Health and Marriage

You know what Tridev, a marital problem is like a dominio effect. I often wonder why am I stressed always. The root cause is lack of companionship. This has a heavy toll. I am forced to be independent, I am forced to defend and take care of myself. This scares people around that very few would really want to network with a person like this.

Unknowingly the personal chaos spills over other facets and without our cognizance we become aggressive. I started two threads Low Self Esteem and yet another (don't get it immediately) just to address this. There was this specific ILite who said she's not surprised that I am having problems. I really thought over her post and realized yes it is not surprising I am having problems because there is a vacuum in the form of forced seclusion.

I don't have friends to go out for movies, shopping or even pick the phone and talk. Most of them are married and settled. The other acquaintances either are not comfortable for whatsoever independent personality that I have built.

The often asked questions are how do you go around alone in an unknown city, how do you go alone for blah blah. I would wish that they really know what it is being alone and certain situations are forced and not chosen.

 

Just curious. Why India? Why not here?

 

I have my cousins and few of my friends who are separated, some are single parents and some are single. Yes initially during the couple of years immediately after the divorce they did sound aggressive, hurt easily, reading b/w the lines, and feeling upset and alone for no reason...

But after those initial couple of years, they gained confidence, they know their life is in their hands i.e safe hands and they started appreciating what they have.

CW dear

I can say one thing here, when you live alone people would ask 1001 questions, but again you are answerable only to yourself and the moment you feel the need to answer everyone around you, including your parents/siblings/relatives, its like living for them instead of your ownself.

I did observe this trend recently (I was doing just an analysis) and observed that a woman who is more confident and feels self sufficient has a good chance of happy marriage rather than someone who wants to live and die for her husband. Becuase if we cant accept and enjoy our OWN company, how can our companion enjoy our company??

Moreover I had this question also, unless you havekids what is the need for you to go around and tell people that you are separated?? why cant you mingle like any girl who is single? why this feeling of responsibility to let the entire world know about your marital status and position.?

When you find good friends who emnpathize with you then you share your personallife not to everyone who you come across with.

I would really want you to be STRONG. Go out and make more friends. Not everyone will want to befriend you, but sure some would want to. So dont even try to take words of peopel who say your behaviour is /was wrong. No one knows you better than your own self.:thumbsup

 

Thanks Sri for your post. I typed a reply but Indusladies site was down. It's making me write again.

I hardly tell anyone that I am divorced. The ones that don't know me know me as an unmarried person / single status.

The single status that one enjoys before and after a divorce is different. The singleness before marriage is like the summer showers in England. The most welcome showers and a very very pleasant weather.

The singleness post divorce is like living in the rain forest region. You will never know when it will rain and shine. When it rains you must be aware that it might turn out into flash floods too. Despite the hot and humid weather you will see the fresh greenery always. The green that you would not have seen earlier and the freshness in the soil and the smell of the freshness around will give you a new lease of life. It is always evergreen!

 

CW, I am having a hard time understanding how life after divorce can be stressful. Don't people get a divorce to get out of the stressful marital life so they can move on and explore other options? I think once you made a decision to get divorced, you need to mentally prepare yourself to move on to a new phase of life and divorce signifies a new beginning. There is no use harping about the past once you decided to end the marriage. Lack of companionship can be easily fixed by dating someone new or explore options. The easiest way to forget your last partner is to get a new partner. Isn't that the whole idea behind getting a divorce?

And I have single friends as well as friends in serious relationships or marriages and very often, we get together and hang out without the husbands or boyfriends. Just because someone is married doesn't mean they are with their husband and family 24/7. Or if you feel people in relationships are busy, you need to get yourself some single friends and I am sure you have close friends who will go out with you whether you are single or married or divorced.

I think the whole objective of getting divorced is to move on in life and seek new beginnings. There is no point in harping over the past or cocooning yourself and watch all your prime years of life disappear. You have to make an earnest effort to live your life to the fullest and keep telling yourself that you got a divorce so that you can move forward not getting stuck there.

