For most part of my life, I have been the most unmarriageable person in the room. Any room. Loud, short tempered, and well, treading on wild. But marriage was always a reality for me. I wanted to eventually do it. And just a little before I met R, I was THIS close to resigning to a lifetime of expectations. Of being the awesome wife who worked in a hotshot company (in all probability, IT :P), someone who made shit loads of money as easily as she made littis, mooli parathas, and aam ka achaar. I never found someone I liked enough to marry. I had to go through the rigmarole of parents introducing me to men. I swore at a couple of them, I kid you not. I was just beginning to adjust to the idea of "compromise" because hello, you can't have it all now, can you?
And then R came along. And I remember that our initial conversations were NOT about marriage. Or relationships. Or cooking (thank God!). Our conversations was all over the place, so to speak. I also remember this brief chat we had about compromise. In those days, compromise had just about begun to feel like a normal thing to me. And R vehemently opposed my notion of "sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do". It struck me then, like it had many times over, that he was the lost soul in the fish bowl. The only man I could even think of spending my life with. A couple of reasons why our marriage has been working well for us - trust. A lot of it. No matter how long we work, where we travel, who we talk to, and who we have crushes on (so far this applies only to me, I am not sure if I will be able to handle it if R had crushes as frequently as I do!), we know we are always coming home to each other. Because we choose to do it. Communication - I have been told very often that telling your spouse EVERYTHING is recipe for disaster. But I don't subscribe to that school of thought. If something comes to mind, it has to be said out aloud. Warped logic, irrelevant nonsense, mean, politically incorrect, rude, or corny - we just say it. Acceptance - much as I would like to believe we are perfect, we are not. I have my temper and the frequent absence of logic. R has his OCDs. But it helps that our slates were wiped clean when we started off. We did not have an image of the perfect partner/ relationship in our heads. We are happy being with each other, making fun of the eccentricities, and knowing that it is not about living with it, but in fact not knowing any other way. And friendship - I have said before that I have been asked how (why?) we generally travel/ eat/ drink/ watch endless episodes of loud American TV shows "alone". Well, for one, 2 is not alone. And I guess we have been fortunate enough to bond over a million things and still have half a million things we can do on our own. So independent personalities will have to be another thing that has been working for this relationship. I, we, have quit "secure" jobs to find something better or more exciting, gone without cooking for days, put on weight, tried to lose it. We have done all of this and much more, as much for the "me" as for the "us". No pressure, no expectation. And cliched as it may sound, all of this has gone into making this relationship stronger than the day before.
I am not the best person to dispense any kind of relationship gyaan. "Nip it in the bud" is something I have repeated to friends too often. I ask people to break up before trying to make it work. But in the last 2 awesome years of being married, if there is one thing I have learned, it is that no two relationships are the same. I can't tell people that complete transparency will work for their relationship, just like compromise would not have worked for mine. Whatever rocks your boat is the only mantra there is for relationships. My marriage is a little surprising. We have been wild, we have had domesticated weekends, and our marriage, for most part, is not like most quintessential marriages. To put it in a slightly better manner *gloat alert*, we have given a completely new meaning to being married.
2 years, much fun, many trips, many jokes (generally on me!), many, many arguments, a whole lot of friendship, and endless laughter later, I am still a die hard advocate of marriage. That says a lot.
We celebrated our anniversary 2 days ago, and this post had been brewing in my head for almost a month now. But things had taken over. Big, celebratory dinners, and big days at work. This had started out as a SWOT analysis of our relationship. But 2 years is not enough to answer the WOT in SWOT. I will leave that for the 7 year itchy, angsty post that I hope I never have to write. Here's to us! What would I do without this!
And then R came along. And I remember that our initial conversations were NOT about marriage. Or relationships. Or cooking (thank God!). Our conversations was all over the place, so to speak. I also remember this brief chat we had about compromise. In those days, compromise had just about begun to feel like a normal thing to me. And R vehemently opposed my notion of "sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do". It struck me then, like it had many times over, that he was the lost soul in the fish bowl. The only man I could even think of spending my life with. A couple of reasons why our marriage has been working well for us - trust. A lot of it. No matter how long we work, where we travel, who we talk to, and who we have crushes on (so far this applies only to me, I am not sure if I will be able to handle it if R had crushes as frequently as I do!), we know we are always coming home to each other. Because we choose to do it. Communication - I have been told very often that telling your spouse EVERYTHING is recipe for disaster. But I don't subscribe to that school of thought. If something comes to mind, it has to be said out aloud. Warped logic, irrelevant nonsense, mean, politically incorrect, rude, or corny - we just say it. Acceptance - much as I would like to believe we are perfect, we are not. I have my temper and the frequent absence of logic. R has his OCDs. But it helps that our slates were wiped clean when we started off. We did not have an image of the perfect partner/ relationship in our heads. We are happy being with each other, making fun of the eccentricities, and knowing that it is not about living with it, but in fact not knowing any other way. And friendship - I have said before that I have been asked how (why?) we generally travel/ eat/ drink/ watch endless episodes of loud American TV shows "alone". Well, for one, 2 is not alone. And I guess we have been fortunate enough to bond over a million things and still have half a million things we can do on our own. So independent personalities will have to be another thing that has been working for this relationship. I, we, have quit "secure" jobs to find something better or more exciting, gone without cooking for days, put on weight, tried to lose it. We have done all of this and much more, as much for the "me" as for the "us". No pressure, no expectation. And cliched as it may sound, all of this has gone into making this relationship stronger than the day before.
I am not the best person to dispense any kind of relationship gyaan. "Nip it in the bud" is something I have repeated to friends too often. I ask people to break up before trying to make it work. But in the last 2 awesome years of being married, if there is one thing I have learned, it is that no two relationships are the same. I can't tell people that complete transparency will work for their relationship, just like compromise would not have worked for mine. Whatever rocks your boat is the only mantra there is for relationships. My marriage is a little surprising. We have been wild, we have had domesticated weekends, and our marriage, for most part, is not like most quintessential marriages. To put it in a slightly better manner *gloat alert*, we have given a completely new meaning to being married.
2 years, much fun, many trips, many jokes (generally on me!), many, many arguments, a whole lot of friendship, and endless laughter later, I am still a die hard advocate of marriage. That says a lot.
We celebrated our anniversary 2 days ago, and this post had been brewing in my head for almost a month now. But things had taken over. Big, celebratory dinners, and big days at work. This had started out as a SWOT analysis of our relationship. But 2 years is not enough to answer the WOT in SWOT. I will leave that for the 7 year itchy, angsty post that I hope I never have to write. Here's to us! What would I do without this!
