By Priyobhashini

I have written this to a friend who is stuck in an extremely unhappy relationship (marriage ). And the only thing holding her back from walking out, is the fact that even her parents want her to try it out harder. The main bone of contention between my friend and her husband is the fact that he doesn’t give her much time. He spends every evening out on his own with his friends and when she protests this, he says this is something he cant let go of and she will just have to learn to leave with it.

My friend says that she married for companionship and a family life, and if he chooses to spend all his free time without her, why should she spent her whole days and weeks running his house, his servant, the cooking, the maintenance of his house and looking after his mother too. What for she asks?

Her mother-in-law says, she should try “harder” to please her man, and if he doesn’t change, she will just have to accept it and learn to live with it, since, traditionally women hold a relationship together by a little compromise.

Her own mother doesn’t her to come out of a marriage with the bad name of “her” walking out.

Below is what i wrote to my friend. I would really appreciate if you comment further on this.

……..

First of all, parents are very wise and have more wisdom than we give them credit for. But when i to comes to intimate relationships i have to say, our parents dealt with a different time. And different kinds of emotions.

Bargaining power and expectations in relationships in their time was way different from our time. Back then, women were “expected” to put up with a lot of situations and circumstances because men (and society where norms are set by men, to their convenience) “expected” so.

Women thus had to put up with a lot of things that made them unhappy, little trivial things as to what they could expect from their husband (including love, affection, time and even sex) to bigger stuff ( support, finances, security and respect ). I keep on saying this in the PAST tense ( mark the women HAD to…) because i want to believe its the past.

However it is not so.

Women are still “expected to” put up with a lot of stuff, especially if they have kids. Not in a real world if things just ran “normally” which it doesn’t want to because men don’t like it to do so.

What i think is that now women are ABLE to break out of it, even with very little support, because they are better equipped to deal with it. look at the odds:
In olden days women would be scorned if they left their husbands so society would make it hard for women who leave their husbands to live on…parents would be made to suffer if fathers took their daughters back, shops would refuse to serve them, no one would give them jobs, same to the daughters….

How could then these women sustain life when everyone shunned them? They couldn’t and hence they would put up with abuse, neglect, mistreatment or even just pure dissatisfaction, disappointment and unhappiness.

Why should one live, with so much unhappiness and disappointment/dissatisfac

tion inside. I mean if one is Mother Theresa and is doing the earth a lot of good, that kind of sacrifice might make some little sense. Else, does it make ANY SENSE to give away this life away, for nothing?

Is one’s life worth only THAT much? just that little much? that a woman has to cook, keep house and slave away in a way that it does very little for her (except make her unhappy) but that it facilitates others life. For what?

What instead a woman, chooses to break away from this society’s norms, and live by herself, whether she has children to support or not, and do all the above for herself. Like cook for her, at her own time and pace (and to her taste) , keep house for herself, and slave away in every way that makes her life easier and more beautiful. I mean, with all the disappointment and dissatisfaction gone, wouldn’t this woman be, happier and more peaceful inside?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS picture?

Nothing at all.

Other than the fact that MEN make it sound like the “forbidden apple” to prevent women from tasting it.

But hey!!! you know what? men tasted it and here we are on earth right now. What bigger proof do you need to understand, that i CAN be done?

I say WOMEN, GO AHEAD, DO IT !.

If you are unhappy, try out things that make you happy inside. You are not obliged to anyone on this earth to slave away for them. Love certainly doesn’t compel you to do so, because if you know what love is, learn to love yourselves a bit more.

After all men have been doing it for centuries, and trust me on this, every woman has every right under the sky to be happy.