by Vani Viswanathan
Lovingly-baked cakes, pictures of hands being held (background all blurred), birthday surprises, food cooked together, flowers, holidays, hugs, kisses, promises of eternal love… if you’re in that phase of life where most of your friends are getting married or have been married a few years, Facebook can be a nauseating declaration of what looks like a successful, fairy-tale-like marriage.
Even as I consider myself a rational, level-headed person, I can’t help but fall into the trap of wondering how these couples make it, and why it seems I don’t. How are their marriages always rosy and happy? How do they get time to do so many things together (and are they really always together?) Do they never get annoyed with each other? Did he or she also happily clean up all the mess after baking the cake? Do all the troubles that come with having a baby truly seem to vanish once you see that precious smile that melts your heart?
I don’t know.
Over the last few months, I’ve taken myself off Facebook for a number of reasons. One of these is that I find it irritating, as if it’s a sign that I don’t do what couples in apparently happy marriages do. If you go by Facebook metrics, my husband and I would look like two souls tossed together by fate without any love for each other – because we don’t give surprises (not those worth going on Facebook anyway – quite silly to post about a pack of hot momos the husband brings occasionally when I’m late from work), we don’t give flowers and I certainly, truly, couldn’t care about cooking for myself, forget about cooking for another. Whatever little cheesiness I was capable of before I got married, I have reduced even further in the last year, primarily because I have come to know that the real game called marriage is just so, incredibly, difficult – no matter whether it’s with someone you’ve known and loved for years, or with someone you got to know a few months before you took the plunge.
Sometimes I wish I could be bold and start saying different things on Facebook. Talk about the times I’ve been irritated with all the cleaning I’ve had to do around the house. About the guilt I feel when he ends up doing most of the research and bookings for our travels. Laugh at how thankfully when we cook (and we cook together), we eat it no matter how it turns out. Feel bad about pestering him to switch off the charger plug when he’s not using it. Feel ashamed that I depend on him for things I managed well enough when I was single and in another country. Talk at length about our arguments on “doing things together” and the “need for space.” Put up a status confessing I feel lonely when he’s on a business trip, or slightly jealous when he’s having loads of fun with his friends somewhere else, because I have very few friends in Delhi. That the rare gesture of words he writes for me, even if in a New Year’s card, send me into a tizzy of happiness. Talk about how we are slowly taking each other’s presence for granted, and how that’s inevitable but still not good.
And biggest of all, not end these updates with a “No matter what, I still love you!” – because at the end of an argument, a long day at work, or when my back hurts from endless bouts of cleaning, I probably won’t mean it. I probably won’t mean it until I take the time to rationalise that given I have a partner I can consider understanding, supportive and fun, these little skirmishes don’t matter, in the bigger picture.
But it isn’t always about the bigger picture, is it? If you only look at the bigger picture, every human being would be a “nice” person, and everybody would have justifiable reason for doing what they did, even Hilter.
The sad thing is that even writing these here makes me feel odd…and exposed. Because they obviously conflict with the positive images that marriage is supposed to have, especially in the early years, when you’re still supposedly to be madly in love (not that after a few years you aren’t in love, it just apparently becomes a more “mature” form of love). Because stating the “truth” is somewhat a reflection of your choices – you chose to marry this person, and now you have issues with him? Or maybe people would wonder how he could do this to someone he’s married to – to state that after the cake she spent hours over, the damned person didn’t bother to tell her how it tasted, or offer to help clean up?
When your friends know your partner well and you have family on Facebook, the last thing you want to do is to state that you’re annoyed with her/him for some reason. I can imagine a dear aunt calling my mother to ask – purely out of concern – “Vani has said this on Facebook. Are you sure everything is ok?” Your friends, other married friends, your relatives will all quietly judge you or wonder what’s wrong, even though it’s regular domestic skirmishes, things that will happen when you have to end up spending nearly all day, every year with someone – things that they have gone through too. This is probably an extension of our human instinct to brush these issues under the carpet, just as it perhaps has always happened. Nobody knows about the husband who brings down her self-confidence, the financial troubles the couple is going through, the frustration they’re facing with school admissions for the child – let’s put up a happy face for all, hold hands and show the world we’re going through hell, but apparently we’re doing it together and are happy about it.
Maybe it’s a lesson about marriage itself, something that parents don’t tell you because they know you can never figure it out until you go through it yourself. Or maybe it’s that every couple is going through this anyway, so why reinforce this on an online medium that’s for the world to see? Why not ignore the boring everydays and instead show those few happy moments, baby smiles and public displays of love?
It may sound like a cowardly way out, but given I don’t put up too many happy statuses on Facebook, I don’t see the need to put these realistic statements up either. The most I can do is to put this article up – and wait to see if I get comments in agreement!
Good article. I am a little older generation to the current social media. what I write should not be treated as comment by as an advice (probably uncalled for) From my view point , I feel the problem of all these restlessness and emotional disturbances is attributable to our own expectation of praise or reward for our actions. Most of the writings in the social media appears to be pouring of the frustrations and get a release of the tension created by us for nothing. I would feel telling people should read the Book by Swami Parthasarathy tiled Holocaust of attachment.
Vani, loved the wry “realistic” tone of your insights. It is so so true that we are almost afraid to post anything but super awesome positivity on social media in an effort to keep up with the Joneses. And the less we talk to our friends in the physical world rather than the virtual world, this gets heightened. And it got a declaration out of our husband to boot 😛 😀
I’m agnostic about what you said. Everyone goes through trouble. Everyone wants to crib about trouble as much as they want to flaunt happy moments. But at the end of the day, it comes down to how far ahead of your problems you can get – it’s not about striking off another day on the calendar with a smiley face. It’s about getting past each of these ugly skirmishes and still keep hoping for a moment of joy just ahead.
This breezy write-up has temporarily transported me to Boston, where my son and daughter-in-law are living. He is a software specialist working for a major organization and she is a scientist at a big drug manufacturing unit. He works from home and she goes to office every day. And they like their roles!
I have enjoyed reading the story, particularly the chuckles embedded in it.