The great Indian 'Son-In-Law' syndrome !

This post is not about the contemptible jerks who physically, verbally or mentally abuse their wife, or in-laws. That's a cringe worthy social epidemic but this article is about an average Indian married man who caters to his family and appears to be gentle and well-cultured. Sometimes he masquerades as a torchbearer of equality too but deep inside he would be suffering from "Great Indian Son-In-Law Syndrome".

One of the earliest advices I got from my well-wisher ahead of marriage was to enjoy 'son-in-law' status post wedding and not let in-laws gain control of me ! I was too naive to even understand what he meant because I never saw my father or brother-in-law behave in any condescending manner or 'enjoy' their son-in-law title.

People change with changing times, education, awareness and exposure. But if there is something that could not be rattled with all the change in the world, its the mindset of the average Indian son-in-law, the patronizing, supercilious member of the family who believes in exercising the right he's supposedly entitled to.

To all my fellow married men, run through this checklist:

1. Do you get offended when your parents-in-law address you as nuvvu (tum) instead of meeru (aap) ?
2. Do you expect in-laws to call and wish you on all festivals ?
3. Do you sulk if your in-laws don't consult you for any major decisions they take ?
4. Do you expect in-laws to offer you clothes and gifts on all festivities or family events ?
5. Do you expect your wife to convince you before meeting her own parents and siblings ?
6. Do you believe you've done a favor to their family by accepting to marry their girl ?
7. Did you discuss or influence your wife to change her last name to yours ? or ever claimed that you "allowed" your wife to retain her maiden last name ?
8. Did you ever feel you "helped your wife" by doing household chores ?
9. Do you dread that your friends and extended family could call you "jhoru ka ghulaam" hence try to dominate your in-laws and wife ?
10. Did you believe your wedding expenses (or gifts) were the responsibility of your in-laws ?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you suffer from son-in-law syndrome. Not that it's criminal but you must refrain from claiming to be a modern thinking man regardless of your education, knowledge, wisdom, social status or ideology.

Patriarchy is deeply ingrained in Indian minds since generations. Sexism, rampant discrimination were earlier considered normal and largely acceptable. Since centuries, its interpreted that son-in-law was responsible for their daughter's wellness and more respected and appeased he was, better would be their daughter's life. That's because historically women were largely confined to four walls of the house and had to live inferior lives. The respect or sometimes fear of son-in-law is the direct consequence of the same patriarchal hangover even to date. Generations of such appeasement and mollification got so entrenched into DNA of the society that men feel offended if they weren't treated like demigods.

Adding up everything, it's a fact that sons-in-law were not respected for the people they were but out of the fear that they could harm their wives. And it's not a surprising fact that the men encourage and entertain such entitlement to this day with active encouragement from their families. Isn't that a tacit blackmail or threat ? How shameful could that get ?

Dear men, you marry a girl because you (like her) need a lifetime companion for physical, emotional, social and mental needs; a person who promises to live rest of her life with you and who builds along with you a strong bond of love, mutual trust and inter-dependency. In the equation, if she doesn't expect your parents to respect her in a certain way, why would you ? Why are you, as a male, more important ? Just because you have a dick ? Does that grant you the privilege ?

It's a puzzle how a man who respects random senior people on the street fail to treat his parents-in-law who are seniors too, with similar respect. Being a man is not about bludgeoning somebody because the weak and elderly are intimidated of the possibility of you harassing their loved one. Being a man is not about exploiting them to appease you to show off how dominant or alpha male you are. Being a male is not demanding or begging for honor, it's about earning respect for the person you are.

Man is not the 'head of the family" as been taught to us in our primary school. You wouldn't be a 'jhoru ka ghulaam' if you get rid of your male chauvinism. Every species in the universe would born either male or female and you just happened to be a male due to the chromosome game. Being a male is not something you earned, there's nothing to be so proud to be one.

Machismo lies in being chivalrous, gentlemanly, gracious and charming with everybody in general and those who respect you in particular. Without these qualities, you will just be a dick...which you may take helluva pride in.

PS: For those who try to connect dots about my wife's last name; we never ever discussed about that and she uses my last name only on the social media for her own reasons and she's proud to retain her maiden name elsewhere, like my mother or my sister.

Checklist for Groom Hunt !

