Secret of Life-Long Marriage

My neighbor and close friend invited me when is parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year. 50 long years of togetherness! This triggered my brain into thinking. What a coincidence, last week on my way back from work, I heard a play on radio in which a senior couple was talking nostalgically about their married life, and its sweet and sour experiences. They cherished the years spent with each other and felt happy that their relationship survived and got stronger despite several ups and downs.

It was very common for people of my parents’ generation to have a marriage that lasts a lifetime. Even people in my generation are commonly seen celebrating their 25 years of association. However, it seems that marital conflicts, break-ups and divorces are on the rise now. Success rate of marriages is on the decline; couples are finding it frustrating that marriages do not last these days. The sanctity of marriage as an institution is under threat.

What is the cause of this change? Is it due to a shift in social values? Is it due to rise of nuclear families as against joint families of past? Are parents over pampering their kids and making them intolerant in the process?  Is it the influence of western thinking and culture? It is hard to say what exactly is the reason behind it, but the trend seems undesirable and concerning.

We know that today’s generation Y is well educated, and are more aware and vocal about their rights and needs. Today’s girls expect equal treatment in marriage unlike past. The youngsters today are also not afraid of social stigma any more. They cannot tolerate any unfair situation just to keep the marriage alive. Their thinking is, “why drag on with a relationship if it is not working out?” I agree with all of this, but still it does not explain why an otherwise perfect marriage fails to sustain these days due to trivial differences.

We may think along a different perspective too - possibly the long lasting marriages of the yesteryears are overrated. Most of these marriages used to be defunct anyway, where the partners live a life of compromise, pushing their differences and real issues under the carpet just to sustain the marriage. Very often, women used to get an unequal treatment and accept it as their fate.

However, when I carefully look around the long-time happily married couples around me, I find that the reality is very different from the above perception. I could not spot any case of a defunct marriage. None of these couples lived in a constant state of compromise. Instead they had a healthy relationship in which they had adjusted to each other very well and there was no evidence that they are just hiding their differences. There is also a near equality in the relationship. In all these years, they have managed to find the secret of forming a lovely life-long bond. 

Is it worth the effort trying to develop and sustain such a long lasting loving relationship? I can tell you from my experience that it is. Nothing can be more valuable than a life partner who understands you fully, with whom you can drop your pretenses and just be yourself, where you feel happy to just hang around together, one who is your great source of support in good as well as bad times, your best friend forever.

OK, you get the gist, but what is the secret of life-long marriage? Well there can be numerous little things that make it possible to build a life-long relationship, and I am not going to list all of them here, since all rules that apply to inter-personal relationship apply here as well. But the most important rule, particularly for married couples is to accept your life-partner as it is. When you carefully think about it, this acceptance may mean multiple things.

Your Spouse is Unique
Every individual is unique, and so is your partner. Do not compare him with others. There are areas where he is stronger, and there are areas where he is not. Accept him for what he is, with all his strengths and weaknesses. He can never be anyone else, even if he tries his best to do it.

Defects Magnified
A wise elder told me once that when you get so close to someone, you see all his flaws on a much more magnified scale. Remember this fact before you get judgmental about your dear spouse. It is not that he is so bad – he looks so bad from such a close distance. To others viewing him from a distance, he will appear to be a much better person.

Do not be a Nag
Acceptance also mean that do not constantly try to improve your spouse. There is a space for healthy feedback in marriage, but let him decide if he wants to act on it or not. Do not be a constant nag about the changes you want to see in him.

Does all this sounds too complicated and boring to you? Does the complexity of marriage scare you into running away from it? Don’t worry – it is far simpler and enjoyable than what it sounds. Let me try to find a fun way to explain it. How about expressing it as a poem or a song?

I need not look any further – way back in 1965, Anand Bakshi wrote some beautiful lines that capture the essence of what I am trying to say in this post.

चाँद सी महबूबा हो मेरी कब ऐसा मैंने सोचा था |
हाँ तुम बिलकुल वैसी हो जैसा मैंने सोचा था |

Keep Driving

Sanvi was driving the car with her father in the passenger's seat, when they were hit by a sudden storm. There was dust everywhere, and it became difficult to see in the darkness.

"What should I do papa?", Sanvi asked.

"Let us keep driving.", replied the father.

You can imagine how difficult it was to drive in the storm, and it was getting worse every moment.

"Now what should I do?", Sanvi repeated her question.

"Keep driving. Go slow.", was the answer from the father.
 
As they went ahead, they noticed many drivers had stopped their vehicles, waiting for storm to subside.

She said,"I think I should stop now. I can barely see the road. This is a dangerous storm and other people have stopped as well."

Her father was calm as he said,"Do not stop. Keep driving."

Now the storm was on its peak, but Sanvi did not stop and kept moving ahead slowly. Suddenly she noticed that the visibility had begin to improve. A couple of kilometers further down the road, they were clearly out of storm, with no dust and bright sunshine in that area.

Her father said, "You may stop now and come out of the car."

"Why stop now?", asked Sanvi.

The father said, "When you come out, you will know that those who stopped due to the storm, are still stuck in the storm. You are out of storm now since you did not stop making efforts."

