Marriages are engendered by humans, sighed the Gods in relief!
Image courtesy: Taken for Kyobi.blog, by Neha Mundhra

It was International Women’s Day, designed for us women to recognise and celebrate equity between genders, and for men to be spokespeople for an impartial social framework. It happened such that on the day, I crossed the divide in binary gender roles and made a proposal for companionship. After I emailed the proposal—digital is acceptable these days—I discovered that it is Women’s Day, and information that I would have typically ignored gained relevance. 

The recipient of the proposal is a friend, and he and I share a common commitment. One of the ways in which we choose to participate in society requires frequent collaboration, this had seemed like a good starting point to initiate discussion about our longterm life goals. It’s nice to share after all. 

The proposal was declined with grace and self-knowledge, yet something had been shared—an unfettering from gender notions and an impersonal view of request and refusal. Our relationship and self-respect remained undisturbed. What had engendered such composed acceptance? Lack of romantic inclination, perhaps? I didn’t mind particularly. In fact had I known better earlier, I may have treated romance as an exaggerated emotion, like a sugar rush that augurs a comedown and a crash. This is not to say that all romances are symptomatic. 

Some romances contain the value framework of commitment, honesty, respect, while socioeconomics drive the viability of others, but increasingly not for long, because marriage is being linked to personal satisfaction. And why not? However do we know what can truly satisfy us over time? Are we directing our lives along that route before we go out and choose a spouse?

Both the slew of unexpected divorces and my own failed attempts at finding the right partner had brought me to a place where I had paused. I stopped seeking, but I did not stop being receptive: the right partner deserves an open heart, but who is a right partner and how do you create the right partnership? Same interests, similar cultural and economic background, and social affirmation are not the answer. With no wisdom of my own to draw upon, I sought the answer from two discerning friends. A month prior to initiating the proposal, I wrote to them asking four interlinked questions, of which two encompass the essence of the exploration and summarise precisely what was being asked. 

Q1—“I am not completely sure, I understand how two people can exercise the intent to have a supportive, nourishing relationship?” 

Q2—“We may meet someone who we connect with and the heart desires for the person’s presence in our life and perhaps even dreams of ways it can have a relationship that brings companionship of a beneficial kind. But how should this desire be viewed and how does one act on it with wisdom, honest communication and awareness? “

These two friends have been together for over three and a half decades—and theirs is a partnership in intentional living. Their response to my questions was so simple that it was beautiful.

Why at 45 was I still asking these questions? Because the answer is not obvious to most of us, and to be consciously realised and lovingly transmitted within the human community, the questions need to be explored with those who are living examples of the wisdom.

Marriage is a human construct, therefore to say it’s a failed institution is simply insufficient—We can’t keep making the planet and society a dump yard for our unsustainable and shortsighted imagination. Perhaps, its more important to see the failings in its construction and fix what is broken. Marriage in a non-binary world, where personal growth and individual reckoning have gained precedence over social biases and needs, is asking to be redefined. 

A disparaging view of marriage is pointless, because commitment to a single longterm partner, when taken to heart, eases the mind’s wandering, to say the least. And when the partnership is formed for reasons that recognise and celebrate individual wellbeing and common goals that gently help us rise to higher ground, where service, love, and wisdom begin to nourish our lives then what we have is a wholesome life experience. 

My sphere of contribution in society does not spread wide enough to subsume existential preoccupations, and consistent practice for spiritual maturity is a focus but not a singular one, it made sense therefore to explore how to consciously and patiently partner in a beneficial relationship. While I may not have a partner, I am glad I have direction, and an answer that has lifted me from the quagmire of ambiguity and unsatisfactory notions. With no desire for child bearing or child rearing (ever since I can recall), there is no race against time. I have the leisure to ask and explore how I can choose to welcome only that which enriches my life. For some of us, a few knocks are enough to move from ignorance towards light, with a little help from our friends.

Sitting with single friends and friends with partners, I hear views that are restricted to their present situation. I listen for the truth to pass on from one human to another, and all that resounds is an echo that will fade as the situation changes. I say, ‘Wait, there is something you must read.’ I turn on my laptop and double click on a document, there emerges on the screen a treasure so precious: Words that stand true across time and instance that nobody refutes their beauty. 

“Religion, social norms and family pressures, no longer enjoy the dogmatic status that they did, a few generations back. Within this setting, it becomes a perfect, nay a logical possibility, for two serious, mature people, acting with wisdom and awareness, communicating honestly and coming together, to have a supportive, nourishing relationship…that brings companionship of a beneficial kind! 

This is very different from the one-night-stands and the live-in relationships that have their bases mainly in the sexual and emotional. These are also valid reasons for two consenting adults to come together, whether in a marriage or not. But valid though they may be, they are too transient because their physical, chemical and emotional bases are too shifting and sandy to anchor the foundation of a lasting relationship and companionship of a beneficial kind. 

For a lasting relationship, the bases have to be outside of oneself; outside of the two people in the relationship; outside of the mere physical, chemical and emotional. While the sexual, physical, chemical and emotional may always be elements in the relationship, they are never the main ones. 

So the basis for the relationship has to be a broadly common vision, dream, mission or path being travelled. The relationship then becomes a beneficial companionship, in which each one grows and helps the other to grow; in which each one is deeply happy to have the other as a companion and be in each other’s company, dreaming together, traveling together, achieving their common mission together. 

And if both are fortunate to develop wisdom of the changing nature of all conditioned things; if both develop the wisdom, that takes them beyond attachment, to pure loving-kindness, then it is hard to find a better combination: growing in and supporting each other’s journey.  

The first thing then, is to just accept reality:

– I have crossed the age of raising a family, and I do not wish to have children. 

– I want a relationship for a beneficial companionship, which I need/ want just now. 

After that, you need to articulate, first by yourself and later with the lucky person: 

This _______ is the very definite, common direction, of the relationship .
This _______ is the common vision and dream of the relationship.
This _______ is the common mission of the relationship.
These _______ are the common aims, objectives and goals of the relationship. 

It is important to first do this exercise for yourself and then as a couple. 

While maintaining your individualities, it helps to see yourselves as a team- couple, accomplishing aims, objectives, goals, mission, dreams and visions, together. A vision document and mission statement, as individuals and as a team-couple, helps to sharpen focus, both short and long term.  That done, you’re on your way!”