Marriage is a gamble, be it love or arranged. Teenage and young adults around early twenties are vulnerable to getting carried away by transient factors which may cost their lifetime of happiness. Liking somebody and being happy with them are completely different things which may not necessarily go hand in hand. While nobody can judge or advise whom to like, I made an attempt to suggest single girls what kind of guys can keep them happy and comfortable. Here goes the checklist to watch out for:

1. Possessiveness - Though it sounds fairly harmless, this can be a single major reason for hell on earth for girls. There is a difference between concern and possessiveness. If a guy breaches that line and steps over individual freedom, that can get on your nerve sooner or later. A control freak, misogynist, insecure, male chauvinist guy suffering from inferiority complex can be lethal for a healthy relationship. So even if you like a guy, see if he respects your freedom. If you believe you can deal or adjust with his possessiveness, you are being very naive. It's a huge no-go
2. Decisive - No girl really feels comfortable with a guy who can't take decisions or relies on others for push. In years to come, he should be a head of your family, manage finances, society around, kids and many more. He should be mature enough to understand and analyze situations, assess options and take reasonable decisions on time. Again there is a difference between overconfidence and conviction which he should know.
3. Responsibility & Security - Single reason for getting girls married to older guys is to make sure they are in safe hands. Doesn't always means body guarding or getting into brawls with street goons to save her honor. Nothing so filmy. But a guy who feels, expresses and maintains responsibility and takes care of his girl's physical, mental, emotional, social and biological needs, securities is a right guy.
4. Attraction - Girl should marry a guy who adores her, treats her like a princess, feels lucky to have her around and takes pride in showing off his girl. Every girl is beautiful and will find a guy who goes crazy about her. You just have to wait and find him. Life becomes much more beautiful and romantic.
5. Family connection - Marriage is an alliance of two families. No guy or girl can peacefully co-exist with their spouse who hates their parents; nuclear families are no exception. Get into relationship only if you strongly and positively believe you can get along with his parents and he doesn't build bridges between you and your parents. It takes compromises from both sides to get along with people of different backgrounds but if it clicks, it makes a lifetime of difference.
6. Sense of humor - Though you don't need a standup comedian to tickle your funny bone all the time, check if the guy has some sense of humor. Life is too short to be seriously planning and panicking all the time. A guy who can make you laugh with even his silliest antics is worth it.
7. Charming - When you get married to a guy, he's introduced to your world of friends, cousins, colleagues, relatives. Though it's not important to keep the society happy, it helps if your guy is charming enough to spell magic among your circles with his charm, wit, etiquette, choice of words, gestures and social behavior. Who wouldn't like compliments about her better half ? That would add spice and beauty to the relationship
8. Expressive - Look for a guy who is expressive, who can show how much he loves you. That one quality will sweep you off your feet many times even after marriage. 
9. Monies - Though not absolutely necessary, life is better with luxuries than with paucity. As a saying goes, a successful husband is one who earns more than this wife could spend. A guy with good financial standing, potential to earn big can save you from a lot of gloom, inferiority complex, adjustments, compromises and agony. If you have a choice, opt for a richer guy. As simple as it goes.
10. Looks - Not the most important, hence the last in the list. Just imagine your life where you wake up (and also go to bed) to a suave, athletic, TDH guy. Wouldn't life be beautiful ? Also he's gonna share his looks with your kids-to-be. So don't be in perennial denial that looks are immaterial.

So girls out there, run this checklist through a guy whom you fell in love with or your parents proposed to you. It's never too late until you tied the knot. And if you think this would help your loved ones, feel free to share !

Other relationship based GYAN at:

1. Love Marriage Vs Arranged Marriage
2. Love Affair Lifecycle
3. Whom to choose between Parents and Life Partner ?

Love Affair Life Cycle

After writing a couple of posts on this subject, I didn't want to delve more or be a cynic especially when I myself am a product of love marriage; but decided to pen down some thoughts based on experiences of those whom I've seen from close quarters. My previous articles on the topic were:

• Love Marriage vs Arranged Marriage
• Love, Pyar, Prema etc

Parents are getting more liberal and progressive these days and we see lot more cases of love marriages than earlier generations or even a decade ago. That may be a good sign from one point of view but that means youngsters are completely given charge of THE most important decision of their lives at the age when they are not always ready or matured to take one.

18-25 is a really tricky age when one falls in love with almost every good looking / attractive or interesting person of the opposite sex because everybody is subconsciously looking for a prospective life partner. On the other hand everybody is subconsciously trying to impress those of opposite sex by projecting their best side, or sometimes an artificial or made up persona (again with or without their own knowledge). So it's quite a confusing situation.

