Marriage is the legal partnership between two individuals and accepted by society as a social institution. Both men and women study, grow, work and then look for partners in their lives. Some find them in their study place while others at the workplace. Parents find partners for those who are not able to find a partner for themselves.

Marriage is an equal partnership and built on mutual respect and love. It grows with age and ability to adapt to each other. Some marriages last their lifetime while others break over time ,due to lack of compatibility.

In the past ,partners stayed with each other and sacrificed their personal preferences for the larger good of the family and the children. This could have created a lot of hardship to either of the partners but they lived with these challenges. Today divorce is not a dirty word in our society and this is good. Incompatible partners are not forced to stay with one another for life ,even if they did not enjoy being with each other every day.

If we look back at marriage as a social institution ,especially in India, we realise that it has been a binding factor in the family. If we leave out those incompatible ones, who sacrificed their lives for their children’ sake, it has by and large been the glue ,between partners.

I sometimes wonder how some marriages last a life time and not others. If I look at my own marriage, I realise it has to be based on mutual trust and respect. We come from different families, social and academic backgrounds. It is our ability to learn and adapt which makes a marriage click.

Conflicts in marriage are an integral part. We start with a honey moon phase when everything looks hunky dory. Then as the family expands ,children arrive and responsibilities increase, there is bound to be difference of opinions and conflicts between all partners. It is not presence of conflicts which worry me , but the lack of patience and adaptability to deal with these conflicts.

In my view, it is better to separate and lead peaceful and happy lives rather than keep fighting every day and make life miserable for self and others ,in the process. Sometimes the flimsy reasons for divorce make me believe that we need marriage counsellors and family counsellors like in the west ,since joint families and seniors in the family do not play this role of mediation any more.

Family as an institution has already degenerated and in the future, marriage as a social institution ,may not exist in the current form. Over the last decade I have seen that one in three marriages that I have attended ,has failed. This is a scary statistic and I am not proud of it.

We have to prepare ourselves to live in a society where family and marriage are no longer sacrosanct social institutions. We may get new types of partnerships and also new types of families ,which may be different than the past definitions ,we are familiar with.

May be time to redefine “marriage” as a social institution and get ready to live in this new world.

S Ramesh Shankar

28th May 2022