25 years of togetherness

Today is the 25th anniversary of our marriage. Reena and I got married on 31st May 1998. These 25 years of togetherness have been full of love, excitement, and many other things. I could not have asked for a better companion than Reena for this journey. This journey took us to places that none of us imagined we will go and threw a myriad of challenges that we faced together. She has not only been a committed wife, but also a friend, a critic, and a cheerleader for me. I don't know if we are made for each other, but definitely, we made each other.  

Just to be clear, it was not a fairy tale like they show in movies or we read in books. Ours was not love at first sight or any other love story where we have to struggle and fight with the system or with our families to get married. Ours was an arranged marriage. Even though it could be categorized as an arranged marriage, it was missing some essential ingredients of a typical arranged marriage. Reena's parents and my parents belonged to the same state, Uttar Pradesh (UP), hence my parents wanted to find a bride from UP even after knowing that none of their kids belonged to UP and share any social and cultural aspects of that state. So, I and Reena did not speak the same language, did not grow up in the same cultural and social settings, and did not share the same values. Normally, in a typical arranged marriage bride and groom share these common socio-cultural aspects, but we didn't. As expected, our start was not as smooth as anyone could have expected due to all these differences. Ours was not love at first sight, but it was love after many sights. But once the love entered it never left or got less, rather, it grew year by year and we are now in our 25th year of togetherness.

We tested and challenged each other on many fronts, before realizing that we really complement each other and then the ride together has been a journey full of excitement and joy. Of course, there were challenges and there will be more to come, but we know for sure that we have each other to face them. The key to our togetherness was transparency and trust. We are so different than each other that we cannot live together without this trust and transparency. We are very different, even after 25 years, each one of us has parts of our lives where the other is not required, and we respect that. We know our differences and don't try to change each other. Husband and wife are not a single entity, they are two different individuals who agree and decide to live together, there is no need for one to dissolve in another to make this relationship a success. This is a simple philosophy that we follow and it has been working great so far. I hope people who want to be in a relationship realize the importance of protecting each other's individuality and personal space. If you don't respect these things about your partner, you don't respect that person, and without respect, there is no love. Marriages can survive without love, marriage is just a legal contract nothing more without love and respect. But if you want marriage to be something more than a legal contract, something more than a way to have a display for society, there needs to be mutual respect, trust, and transparency, I am glad that we managed to achieve that. Most marriages come with patriarchal conditioning where the husband has an upper hand and ours was no different. It took a lot of work from both of us to negate this burden and create our own dynamics that had no precedence in our family or culture, but I am glad that we did that and never followed the status quo. I thank Reena for accepting this challenge and making this work, I know it was not easy for her, but she not only accepted the challenge but added new dimensions to it. The journey continues and I am looking forward to our next phase with equal excitement and awe.   

Happy anniversary Reena, and thank you for allowing me to be me.

Thank you for reading and please share your story of togetherness with others, it may inspire more such stories. 

©Vinay Thakur,  Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com

Guilt is an effective weapon used against women for centuries

A feeling of guilt is not a good feeling. It makes us feel bad for whatever we did or failed to do in the past. It makes us feel responsible for whatever bad is happening around us. This feeling is necessary many times to make us realize our mistakes and take corrective actions, but this feeling can also hurt our progress if we feel guilty for no reason, or for doing things that we were supposed to do but which were against the established social norms of that time. The feeling of guilt has been used against women for centuries to make them fulfill stereotyped roles. Overcoming this imposed feeling of guilt is an integral part of every woman's struggle to break the shackles of unreasonable stereotyped restrictions. Women are successful to overcome this feeling and achieve substantial progress to prove that they are no less capable of achieving success in every field, but even after all these years, I read posts on social media where a woman feels guilty for not doing enough for their families by prioritizing their careers. They feel or are made feel guilty for not paying enough attention to their in-laws or kids at the cost of their flourishing careers. They are blamed more for neglecting their familial duties compared to their male counterparts. In contrast, I rarely see any such posts by men, where they regret focussing on their professional lives at the cost of not paying enough attention to their family members, especially young kids.

So, why career-oriented women are selectively targeted for not being involved enough with their families? Because many times this strategy works, many times society becomes successful in imposing that feeling of guilt in women's minds. This weapon of guilt has been used for centuries against women and it is still one of the most potent weapons used against them. Victim shaming also comes in the same category where the motive and behavior of the victim of sexual crime is criticized instead of a blatant act of harassment or assault by the perpetrator. It is not easy to deal with such attacks. As human beings, we are sensitive to our surroundings and have a tendency to fit in. Both women and men are targetted by outdated and rigid social norms to fill in certain types of roles and whenever they try to break those boundaries they are targetted for not being real men or women. We as a society need to fight this mentality if we want each and every member of the community to contribute to the welfare of our society to the best of their capabilities. In an era where a lot of professional help and care is available, it is unreasonable to expect only a particular gender to fulfill particular responsibilities. There is nothing wrong with being a career-oriented person for a man or a woman. Partners can help each other to fulfill their career aspirations and achieve professional as well as personal success. Without support from each other, men and women will fail to achieve their aims no matter what those aims are. 

Hilary Moore, a lawyer who decided to leave law to look after her family wrote in her article, "A real freedom is freedom from condemnation, no matter what choices we make. A woman's place is where she pleases. In a truly egalitarian society, a woman's value will not be measured by her ability to reach the traditional male definition of success." Make your own choices, go through the struggles and hardships that come with it, and reap the rewards. If the imposed feeling of guilt is only used to deter you from breaking stereotyped roles, just ignore it, we need to diffuse this weapon as it has been used for quite some time to frustrate the efforts of brave women. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.