Boys naturally get attracted to beautiful, charming, sexy, talkative girls who elevate their status in their circles. Girls get attracted to handsome, humorous, interesting, charming, romantic guys who can provide them some security. That's quite natural

When a boy and a girl start talking to and liking each other (due to factors mentioned above), they will have a lot to talk, share, discuss, express for a period of time. This is when they spend hours together on phone calls, instant messages, text messages day and night. That's really a beautiful phase of any relationship.This is when "love" blossoms because they find each other very interesting, enterprising and engaging enough to spend the rest of their lives. The problem exists in the fact that nobody realizes that's a temporary phase because no couple can talk or share things like that forever. The aura or utopia vanishes in an year, sometimes even months or even worse, in some cases days. This is the period when a lot of couples get committed for marriage or a long term relationship. That's what they call love and also convince themselves that they know a lot about the other person and hence it's not infatuation anymore. That's when they get into some kind of intimate moments or physical relationships.

But after the cloud of interesting phase passes away, comes a phase of strange silence, longing for those golden days, dearth of interesting topics to talk about, lack of time for each other. This is the phase where the bogeyman called "possessiveness" creeps in. This is when boy and girl start fighting and cribbing over some "extra-attention" she/he gives to other boys/girls. Things start to change. Restrictions, instructions, follow-ups on each other take place of sweet-nothings. Worse if arguments about family customs, conflicts in backgrounds, fear of mental, emotional and social adjustments post marriage take center stage. In short, it would be "mini-hell".

A lot of couples break-up in this phase and find solace in other people who try to get them out of their bad phase. Some people stay in relationships just because they don't want to hurt their partners or don't want to be selfish or even worse don't want to treat "love" as a business - without realizing that these foolishly romantic lines will ruin two lives and families one day. And those out of bad relationships would feel like free birds :) Thus love affair life cycle ends. But if the couple really falls in love with each other, this phase too would be a temporary one and they can lead a happy and beautiful life forever because their real love starts just here notwithstanding all earlier sugar-coated conversations, spending hours on phone etc.

This quite often happens in arranged marriages as well. Couple brought into arranged relationship by their parents too will go through the utopia phase of colorful thoughts, sweet nothings, flowery conversations which will end at some point, but they come to terms with the next phase because they know they are tied by social norms and hence secondary thoughts don't even creep into their minds.

I personally know people who jumped into commitments because they like the way other person talks or behaves or looks like and then struggle through the next phase of converting love into marriage or marriage into love, and sometimes it's too late for them to back-off. A relationship which begins on the basis of superficial, artificial, unimportant or temporary factors will result in a bitter end or a bad marriage. Its good such relationships remain as crushes or infatuations forever.

From Boyhood to Manhood

When I was in my teens and early 20's. I thought anybody who crossed 25 was an oldie and now am 31 but I feel this is my prime-time :) Amidst all hectic schedules, hullabaloo and struggle for existence thingy, I found some time to ruminate over gradual transition and development of "me", my thought process, values and attitude towards life. This post is just a reflection of what I understood as my transition from boyhood to manhood.

At my current phase, I can clearly and unambiguously categorize my post teenage years as 19-23, 24-28, 29- present, as my opinion about world and myself witnessed a paradigm shift with age.

19-23 for me was, like in anybody's case, wild, volatile and unstable phase. I was a boy subconsciously trying to behave like a man. With newly found freedom, exposure to the world, situations demanding and teasing my decision making prowess - that was an age which forced me to defy all rules and norms of society; ironically that was the age when I didn't know much but aimed at taking over the world. It was sheer ambition and rage of fire in the belly.

Superficial knowledge and limited exposure combined with unlimited arrogance is a lethal combo but that combo conferred upon me this attitude which some people refer to as devil-may-care-attitude. The obvious set of traits like carelessness, negligence, headweight, irreverence, idiosyncrasy crept into my head. Though I don't like this kind of attitude in others, I unknowingly fell into the same bracket at that age. When I see kids of that age group behave similarly, I see my old self in them :)

With age comes knowledge and a tinge of knowledge was bestowed upon me in the next phase i.e., 24-28. This is usually an age of revelation and confusion and I see people belonging to this age group consider their younger lot as confused and ignorant while they themselves fall in those traits :) and that's quite normal; I was no exception.

I was expected to be more mature, responsible and take decisions which shape my life forever. Diplomacy, machiavellianism, chutzpah took the place of innocent arrogance. I thought I could manipulate anything in the world and impress anybody with my smartass attitude; Always tried to impress everybody around with whatever I could, tried to take undue credit for every damn thing that happened around me, resisted any kind of value addition or pieces of advice from elders and more experienced. That's where confusion started, but the other side of the coin is that transition in mindset was initiated.

