Marriage - POINT OF VIEW

The three ring circus

by Aditha Dissanayake

"Is it compulsory that a man should marry?" (Minihek unahama kasada badinnama onada?) asks Aravinda, in Martin Wickramasinghe's novel, Viragaya. When I ask the same question from everyone around me they say "NO. Not necessarily". Then, why get married?

Specially when there are so many things going against this "legal union of a man and a woman for cohabitation and often procreation"? Specially when women like Lady Nancy Astor has said "I married beneath me. All women do", or as Max Kauffman said, "I never knew what real happiness was until I got married and by then it was too late".

Yet, society demands it. Whether you are a teacher, an executive, a secretary, a doctor, a writer... the moment you reach your mid- twenties it becomes important that you become a part of what cynics see as a three ring circus; engagement ring, wedding ring and suffer-ring.

If this is not enough, to make things worse society demands this union to be perfect. Once you sign on the dotted line pledging only death will part you from your partner, you are required to have a dynamic mutually fulfilling, uninterrupted companionship with each other for the rest of your life, plus children, a car, a house of your own, while not letting any of this interfere with your other ambitions (building a career, travelling all over the world, completing your M.A...). A tall order. But, if you manage to achieve it, you are seen as a success. You are praised as someone who is leading a "well-rounded" life.

But, surely this "ideal" state is impossible to reach in real life? Especially, as Lee Schnebly shows in "Being Happy being Married" when most of us get married we sign in our minds, the following contract with our partner

1. I hereby renounce the right to make myself happy because from now on I expect you to do it for me.

2. I will look to you for all my companionship instead of having additional friends.

3. In exchange I will try to fill your every need. This gives me the right to advise and control you, because I know what is best for you.

4. With our responsibility for each other, we must match each other's moods. If you are angry I will be angry too. I will be sad when you are sad, and expect sadness when I am sad. If one of us worries the other must also worry. One must never be happy unless both are happy, no matter how long it takes.. if ever.

5. Because you are the most important person in my life, should I ever be unhappy, it will clearly be your fault. And it is therefore, your responsibility to reverse my mood.

Such partners are surely non existent, except in fairy tales where handsome princes marry girls like Cinderella and live happily ever after, and in epics like the Ramayana. Rama epitomizes the ideal husband; he is magnanimous, strong in himself, ever ready to protect and defend the weak, fair-minded, reasonable and wise.

Sita is the ideal wife. Loving, compassionate, motherly, self-sacrificing; the counterpart of Rama in every virtue but with softness and understanding in place of outward strength.

Alas, there are no Ramas or Sitas out there in the real world. If you have set yourself to finding one, you are guaranteed to remain a spinster or a bachelor for the rest of your life.

If this is so, why get married? Because, if you do, when you are old, and grey and full of sleep, you will have someone by your side to share the memories, to bring back the passions you enjoyed in your youth, gently and tenderly. And, because, as Elizabeth Taylor said everyone should make at least one big folly in their lives.