Welcome to the Hormonal Industry

When one of my childhood friends who was planning to tie the knot with his recently met girlfriend asked me to prescribe him an ideal marital prescription, that popular Hindi saying flashed on the screen of my mind. 

This is what I texted to him: 

Shaadiwoh ladoo. Jo khayee bachtai. Jo Nakhayeewohbe bachtai.

Picture courtesy: Click LINK

“Don’t you remember that I am deaf to Hindi language? Please elaborate” he wrote.

“Why do you ask me? I am neither a matrimonial pundit nor a conjugal guru”.  

A vacuum of correspondence ensued. A few minutes later, I wrote:

Marriage is like ladoo. Those who eat, they regret it. Even those who don’t, regret. 

Hope you will now not ask for any subtitles to understand it. I responded.

But before he replied, I texted again: “Welcome to the Hormonal Industry”

“Ha-ha. What is this now? This phrase surely demands a Dzongkha subtitle”, he retorted.

And this is how I vindicated my statement:

Research has revealed that the level of oxytocin is very high when people fall in love. In men, their testosterone level reduces while the amount of oxytocin increases. This flux in the number of sexual hormones ensures faster bonding.

Marriage guarantees a legal and social covenant between two people in love to be together, and that’s the reason why many feel anodyne to travel this road. Marriage is the result of these hormones secreted in our bodies. Marriage is thus, a hormonal industry!

Once we sign a contract with this industry, the whole template of our habits, perceptions, and management patterns, transform completely. Those old unpleasant habits that we're unable to let die young during bachelorhood either receives renovation or get refurbished or fixed with the gentle breeze of so-called love. But to fix these square pegged habits into the round hole of marriage is always regulated by the buttons of understanding, compromises, sacrifices, devotion, and convictions. In some essence, marriage is rather like a literary journey. The winds of unprecedented euphoria of love that exists can transform us into a poet to write touching poetry or an artist to craft haunting lyrics of melodies.

While even on brief separations, that aching pain enables us to understand the gravity of emotional torments suffered by John Keats, P B Shelly, and John Milton as expressed through their poetic limbs. We can feel exactly the way they did due to the madness of love. One intriguing thing about marriage is that it is a journey of two amalgamated souls with a single dream, sailing to survive the unexpected storms of life together. 

We learn to divide responsibilities and multiply devotion and sentience. As time mellows and as we grow old together, the love also matures into a form of a child - which then becomes the fountain of happiness, a lifeline and purpose of our life.

More importantly, as we marry, we are promising the child to bestow a set of parents (a father and a mother), a commodity that is rarely found in pairs, in the market of our society today. 

On a scientific note, studies have revealed that married people live longer than single, separated, divorced or widowed people, and that, the mortality rate is low for almost every disease. In the words of Allan and Barbara (2009), ‘marriage has its good side. It teaches you loyalty, forbearance, tolerance, self-restraint and other valuable qualities you wouldn’t need if you had stayed single.

However, marriage is the easiest subject in the world to have an unlimited opinion about, but perhaps the bravest thing to do. Bravest because we have to ensure it functions throughout the span of one’s lifetime. It is not proportional to the number of years. Sometimes, even the concrete ship of a marriage that journeyed 50 years suffers a cruel fate of wreckage within a fraction of a second. When it is on a rough note, which is a result of a screw gone loose, that fury has the ability to transform that once-upon-a-time-heaven into a living hell.

Basically, the voyage of marriage is surprisingly full of ups and downs which is the consequence of some hormones which make us fall in love. It is not a default mode of human living that always produce the hymn of ‘happily-ever-after’ stuff.

As I say it, you must understand that there is no single thread of thought to dampen your love. If you don’t marry, people might doubt your sexual orientation 😃 or those with a biological education might even doubt a hormonal disorder.

Socially, marriage is generally considered proof of true love. Embrace it to sail on the cruise ship of your life with your love. Experience, the hard teacher as many say, would teach you on the way of your life.

Good luck, buddy.

“Thank you. As you said, let me start the engine of my marital ship and live every moment of it. Buddy, please note that you are included in the important guest list among those local leaders and business honchos during my wedding ceremony”.

But days folded to weeks and weeks aged to months. I called my friend to ask if he has forgotten to invite me for being his marital therapist some time ago.

But what can the world expect, when he has already experienced those marital hiccups even before he got married to his beloved. 

His so-called beloved has become the kept woman to one of the local business tycoons.

And now the question is, how did he lose his beloved to be somebody’s kept woman?

“You have two choices in life: you can stay single and be miserable or get married and wish you were dead” – Bob Hope.