After spending most of my early 30s advocating the single life, half a dozen years of marriage have taught me that the institution works best when spouses are eager to do all they can to see each other thrive
My spouse and I seem to have transformed the concept of marriage to suit our bidding. Representation Pic/iStock
Six years ago, on this day, I married someone I had known for just about 12 months, with most of our courtship conducted long-distance, over email, WhatsApp, and video chat. My friends and family, though supportive, were undoubtedly surprised, and perhaps also a bit worried. Considering I had spent the better part of my early 30s avowedly advocating the single life, content with inhabiting my own solitude, my decision definitely raised eyebrows. It seemed somewhat out of character for me to be marrying someone, let alone a person from another country, whose life and upbringing had been so vastly different from my own, save for the fact that we shared a religious background, although that had nothing to do with our decision to be together. Marriage offered the only opportunity for us to continue to get to know each other, especially because we lived on different continents. The colour of my passport ensured that travelling to Europe to meet him would prove challenging. I had become that feared, suspicious visa applicant — the single woman who was in love with a European citizen. Suddenly, marriage, which I’d felt sure would confine and repress my ambition, seemed like the only thing that could open up possibilities instead.
Still, embracing the decision didn’t come easily. While I had zero doubts about the person I would be marrying, I feared I had more to gain from it than him. Was I taking the easy way out? I’d considered myself self-made, career-wise. Was this some kind of shortcut I was accessing — this proximity to whiteness and to Europe? Could I even imagine myself as someone’s ‘wife’? Walking down an aisle in a flowing white gown was for me an alien fantasy. Signing papers with someone who was eager to share his life with me — that was not part of the plan I had conceived for myself when I turned 30, or even by the time I turned 34, the age I was when we got hitched.
Six years down the line, I can say with confidence that I got very lucky with my spouse. Of course, I married him after I had done my due diligence — meeting his family, living with them, inhabiting his world. Our plan, really, was to remain in India. The pandemic and the unforeseen conditions of my Italian residence permit forced us to relocate. Fortunately, I’ve never been happier.
I’ve met many people who’re so afraid of being alone, they turn a blind eye to all the red flags their partners manifest. I’ve many friends who were pressured by their families into marrying the person they were dating — most of them are now either separated or divorced and they all report that they would have preferred, instead, to simply live-in with their significant others instead of going through the drama of a wedding and dealing with all the other strings that come attached with that. I’ve many fabulous friends who managed, successfully, to totally resist the pressure to marry — most of them women, who are thriving and living fully for themselves, fulfilling all the dreams their female ancestors were not allowed to even imagine. In the end, I suppose, the banal thing about marriage is what the people in it make of the institution. It is, after all, a template, a bureaucratic entity.
My spouse and I seem to have transformed it to suit our bidding. Neither of us performs the designated ‘roles’, which is perhaps why I find it odd to call my partner my husband. He is my partner because he is able to intuit my needs as they arise and respond to them in a way that liberates me from having to perform the emotional labour traditionally reserved for women. Yesterday, since he was leaving to visit my niece in Brighton to be present for her graduation in my place, he was showing me how to run the washing machine. I couldn’t remember the last time I did a load of laundry or even folded our clothes. He got fresh bread for me from the baker so I would have breakfast this morning easily at hand. He helps me with my invoices, my taxes, my medical appointments and a million other things. None of it is ‘usual’… He performs a bouquet of multiple roles, not because I ask him to, not because it is expected of him, but because he loves me and is eager to do whatever is in his power to see me thrive.
When I told him the other day that our kids were so lucky to have him as a father, he responded by saying he wished he had my patience. I realised only after he had already entered the bedroom where our toddler lay sleeping that he was the reason I was able to find my reserves of patience. His support enables me to be the best version of myself. Last evening, as I was reminiscing about the first few days we spent together in South Tyrol, I came across a video we made of us in Karthaus. We looked drunk and heady in love, so eager to be caressed by each other’s eyes. Even though we’re currently displaced in different bedrooms as caregivers for our two kids, the joy of being together, under the same roof, sharing breath and bread and song remains constant. All of this is to say to you ‘eligible’ women out there — if you do decide to marry, let it be with someone who derives their pleasure from helping you thrive. It’s the only advice I could ever give you on the subject.
Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She posts @rosad1985 on Instagram
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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