In this part of the world arranged marriage was prevalent until women started to opt to go out and work and be financially independent. This process started about 30 to 40 years back. Before that women stuck to the traditional women jobs like doctor, nurse, sales girl and teacher. Now no field is untouched by the women. And now more number of love marriages is happening and also being accepted by parents and society. In the west it happened about 80 years back.
Now people go on date and then another and then another date until they realise that a relationship has formed. Sometimes it transforms from a platonic friendship to a relationship. The undercurrent was always there but was ignored for long.
When it happens you feel like to be in cloud nine. The relationship is there even when you are not together. Now you are not interested in what the world says and you are happy that it happened to you. Now all those love sings have a meaning for you. Life has a new meaning; each day is brighter than before. The yearning and the fire is unstoppable.
All this and then after a few months you start noticing the change. You start coming down from cloud nine. Now the perfect person seems to do some imperfect things which you don’t like. The quirky things he used to do and you found them funny now starts annoying you. You start having second thoughts about are you dating your dream guy or a stupid. The relationship that made you fly now seems to be claustrophobic. All those negative things which were hidden in the haze of love now seems to clear up and looks at you face.
Now is the time to decide based on the good and bad you have noticed?
Society is a pretty bad place, it will not like if your relationship is long and you are not arriving at the decision. The society will interpret it as something is wrong in the relationship. To make things right or hasten the decision it will start applying pressure on you from all angles. The society will try to make your relationship look like everything forever or it would make it as if nothing ever again.
These are some of the ways we make a decision on this issue:
• Let the other person take the decision. This is quite easy and you don’t have to handle the decision making. The early years are as if you are in your (life) raft and the river of life is taking you down the river and you are flowing with it. Once you reach your mid twenties and you have been through many relationships, now you get into the next relationship and expect the other person to take the decision. If the takes it then you are ok for it and you accept it without giving much thought about whether it is right or wrong for you.
• If you are al little more active and want your role in the decision making then you bank on your emotions and primal instincts. You mind juggles between the emotions of love, fear, ego and sex drive and weighs the pros and cons of each of them. This helps them come to a decision.
• Trust your intuition. Sometimes when the decision is precariously balanced and can turn both ways, we try our gut feeling, the intuition to guide us. The basic question we ask to ourselves is that – does it feel right? The gut decision is generally pretty straight forward, a yes or a no. It doesn’t go into analysing things to come to a decision. In our lives we use this gut decision many times.
• The brain. This is the most analytical decision making process. It studies the rules of the game to reach a conclusion. To come to such an important decision, conviction is required and it comes from the sources which will affect the decision making process. For the brain to make a critical decision it requires solid evidence. If it doesn’t get that evidence then it will not be able to come to a proper decision.
The decision of marriage and specifically who to marry is still the most important decision of life. It’s not like a job which you can hop every year. It is about a lifelong association which will affect the quality of your life in every step. So while taking a decision it is important you use all of the above techniques to decide your best course of action.