24-28 is also an age where people get settled in terms of life partner and career. These are the biggest factors that could / can affect any damn person to get back on the right track and understand what "life" is. Anybody who has not settled in either of these will remain confused for sure and if it doesn't happen till late 20's, the situation will become psychologically and socially worse and the worst thing is they never realize the effects.

Life before marriage is like a flight on runway. Until it takes off, flight can't be considered operational. Marriage makes a person more responsible, wise and stable in every way possible. Balancing life, balancing feelings and respect towards parents, life partner, understanding their insecurities and providing the much needed support to loved ones will throw any person into altogether a different world. But this transition doesn't happen in a day. It takes months and years to completely get into the idea and understand technicalities. It only comes with experience and once you are a pro in this, life seems to be totally under control. This happened to me and I feel so much lucky that my parents and my wife made this transition smoother than what it would have been for most of the people. Read: Whom to choose between parents and life partner

24-28 is also the phase when we tend to understand the difference between a job and a career, money and job satisfaction, vulnerability and stability, importance to professional and personal lives and a lot more. The kind of exposure and situations around will make a person more mature and thoughtful. Again, I'm no exception.

In this way my 24-28 helped me, exposed me to lot more situations, pulled me out of my boyhood and kept me in a staging or transition stage before I could become a man. It was a confusing stage as I had to come out of the shell created in my early phase and understand the reality of the world.

29 - present for me is a golden age, perse. As mentioned earlier anybody above 25 was an oldie for me but I believe I got my senses and controls back only after 28 :) By then I knew what the world was, faced many dire situations, knew how to handle stress, pressure, could handle any kind of offensive. I am now mentally and emotionally stronger.

With age also comes wisdom and I believe am much wiser now. I again broke the shackles of manipulative attitude and understood how important it is to be loved and respected. Human values, principles, social responsibility have become vivid. Everything in life is as clear as crystal.

The difference in attitude was that in early 20's I didn't care what others thought about me, in mid 20's I tried to impress others with smartass knowledge and kickass attitude but now I realize that we just need to be ourselves and be expressive and people will automatically love you. Life has mellowed down and eccentricity has given way to thoughtfulness.

This is also a phase where for the first time, I got close to a lot of people who are either much elder to me or younger to me. This gave me a 360 degree view of how life is perceived by people of all ages at the same time. I could see how people 10-15 years elder to me defied all rules of age and are living a life of their comfort. They never took their age seriously and behaved the way their heart wanted. They now do everything which a 22 year old guy can do (except flirting and courting though :p). And guys and girls younger to me showed me how world is getting faster and ruthless. I see teenagers and young adults with awe and feel good when they share their knowledge, ideas, treat me with respect which I never did in their age :) I know the times are changing and it has encouraged me to keep up to the world.

Most of my hobbies, travel, extreme sports happened in this age. I started interacting with more people now than I did in my mid 20's. I'm getting more compliments and appreciation for what I do; I'm garnering more respect when I'm not trying hard. I am clear as how to deal with negativity and worthless people (Read: Dealing with Negativity), deal with failure (Read: Dealing with Failure), how to be happy (Read: Rules to be Happy). My family life has been blissful (touchwood) with the only concern that my parents are not with me (which will be addressed very soon though). My parents, wife, sister, brother in law, parents in law, sister in law love me unconditionally. My word is well respected among all my family members and they all know I love them and care for them. 

This phase of age witnessed my complete settlement in career. I have no insecurities or qualms about making money. I'm in a stage where I have gained knowledge, experience and right attitude to sustain myself; I'm more than satisfied with my work, I'm happy with the kind of educational background I have and the way I'm putting it to use as well. Am the happiest when more than 200 people approach me and say I'm in someway responsible for their career. Bliss !

So I'm wiser, more intelligent, more enterprising, happier, richer, respected, more secure than I ever was. In short I'm happy with how my life is going on and can definitely say that this is the best phase of my life compared to younger days. This is the reason I don't miss being a teenager or younger.  I know I'm a MAN now, not a boy anymore and I'M LOVING IT. I believe my life in coming years will change further and am all game to take it into my stride.

Whom to choose between Parents and Life Partner ?

Marriage is THE most important event in anybody's life. It builds new relationships, changes lifestyle, brings more responsibility, matures you as a person. But some people inadvertently fall into a predicament of either compromising on their existing family relations and values to start a new phase of life or uphold old relations and end up not respecting the new relation it deserves.

Parent children relationship in Indian society is much different to that of other parts of the world. Parents don't wait for kids to get self sufficient and move out, they don't expect kids to work part-time to make their own living. From the time they give birth to their children, parents care, love, suffer, protect, pray for the well being of their children regardless of how old their kids are and regardless of the necessity to do so.