There are times when we face tough times in life - at work, at home, or in family. This little story is an inspiration for us in difficult times. Even the strongest people tend to give up when faced with insurmountable difficulties of life. Let us remind ourselves that this storm will pass if only we do not give up making efforts. Keep driving and the Sun will shine again in your life.

The following lines capture the inspiring message very well:


पार हुआ वो रहा जो सफ़र में, जो भी रुका घिर गया वो भंवर में,
तू ना चलेगा तो चल देंगी राहें, मंजिल को तरसेंगी तेरी निगाहें

His Shirt is Whiter than Mine, Why?

Most people of my generation will smile as they recall the tagline of this popular detergent advertisement of 1980s. It brings out our tendency to constantly benchmark ourselves with others. Everyone likes to believe that he is better than others, which is fine so long as it remains a subjective feeling. But the moment we face an objective counter evidence, aren't we prone to get upset? How do we handle such feeling? In my humble opinion, the best way to handle it is to avoid such comparisons.
 
I had my birthday this week, and amid the hustle-bustle of wishes from friends and family members, the thought crossed my mind, “How am I doing in life?” Since I also attended a reunion with my college mates from Roorkee last week, it took an obvious turn, “Am I doing better than my class mates?”
 
As I tried to find an answer to this question, I stumbled upon the first roadblock. I recall vividly that on the evening of reunion, we had such great bonhomie among all the friends… It was apparent that all of us started our journey in different directions and reached different places over the long years; however, each of us seemed fully satisfied with our journey and we felt genuinely happy to be where we are. How to say who did better in this case? How do we define the concept of ‘better’?

Luckily, the engineer in me found an easy answer. Every definition of 'better' has an associated comparison function. Choose your function and you can find out who is better. Somehow, I was not convinced with my own logic. Another voice in my head said, “Comparison functions are meant for inanimate objects. Are you sure they are suitable for human beings? A comparison can tell you who is bigger; but bigger is not necessarily better. Similarly, it is hard to say that faster or higher is better.

It was getting complicated. Life was easier in college, when marks or grades could be easily used to rank the whole class and you could easily find out where do you stand. If only we can find a similar quantifiable measure to apply, we can use it to compare. Some commonly used benchmarks in society are: 

• Education - Degrees, Grades
• Money – Income, Wealth
• Assets – House, Cars
• Status – Position at work, size of business, social status
• Popularity – number of friends / likes on social media etc.

The benchmarks listed above are no doubt objective in nature, but I realized none of these help me answer my original question. To be sure, one can find out whether she is more educated, richer, wealthier, better placed at work, or more popular than others. Does any of it make her better? Not sure. More educated is not always better. Being richer or wealthier does not imply being better as well. People may be more popular or have a higher status, and that also is not an indicator of being better. If we look around carefully, we can find numerous examples around us to support this argument.

So, I was back to square one; it was turning out impossible to benchmark myself with others. Suddenly I realized that it is pointless to compare, when each of us is a unique individual with a different and equally interesting journey. Why bother at all? There is no need to compare yourself with others as such comparisons are often misleading.

I know you are thinking, “This is too idealistic a viewpoint and the real world works quite differently. In reality, we do benchmark ourselves with people around us all the time. We try and be better than them, and a big part of our lives is spent in this race. It is this sense of 'competition' that makes us better each day. If I adopt a no-comparison mindset, won’t it kill my desire to excel?”

Well, why not compare with yourself? Benchmark yourself with what you were yesterday and try to improve upon it. This is also easy to do as you can do it in small steps, and be on a continuous path of improvement and excellence. This is a good way to keep your motivation to excel.

Let us take the example of a marathon to understand it better. Hundreds of people take part in a marathon, and a big majority of them take much longer to complete it than the winner. Do these people compare their timing with the winner to motivate themselves? In fact most people running a marathon are happy to just take part in the race. Even the performance conscious runners try to do better than their previous run, instead of competing with fellow runners. We should run the race of life like this marathon. It is not important how many people are ahead of you in the race… more important is how far you have come.

A friend has an interesting observation in somewhat different context. He says,”If you compare yourself with people around you (similar background, same location etc), in the best case you'll be slightly better than them. So if at all you're going to compare and compete, do it with the best in the business. It will be easy to tell yourself several reasons why you can't be as good. Not letting those reasons stop you is half the work done!”

I fully agree with his suggestion of benchmarking yourself against the best, as the idea encourages us to aim high and have BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals). However, an inherent limitation of external benchmarks is hidden in the observation as well. Any external benchmark places an upper limit on how great we want to be or can become. With whom did Newton compare when he invented gravity? Did Mahatma Gandhi compare with someone on his road to greatness? Do you think Mark Zuckerberg needed a comparison to take Facebook to such heights of popularity?

So do aim high by all means, but when you switch from external benchmarks to internal benchmarks, you will be set to fly much higher.

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About This Post

The thought behind this post was triggered by a Facebook post by a friend, with a valid point about choosing to benchmark against the best. The thought also resonates well with the idea of BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). I admit I am guilty of misunderstanding his point at first, and he had to clarify it before I got it right.

However, the post triggered my thoughts about my deep rooted belief about the futility of external comparison.

Disclaimer - I am a firm supporter of the idea, and the anecdote in the post about me trying to compare with my friends is not real - it is there just to help me make the point more dramatically.