Divorces can be hard initially and that is understandable but you cannot be stuck there forever. You have to make efforts to move on, see new people and make the best out of your life. You cannot get the prime years of your life back and everything else in life is replaceable. You don't want to look back 20 years from now and regret that you missed out on making the best out of the prime of your life. They will never come back in life so keep telling yourself to live your life to the fullest when you have the age and energy. Divorce is just a temporary setback in life and despite its short term lingering effects, it opens up a whole array of new opportunities and you just have to seek it and go for it.

And I don't know if being independent and taking care of yourself are qualities people run away from. I have always been very independent and pretty much can handle myself on my own and whether I am married or single, nothing can change that. I don't think whether those qualities have negatively affected my friendships and if anything, they have had a positive impact.

 

Mals -
the 50-50 "enforcement" can be a disaster for initial years of an arranged marriage (perhaps even to love marriage). The 50-50 will come with time and maturity in a reasonably good marriage. But "with time" is key.

At the beginning - unless there is already a tremendous understanding in place which is unlikely - a slightly skewed 60/40, 40/60 or sometimes 70/30 or 30/70 will be the way to strengthen a marriage.
(I write both 60/40 and 40/60 because it does not matter WHO does it, as long as one of them gives a bit more than the other to start with).

If a marriage starts out 50-50, by all means, celebrate :cheers

But pushing for that or trying to ENFORCE it - has derailed several marriages. I will elaborate later. Right now, just getting to see what is in IL after taking a break of not reading IL for about 10 days

 

Mal, life after divorce is like calm after a storm. The perception of life changes and yes one is more peaceful. It is like meeting with an accident and there's a healing period to recover. Until then it is quite difficult. However, life is much better than what it was before.

 

So where the heck have you been Spidey?

Well I am not sure about your hypothetical ratios of 60/40 or 70/30 or how you arrived at that but I am certainly intrigued to know. And I am also curious to know why 50/50 can be a disaster without substantiating it with any facts. Marriage is a union of equals and people who decide to get married need to understand this concept before getting married, whether it is arranged or love or russian mail order marriage. Obviously 50/50 does not mean you are wagering a territory war and keeping tabs on how much each person does every single day but overall, the relationship has to be a relationship of equals. So what makes you think the person who has the advantage of giving only 30% in the relationship will change to give in 50%? What if he/she takes it for granted that is all they have to give in the marriage? If they are not willing to give 50% in the beginning what makes you think they will later? In the meanwhile, frustration is building up for the other person so don't forget that and all that frustration builds up like a pressure cooker and blows one fine day. Lots of couples have marriage blues after 4 or 5 years mainly due to this.

What exactly is enforcing it? 50/50 does not mean you keep a running Excel spreadsheet to determine who did how much at any given juncture. It means the other person should not be made to feel that they are always getting the wrong end of the stick or they are not being treated as an equal in the relationship.

The idea of being equals in a marriage and 50/50 should come naturally and it should not be a result of a marriage counselor's suggestion 5 years after you got married in the process of determining what went wrong in your marriage initially. That is my take on it.

 

CW, I am sure everyone needs time to recover but that time cannot be forever. The calm after the storm and recovery period after accident analogies are good only if the time is reasonable. I would think usually the events that lead up to a divorce in a marriage are exhausting enough that when people actually get divorced, they'd be ready for a new life. From the divorce and separation cases I know personally, mentally the separation happened long before it happened legally so by then, you should be all raring to go.

What I am trying to drive across is, there is no point in harping over bad relationships for long. Life goes on and you get only older and you do not want to see the prime of your life vanish in the rear view mirror while you are grieving your divorce or separation. And only you can make your post divorce life better and it does not depend on the whims and fancies of your friends or acquaintances or how they view you after a divorce. Because none of that really matters and you don't live your life for them.