For a boy or a girl, parents will be everything; but with marriage, the dynamics tend to change. Attraction, liking towards that new important person of the life, a feeling of sharing the rest of the life, discovering new things about that person will drive a strong affinity which will make life partner as important as parents or siblings. Thats quite natural for everybody.

But just think from parents' point of view. They would be put in a situation to share the love, attention, affection from their child they were habituated to from past 25 years with a new person who came into their child's life some days or months ago. Parents will be mentally prepared, they know thats life, but still their heart always doesn't agree with their mind; it causes loneliness. Its just not fair.

Youth has to understand that parents need more attention and a feeling of possession in that phase. A boy has to assure his parents that he hasn't gone away from the family, but has brought another child for their parents. No guy neglects his parents deliberately, but proper care should be taken to ensure that his parents whole heartedly accept the girl as a daughter-in-law and not just as a wife to their son. It needs a lot of words and lot more actions.

The way of life should not be drastically different post marriage; Thats the first thing to make his parents feel "yes, he hasn't changed". He has to spend as much time with parents as he did before, do the same things, be the same. Thats very important. He has to help his wife in her trials to build confidence in his parents even at the cost of his own ignominy, thats worthy.

At the same time, the boy has to make his in-laws realize that he didn't separate their daughter from them. They have given their daughter away to an unknown family and would obviously be very apprehensive and nervous. Some words of love, some acts of togetherness will make them happy and content about their decision to get their daughter married to him. Treat them like your family. They need that love and care from their son-in-law to overcome the feeling that their daughter is away. After all, they are a family too.

Girl's role is equally important. When a girl enters a new family, she has three choices

• Be a wife to her husband and start changing him to make her dreams about married life come true.
• Try her best to show love to the family and treat her in-laws like the way she treats her own parents
• Try her best to show love to the family and treat her in-laws like the way her husband treats his parents.

Agreed that every girl enters a married life with lot of dreams and aspirations, but the day she decides to change or manipulate her husband to her tunes is the day when happiness in their lives starts waning. However loving her husband could be, no boy enjoys the feeling that he is being taken away from his parents.

The other two choices sound very close, but are different. Girl has freedom with parents, her parents can forgive if she hurts them or behaves stupidly. But for in-laws, the factor of forgiveness and taking it easy doesn't arise all the time. Its nobody's mistake, thats life in simple terms.

So a girl has to try treating her in-laws like her husband treats them or may be better than that. Initial months or a couple of years of such relationship will develop that mutual love, admiration and affection and parents tend to accept daughter-in-law as their daughter and not just their son's girl. That day, girl can not only tune her husband but also her whole family (including in-laws) to make her dreams come true as no in-law would not like to listen to the girl who came from other place to take care of them more than their son.

A girl always feels responsible for her parents too. So if a boy takes care of her parents, that reflects in a girl's behavior towards his parents. Thats a successful marriage. Happiness starts exactly there. And thats a lifetime of happiness.

Now comes the interesting part. How to behave with your life partner after the wedding.

Boy always speaks volumes about his parents to his fiancée, which is very common. Girl patiently listens to everything and says she loves to get into the family and loves the joint family. Even this is equally common :D

After marriage, the boy wants to show their parents that he is not a changed person, and thats really important as per the previous discussion in this article. At the same time, its also important for him to understand that a girl leaves her parents, siblings, old ways of life just to be with him. She arrives into a new family with lot of fears, apprehensions as she doesn't know behavior, attitude, tantrums, temperaments of the new family. This is a great sacrifice which she makes out of love and trust. She deserves a lot of respect and love just for that fact.

Dragging her into his world always works against the relationship. A girl who comes would be the youngest in the family in terms of age, maturity. She may or may not know how things work in his family. She may not know what irritates his parents or what are their ways of life. She may need to face ire of her in-laws. Sometimes she may get dejected, disappointed and would not even have her parents and siblings around to share. She comes into the family with aspirations and dreams and soon gets depressed and drags herself into a viscous web of negativity.

So a guy has to ease his wife into her new life by taking care of her, making his parents understand her habits, not forcing her to do anything which she doesn't like, not restricting her to talk or move freely with her parents, siblings, friends, not making negative remarks about her past life, making her feel free in the new atmosphere, doing things she likes, showering her with love and attention she expects. In short, a boy has to treat his wife as a princess, which would not be a herculean task (and especially if they got married recently) :)...she deserves it !

