AHA Moments

AHA Moments

Melting differences with love

Megha Bajaj discovers the secret of a successful marriage: learn to enjoy the differences between you and your spouse and try to understand each other

So, what happens when a curly-haired North Indian, slightly crazy spiritualist, author, and film scriptwriter marries a simple, straightforward IT professional from the South of India?
Do you really want to know?
In five letters? 
Chaos.

I was so in love with Arun before marriage that I never suspected that anything would change after marriage! “Why should it?” asked my Mills and Boons-ridden brain. He was my knight in shining armour.

I remember our first real fight, barely fifteen days after coming back from our honeymoon. I wanted to do up our home with the prettiest of rugs and ancient chandeliers, and he couldn’t believe I had just spent what I had. “How could you be so irresponsible,” he asked, seething in anger. I looked at him with tears in my eyes.
From the vessel we would use to cook, to the food that would be made at home, and from his long hours at work to my inability to keep things the way he wanted it—everything became a bone of contention. And it didn’t help that in the Indian context you never just marry each other but the entire families. We didn’t know what to do with each other, let alone understand what to do with so many more family members, cultural differences, and conflicts that seemed to arise out of thin air.

From being happily-in-love people, I think we began to grey. Something within us just stopped living. 

I lost objectivity and just went deeper into the cloud of despair and hopelessness, and I think so did he.

Blessed are we, to be growing with a living guru. And I think, beyond blessed, as He knows us personally and interacts with us.

I remember one of those days mailing him in a state of frenzy, just saying that I could see no future to our married life. His long mail to me contained three nuggets of wisdom:

• Our sameness brings us together and, in time, we start seeing the differences. This is the natural course that every relationship takes. The entire game of love is to learn to enjoy the differences and build the foundation of the relationship on the sameness. Somehow, these words offered me tremendous hope. It made me realise that one, I was not alone, and every relationship went through a similar trajectory and two, indeed, we were over-focusing on differences.
 
• First, you have to understand before expecting to be understood. Fairly simple, and one would assume we are all living it, right? I was astounded to realise that this little shift could bring so much of a difference. We both were screaming all the time, “You don’t understand me, you don’t understand me” when what was needed was for one to pause, step back, and say “Wait, first let me try and understand.” Sometimes I did this, other times Arun, and the result was that instead of conversations being painful, a flow started coming in.

• Refrain from action when emotions are high. Once we both understood this treasure, one of us started naturally leaving the room when the other was emotional and only getting back when the tidal wave had settled. 
Marriage, like any other relationship, is a journey. I don’t know if there is a perfect state to reach, but I can certainly say that, to a large extent, the bliss of love has been restored. He is my Rock of Gibraltar, I am his whimsical butterfly, and together, we are slowly and steadily achieving our dreams.
Excited to see what lies ahead!

An award winning author, film-script writer and poet, Megha is an eternal seeker at heart. She also empowers people to write and get published through her online writing workshop. You can read more on 
www.WonderofWords.org.