When We Don't Tell...

A sister wanted me to publish this. She cannot post it anywhere else. But certain truths, even in anonymous forms, need to see light. Like why we divorce. Do we divorce only because of mutual incompatibility or violence? What if there are other reasons that are socially embarrassing to reveal and yet gnaws our heart?

This post is edited and shaped by me extensively. But I have not touched facts.

A woman received her annulment of her 7+ years of marriage. It took her 6 years to go to courts for the same. Many years to regain confidence in herself, to know it was not that she was not desirable but that is the way it was.

That he had a medical condition that prevented intimacy in marriage. That he could not bring himself to admit it. To seek medical help. That for many agonizing years, she suffered. She suffered not knowing it was a medical condition. She suffered wondering why.

The larger issue is all the compromises families and potential partners make to ensure their children are “settled down” and how the settling down thingy holds unsettling silences, of things hidden, of facts not told, of social pressures to appear this way or that—a man for a man and a woman for a woman. And how those unsettling things undo the very foundation of this thing called marriage—trust and friendship and warmth.

To suffer from 7 years marriage as a virgin reminds me of that famous story in Hindi when the various social issues, misinterpretations, miscommunications led a couple to not talk to each other for seven years. What loss! What pain!

For couples who may be reading this, open up and treat each other as friends first and foremost. When you chose to walk the sunset together, you did something more than that. You chose to share your journey. Don’t unnecessarily hurt yourself and the other. Emerge in light and be in peace.