Girl floats in day dreams from the time the marriage is fixed. She starts weaving a wonderland with her husband and herself as protagonists. But she has to realize that her would be in-laws are important characters in her fiancé's life. She can't live a happy life by dragging him out of his family. A girl is brought up with the thought that she has to leave her parents after marriage. But boys aren't. So boys are not mentally prepared for any kind of transition and if something happens in that direction, they will be heart-broken (except if he is insanely selfish and ungrateful). So girl has to understand this predicament.

A girl also has to realize that her in-laws initially tend to get possessive about their son and hence expecting them to be super nice is only unfair to them. The quicker the girl makes her in-laws realize that she is not here to separate their son from them, the merrier her life would be. The moment she gets cosy and friendly with her in-laws, she can find her husband in her kitty in no time. It may take some time, but definitely happens. Thats the secret, not many girls know.

There will be lot of negative influencers like male chauvinists, ultra feminists, pseudo intellectuals, so called experienced bigots who try to brainwash youth as how to keep wife / husband / in-laws in "control". Beware, thats a slow poison. Heeding to those irresponsible pieces of advice will only turn the prospect of a happy family into a war zone.

A successful marriage need not be an arranged marriage or a love marriage. But it needs a union of two matured, understanding, loving people who can bring two families together instead of ripping apart their spouses away from their respective parents.

So the question in title, whom to choose between parents or life partner ?

Simple answer: You have to choose if parents and life partner are on opposite sides. Do you need to, if they are on the same side ?

So what can you do to get them on the same side ? Whatever on Earth it takes, its worth.

PS: After my marriage, my parents have gone out of their way to share their love to my wife and my wife bypassed me to become their daughter and she treats / calls them Amma and Nanna. So all of them are on the same side and pushed me on to the other side. They never cared and I don't complain either. Touchwood :)

Love, Pyar, Prema etc

Warning: This is a long post aimed at all those single / committed / unmarried boys and girls who have to know a lot about love, marriage, life. Please don't bother if you don't have much time or if you are not interested in this topic :)

Love makes life beautiful and saying this now is a cliché. The word love is a euphemism for a variety of emotions and expressions like liking, affection, infatuation, impression, care, attraction, lust etc. In one of my previous posts (Love Marriage vs Arranged Marriage) I presented my thoughts on what love is, but in this post am referring to the kind of relationship boys and gals enter into before marriage.

Almost everybody close to me has been in some kind of relationship / feeling before their marriage. Some acknowledge and some don't :) There were four consequences for such relationships

1. Converting the relationship into a successful marriage
2. Converting the relationship into a marriage, but not so successful
3. Could not convert the relationship into marriage and got depressed
4. Could not convert the relationship into marriage and are happy now :)

Interesting part here is that those who failed in their love stories don't know that option 2 ever exists and those who converted their love stories into successful marriage don't know that option 4 exists, which mean to say that options 2 and 4 are far overlooked, especially by my unmarried friends, and hence this post :D

Those who are immersed in love with somebody before marriage always dream about a happy fairy tale kinda life post their marriage and thats quite natural. Love really makes their life beautiful because of these dreams of togetherness and a lifetime of bliss. 

Its not very easy for every couple to convert their beautiful dreams into reality because a lot of times, when a boy and gal fall in love with each other, they are so attracted to each other that they subconsciously never put their worst sides before their lover. Both present their best sides and thus made to believe that their partner will be the same throughout, which is not the case in most of the cases. To make their dreams a reality, they have to understand that getting married is not the only solution for this, but they have to continuously understand, accept, support, respect each other after marriage too.

This works and worked for me, touchwood !

I was browsing through the news websites and saw that Chiranjeevi's daughter Srija's marriage is in trouble. After that cinematic revolution and hoisting the flag of love, something has seriously gone wrong now. This is not a rare situation. We find a lot of similar cases in our day to day life. I have seen my very close and loved ones going through this. Hence its not certain that if a couple gets married after their love story, they are happy. Hope all my friends out there who are going through failed love stories find some solace out of this :)

So I take the liberty of reiterating the same old golden rule to all my unmarried / single / committed friends out there. If you like somebody, if you love somebody, be yourself and present your good and bad sides, see if you can accept your gf/bf's good and bad sides before getting into any commitment, because you can't act or tolerate something for the whole life. Its better than going through a bad marriage or a bad break up.

Another rule is never assume you will be happy if you are getting married to your love. The person may change, may show his/her other side, other colors which you may not appreciate. So if you revolt against your parents and loved ones who accept you for whatever you are, just think twice. Liking somebody and being happy with somebody are completely, ridiculously and insanely different. Not understanding this silly point is the reason for the option 2 mentioned earlier in this post.

