Marriages are made in heaven, or that’s what they say. But ‘they’ sure are living on earth. And Earth is not such a friendly place. It takes a lot of effort to commit to a relationship and give it everything. Mostly, we are even ready to give it everything but we often don’t know what it takes.
In my relationship with my husband, I had been a more demanding partner. I had more ‘what to do’s’ and ‘what not to do’s’ to keep myself happy. You must think, I must be a mad person, since I have so many ‘ifs’ before I could be happy.
I always thought that I am a happy individual. But sooner I realized that I have only decreased my chances to be happy by increasing the number of clauses that define my happiness. “This I don’t like!”, “When he does this, it doesn’t make me feel nice”. “Why does he do this? I hate this”. The longer the list of things that I don’t like, the more the chances I would be unhappy.
This, I realized, was a problem I suffered all my life, even before I met my partner. My husband chose me with all my flaws and promised to be with me ‘in sickness and in health’. So there is no doubt that he took me with this sickness. He handled all the hardships I threw his way, he apologized for everything that he did that fell in my list, and he himself became the easiest person to please. He saw love in every little thing I did but I needed him to do things that I wanted him to do, to see his love.
I just had to be myself for him to love me but he had to be my ideal version of a husband for me to love him.
He eventually became a happier person individually, more happy, less stressed. I, on the other hand had only added another person in my life from whom I was expecting the undoable to be able to feel satisfied. We lived together happily, me with my demands and him trying to live up to my demands. But every person has a threshold and I think he crossed his in the fifth year of our marriage.
One fine day, nothing out of the ordinary happened. It was just another day with the most mundane of disappointments. I was away from him and home and he was suppose to call me, one of my demands which if he would have fulfilled I would have been happy. For some reason he didn't call me and I made a complain call to him for the same. And my husband broke down. I hadn’t seen him so angry. Over the conversation filled with my arguments and complain he didn’t speak to me much, but the few words he said were slathered in disgust. It just didn’t make any sense. I thought I hadn’t done anything to deserve this. I was hurt. I slept over it hoping that he would in the morning apologize. But the next morning it was worse. He too had found time to contemplate over the outburst.
And so he finally told me, “I can’t take it anymore.”
It took me many sleepless nights and tired days to understand that he was not talking about that night. He was talking about the five years we had spent together. I went over all of it in my head again and again. And I noticed a pattern. This revelation changed my future with him.
I noticed that in our relationship, I was always winning. I was winning at arguments. I was winning at making him apologize. I was winning at everything. And just like that I stumbled upon the mantra that I swear by now. And here I say it out loud.
Marriage is for losers.
I understood that a marriage had to become a race to see which partner loses the most. At every stage, every fight, every argument, one had to try hard to lose to their partner and one would do just fine.
It surely doesn’t come easy. And that’s not a surprise. We are hardwired to win. Life is a competition and we have been told that winning is important. ‘Truth Always Wins’. “Be A Winner”. “Survival of The Fittest”. Winning is glorified. From winning approval of our parents, to winning friends, from winning the competition in our school to winning a deal or a case as a professional, winning is all we strive for.
‘LOSER’ is not a beautiful word. But we must let winning lose its glamour. At least for this one. We must let losing be about humility, forgiveness, sacrifice, care, service, empathy.
Next time there is a disagreement and you know with all your heart that you are right and he is wrong, let him take that one. Let him take all the ones. Ensure that he wins.
Let losing be cathartic.
I knew he had always ensured that I always won. Only if I did the same, we would be two happy losers in our little world of mutual surrender. The below text is one such losing act in our wining relationship 😊
