I read a story in the newspaper about a woman, an only child of a couple, who was married off, only to get killed by her husband in a matter of 10 months from the marriage! The parents had brought a car for the groom...in which she was driven by the husband..dead, to be dumped.
Such are the possible consequences of marriage but our society does so love the institution called marriage and pushes off their darlings to experiment with dangers...without any training..
Dont all parents, all married couples know that the opposite sex is very different and very difficult to understand. Dont they remember how they struggled to understand their spouses? Probably they think, theirs was a unique case but infact the issue is not in your spouses, the real issue is lack of awareness about basic differences in the opposite sex, and lack of skills to bridge the differences. Isn't it the reason why a person who divorces once and marries again ends up divorcing again..and again. If the woman likes to communicate, the man mostly prefers quiet. If the woman likes to correct, the man hates to listen. If the woman is romantic, the man is practical..It wouldn't be wrong to say men and women are basically incompatible. Left to themselves, to their own devices, each person tries to change these differences to similarities, getting frustrated and resentful in the process.
And also, due to these differences that are not understood as natural differences, judgements are often made of the character that makes each sex become disgustful of the other in the long run, killing the very soul of marriage. If only they had known what to expect and what not to expect from the other sex....It could prevent disgust and anger from destroying the marriage by building the base of understanding that comes from being informed. Understanding and training could have given the skill to deal with differences correctly to make the marriage functional.
If society does want the institution of marriage to survive, what is it doing about it? It takes only trained people to do its engineering, doctoring, and for all sorts of institutions, but why does it not bother to train people for its much loved and fundamental institution of marriage? Is the indifference because the people in the marital institution are not paid to be in it? But isnt the exceeding number of divorce cases, the disturbed kids, the abuse, the murders in marriage, big enough reasons for worry that make the society sit up and finally do something about it.
I believe that society would benefit itself by starting a compulsory subject at graduation level that is equivalent to "Premarital councelling". All courses should have this as a compulsory subject and even the non graduates should require a certificate course in it to get married.. The subject should help in learning skills that help interact aptly with the opposite sex in marriage. It should most importantly also include sessions that involve releasing each individual from the baggage and damages of their family and upbringing, their past relationships, to prevent carrying and projecting its ill effects into their marital relation. This is important because unknowingly we live the roles of our parents and react to our spouse with the prejudices towards the opposite sex learnt unconsciously as a result of our earlier interactions with them in earlier relationships or even the view projected through the media.
There are many skills about handling relationships that cant be learnt easily without some sort of guidance. Look at marriages and you will see that 90 % of the times, the skill couples invariably learn by themselves, to deal with the spouse, is to keep distance, and with each passing year the distance builds. If society does really want the marital institution to be healthy and survive in the long run, creating balanced individuals in its offsprings, it does require a compulsory course in developing skills for marriage. I really dont think optional pre marital councelling or councelling when issues crop up is sufficient. What society currently does is like giving the car to an untrained person and asking that it be driven in heavy traffic. Is it enough to give the driving suggestions when the person and car are damaged in an accident? How would it look condemning the issue of increasing accidents when no effort to change the scenario is thought out? Yes, I am in fact saying society has been stupid and highly callous in its attitude to its fundamental institution, and what worries me is how long it will choose to stay so..
(A related post by me "Informed Love" (http://jerlyt.blogspot.com/2009/12/informed-love.html)can be viewed by clicking the title of this post)