Break-up management:

It sounds like an MBA concept, but its pure common sense. Not everybody would be lucky to be successful in their love story, but that doesn't mean they are unlucky. May be they are lucky that it didn't work :)

I always feel good for people who break up before even thinking about marriage. Its a blessing in disguise rather than realizing that after marriage and kids naah ! If a boy and a girl like each other, get into a relationship and later face compatibility issues, its better to break up. If you try harder and make it work somehow, both have to live along with such incompatibility for the whole life. Life is too short and too beautiful to waste for somebody you can't live with.

A promise of love and even some physical intimacy should not be hurdles for breaking up with consensus. Lifetime of pain is not worth anything. Yes, it hurts to part ways but a relationship of few months or few years is not as important as your life in next 6-7 decades. Just understand that the person you are going to marry is somebody who is going to give you identity, security, stability, responsibility, love, support, family and everything in your life. Thats far far far more important than ANYTHING before marriage.

Its a happy ending for a love story if both break up with consensus. But the real pain lies in a break-up from one side and agony on another. Thats a real hell.

But just understand that if somebody didn't feel like spending their rest of his/her life with you, its not that you can't be happy with anybody else. It definitely doesn't mean you are not good. You are judged by somebody possibly based on some very unimportant thing. If somebody judges a fish by its ability to climb a tree, whose mistake is that ??

Realize that love stories that end up in marriage are not always successful and love stories which don't end in marriage are not always failures. Life is too important to worry about a silly relationship or commitment you got into for few months. Everybody is destined to get his / her soul-mate who is made exclusively for them. If your love story is a failure, realize that the person was not your soul-mate and you are lucky to realize that before hand. Just wait for the best to happen.

Love as what you understand is not love in the first place. You fall in love only with the person of opposite sex who belongs to your age group only because you dream to live with him / her and lead a happy life. So you don't know if your reality would be as good as those dreams or worse or better. Its a hypothesis. If dreams are shattered, would not you wake up ??? So ruining your precious youth, family life, friends, affection you are coming across from various ends just for a sake of a looser who ditches you is very unwise and immature. Understand that there would be lot of people out there who want to see you happy, smiling and playful.

Your reality may be better than your dreams. Who knows :)

I really wish all those who get married with your love lead a successful married life and all those who could not convert your love into marriage also to lead a successful married life (with somebody else, who turns out to be your soul-mate).

Love Marriage vs Arranged Marriage

Two different schools of thought and often two conflicting opinions. Whenever the debate arises as which is better, the opinions are highly polarized and often subjective. But what I believe in is that success or failure of a marriage is not dependent on the kind of marriage it is, but the attitude and decision making prowess of people involved in it. And this is the very reason we don't see only one kind of marriages being successful and all others a failure or vice versa.

There are people from older generations and few in gen X too who look at the word "Love" with contempt and this is because they associate the very word with some kind of negativity and often use love as a synonym to lust or immaturity. This school of thought vehemently advocates arranged marriage and the kind of family support and thought thats put into those kind of marriages.

I often fail to agree to that as most of the cases, arranged marriage is set based on few set parameters like looks, financial status, job security and caste. I can't think of any other factor in consideration. The whole decision in taken in a matter of a month usually. Based on that, two lives get intertwined for 6 or 7 decades after that. I don't say arranged marriages don't work. Such marriages have all the ingredients to make it a good alliance, but the basis on which they are fixed has to be expanded.

Coming to love marriage, most of the current generation kids would prefer this as this kind of marriage provides an opportunity to know each other, like each other and decide if the rest of lives can be spent together. Again we see all kinds of examples here too. The success and failure of love marriages depends on what factors the guy and gal consider to know if they are compatible and their wisdom in analyzing the same.

Lot of youngsters mistake that liking or love can make their life happier. What they don't understand is marriage is not only about love or liking. Liking somebody and being happy with somebody are two different things. They have to understand that those they like or those they are liked by may or may not have that capability or attitude to keep their spouses happy for rest of their lives.

People who advocate love marriages have to answer themselves if they can be sure that the person of opposite sex is demonstrating his/her negative attributes too as it doesn't always happen during the courtship. The kind of compatibility issues rise only after two people start living under the roof. Once those differences in opinion start, the way the couple handles those situations is the key for successful marriage. Now this is applicable for both love or arranged marriages equally.

