Marriage isn’t for Me…

The limited understanding of oneself, especially as time percolates into hours, days and years, gets daunting, especially after marriage. Not only you have to adjust with your partner, you also need to work, both physically and emotionally, to make the marriage work, as if that’s all that your life is all about. Getting married at an early age, makes it even worse, because you are more vulnerable, more naïve, dominated easily. After then, slowly, the monotony seeps in, as it always does, without any noise and at times, as you stare at your partner, you wonder, do you really love him, anymore?

In my case, my answers are particularly scandalous or perhaps, untimely. With a marriage baggage of seven years, it took me few months of adrenaline-gushing excitement to actually get attracted to another man, someone I knew from childhood, but never too closely. Distances between us, disappeared, we gave into each other’s physical lust, the need to be touched, cared and felt, as madly and irresistibly as possible, without a second thought. No, it did not matter to me that I had a husband, or that I had to be a dutiful wife? Why? Because I was sinking in my own hell, days were getting darker and murkier for me, the nights painful.

My husband, busy and always engrossed in his own chores, had hardly time for me, a fact or practice that I started noticing quite soon.

So, I wandered. At that time, it did not matter that I was touching 35 or had white hair or wrinkles. It did not matter that guilt would start to override me, my emotions. All that mattered was, somewhere in the same city, I had another man, for whom I was more than a woman, more than lust, more than history of our togetherness. It made me feel liberated, as I got even closer to him, bringing my marriage at a toss. My marriage had nothing left in it. Except that I had a child to take care of, but no symphony, no chord. My partner was not married, lived alone and that’s encircled private space which he inhabited attracted me more towards him. The attraction became difficult to dominate, a persistence desire which led me to explore myself.

Was I being fake in my marriage?

How could I? When I never got the chance to be real me in it, anyway?

I realized I did not like that my husband used to come drunk, late nights and rebuke me, for whatsoever the reason might be. I realized I did not like to be a house-wife, with my wings clipped and reasoning daunted. I realized that my dreams where somehow suffocated in the claustrophobic ambience of my marriage and I was no longer the person I should have been at my age. I realized so much by being in an extra-marital affair, yes you name it right.

It was difficult to start at first. I was not so empowered. I felt guilty, as if I am committing a sin? But did marriage then dominated over the desires of my body and my emotions? Was I no longer allowed to experiment, just because I was in a so called ‘sacred institution’? Was I to become a cheap slave labor to carry out the daily chores of my household without even having an identity?

There were so many questions that lambasted me. I was haunted and it felt terrible.

It is then when my partner came to my rescue. To start with, he helped seeing myself as a person again, not as someone’s wife or mother but my own identity. The mere way he used to call me with my name, endowed me a sense of freedom. He helped me to gain confidence, to have a style in my personality because slowly and slowly I was experiencing happiness in my own little ways.

No one noticed it initially. And why would they? They never noticed me anyway.

But when after few months, it became apparent that I was having a relationship out of the wedlock, I was haunted, questioned, abused and even slapped. No one asked my husband a single thing, though I knew that he was also seeing women, even sleeping with them. But for my in-laws he was the self-righteous son and I was the one who must be punished, because I had committed a sin.

Did I commit a sin, only because I loved?

I had never loved my husband. My marriage had been a burden, but who would understand it? Who would understand that I too was human? Few years back, my marriage ended, I took the decision. I could no longer stay alive in an environment which had been created for me, it was like a living hell.

There are so many women in my position, many who are domestically abused and ruled over, trampled by the whims and fancies of their husband. To them, I would just like to say that it does not matter if you experiment, fall in love once again. It’s our Indian society that has created such norms, you don’t have to be a victim to that. Instead, you need to break free, take a stand like I did, own up to your own decisions.

Where love ends, extra marital begins… 

Because of an extra-marital affair, your marriage ends, it’s not a stigma. You need to understand that there was no love right from the beginning. If there was, you would not have been in this position.

So, be strong and stand uptight. Take the call. Stop calling yourself names and own up to your own personality. Break free!