I'm In Love And I Like It That Way

I was in love. I still am. And I prefer to be that way. And, yes, I love my husband. All unmarried girls focusing on their career and living the life they planned need to stop snickering. We married people plan too. Maybe our plans involve different perspectives, complicated procedures and longer time span but we like it that way. We chalk out, cross out and re-chalk our goals every now and then but that doesn't mean we're not living in the moment. Yes, we have shifted our “I” priority to “We” but we have accustomed to it too. You don't have to tut-tut at our living-for-others strategy. We're struggling in our education, we're working hard at our house chores or we are trying for a baby, all these problems are our part of life and we know how to deal with it. You don't have to shove “told you so” attitude to our faces.

I married in love. The moment you tell anyone about this, the next question that throws you off-guard is “So how’s it turning out to be?”, “Still in love?”, “Is he/she the same guy/girl you knew?” Why is it that our society is craving for bad news? Or is it just the love-marriage phobia that drives them so nosy? Don’t normal arranged marriage couples fight or argue? Don't they get frustrated with their routine lives? Don’t they fret when they go out of budget? Doesn't a husband or a wife shout at each other to release their anger? Don’t they ever think that their marriage won't last long? Do they ever shed tears hiding from each other? And if the answer to all these questions is yes then why not the love marriages couples can have the same issues? Why is it that when a newly married in-love wife updates a sad status there are comment asking for reasons and justifications while in other case it’s just so normal? On the contrary when lovey-dovey pictures or quotations are posted, the audience just waits for the next big turmoil in their life or simply states, “let’s just give those few months and then we’ll see.”

Why is it that a love marriage crumbles faster than the arranged one? I wondered to this question for so long and maybe the answer is simple. The people who married out of love tend to come out of love after marriage is because of expectations. You knew the blond-haired diva or the dimpled-face stud in and out. You two were living different lives yet so closely tied together that you thought you knew that person downright. But that’s where you're wrong. Unless and until you start living with a person you can never judge his/her character. That same old blondie snores loudly at night. The stud has this crazy narcissist attitude that you tend to find so attractive before marriage. When you really come in contact with the person you then find so many dimensions of his/her character that were unknown or hidden to you. You feel betrayed by the amount of information overload. This is where you start your first fight. The fight that you thought would never surface in your relation. You are so attached to the pre-married life and the person that you find this overwhelming. You start comparing tiny details of their attitude with past; their unrealistic promises, their mushy voice, their mystified eyes and over the top caring nature. You crave for this again. But you don’t find it anymore.

Rule number one, stop comparing. Rule number two, start adjusting. Rule number three, don’t stop loving! The moment you stop loving is when the world falls apart and with it your marriage. The love that bonded you together in the first place is the sole reason for your marriage to last longer. So you just can’t give up on loving each other. And that’s why the people in love are always looked with skeptical eyes. Because the world knows that it’s just an emotion. It is your doing to make it a habit. To be in love always. And that’s when you’ll scare the shit out of people. That’s where they’ll always be, shrugging, tut-tuting or simply denying. And then you’ll know that this is the precise thing you wanted out of life. To be what you always wanted to be. To be loved. And all your problems, struggles and hardships seem trivial to that mere feeling.