Liking towards one person is just one of the factors to marry that person as there are more important factors. Love can propel the marriage for may be 5 or 10 years. After that there are more factors which come into play. Security, comfort, support, understanding, humor, ability to resolve differences - from these factors, love automatically evolves which keeps the couple happy for the next half of the lifetime.

Love is something which is gradually developed after continuous interaction, mutual understanding, complementing each other's weaknesses, supplementing each other's strengths and being a shield of support for the partner against the whole world. Attraction, romance or infatuation towards each other don't die for decades if these factors are proportionately managed in the married life. Now this is a secret of a successful marriage.

Just because a guy and a gal are made to see each other for 20 minutes in presence of 20 people, neither can know if they can be a compatible couple for life. On the other hand, just because a guy and gal know, like each other and enjoy each other's company, it doesn't mean they can be happy thereafter too. Both these approaches involve judgement. So if parents are better judges if their kids can be happy with some person, arranged marriage will be magical. If kids can judge better than their parents, love marriages are good.

So it all depends on judgement of people involved and factors they consider, not the kind of marriage.

The magic lies in reaching out to each other, trying to accept each other's qualities, respecting each other and continuously working to keep the fire on for the entire life.

PS: I don't belong to any school of thought as mine was a love story which was turned into an arranged marriage. I`ll write about my views on pre-marital commitment and their implications in my next post.

Spread Love !

Qn: Whats the secret of happiness ?

Ans: Loving without condition, talking without intention, giving without reason, caring without expectation - That’s the real secret of success and happiness; Dare to disagree ?

Sounds impractical, bookish, foolishly romantic and like a hallmark greeting card ? It does :) but it works.

Try following these for a month starting today

Overcome your short temper. People have this wrong notion of assuming short temper as “attitude”. This very quality is a source of most of the woes in a human life.

I sometimes wonder the connotation of the word “Attitude” which in the urban dictionary, is forced to mean arrogance and rudeness. Attitude is not about being rude and arrogant. It’s all about influencing others with your words, actions, gestures. Bring in that “attitude”.

If you are short tempered, there is something wrong with you, your attitude and your upbringing. Just understand that you are as normal as others and nobody deserves to bear the brunt of your ill behaviour, whatever mood you may be in, period !

Kill your conceit. For this, first of all understand the words ego, conceit, self indulgence, excessive self pride.

Understand that whatever you are is not because of what you think of yourself, but because of what World thinks about you. So stop thinking too high about yourself. Let the World do that for you.

Never get judgemental. Never ever try to judge anybody based on what you see / hear. Circumstances, situations, contexts differ from day to day and person to person. The way everybody reacts or responds is different. Accept everybody on their face value.

Censor negative suggestions. Well-wishers, friends, family, loved ones guide / suggest you throughout your life. Know what to accept and what not to. Never take negative suggestions too seriously.

If you are asked to avoid somebody, keep a tab on somebody, trouble somebody, play dirty politics, indulge in hatred – think twice. Notwithstanding the love or positive vibes you enjoy with the person, please take everything with a pinch of salt.

Learn to forgive. As many popular quotes say forgiving is the virtue of stronger breed. Revenge doesn’t help anybody. You might afflict the other party by hitting back, but that doesn’t heal your bruises. Forgive and shower love on everybody around.

Enough of Gyaan on what not to do. Something on what to do here:

Love: Parents, spouse, family, siblings, in-laws, cousins, friends, colleagues – These are the people who define you. Like them. Respect them. Love them. Its infectious !

Care: Show your loved ones that that you care for them. Help them, go to their rescue. Celebrate their happiness, feel their pain, lend a shoulder if they wanna cry. Make them feel comfortable and make them realize that you are always around the corner for them.

Express: Do you belong to the clan of people who don’t believing in expressing love? Do you feel expression is dramatic, melodramatic and filmy?

If you feel so, you are used to taking people around you for granted ! You assume that they understand your love and care. May be, they do. But are you not loosing anything gestures. Definitely not !

If you are not used to that, it’s never late. Try it once and see how better you feel ! Its addictive !

Be patient, stop complaining, halt scheming, avoid negative flow, go against the negative system. Be Human !

Try to observe a deeksha for 1 month or 15 days or atleast a week and see remarkable difference in your life ! Even if you don’t, you are not loosing anything either.

Contribute in making the world a better place to live. Spread Love !

PS: I know I can’t change the world by writing a few words here and I don’t expect the readers to follow all these immediately and change the World either. But if you read this looooong post and reached here, that means you gave a thought about this. Thanks for that.

And hope you have noted the change in the blog URL. Its not vibrant-serenity.blogspot anymore. Its being-chandu.blogpost.com

Love, Health and Power to all :)