Secret Of Long Marriages: Appetite For Forgiveness

'In a marriage, you must wipe the self-helpy, holier-than-thou grime off your forgiveness to see what it truly is.'

I can trace every minor discomfort in my cushy life back to the traumas my mother has inflicted upon me.

In my adult-sized toddler brain, they are tragic milestones in her journey as a reluctant mother.

So when our writing class (yes, I am attending one of those at the moment) is asked to examine 'forgiveness' as a prompt, she is naturally my first target.

I want to write about her stunning face (back in the day, she looked exactly like Muqaddar Ka Sikander-era Rekha ISTG, and gets told rather frequently that she is too young to have such old kids *groan*. Well, guess what, Einsteins: She had me, the firstborn, at 21, so she is the appropriate age now to back off; your soul-crushingly predictable comments are not good for this mother-daughter relationship) and confounding personality, her unconventional mind and the cultivated compulsion to conform, the blasé attitude towards the kindness of people and the overly verbalised appetite for life...

Then, the realist part of the brain chimes in: "If your sob story hasn't won you any Pulitzers or even an entry into Granta, LRB etc yet, maybe it lacks merit.

After trying to milk it for literary cred for almost a decade, and failing, it does seem too tired to be attempted.

Let's face it: If you had the talent, you'd be the modern-day, female Bukowski by now.

Drinking and puking unapologetically on stage, but minus the rapes and sexual abuse of the opposite sex. Or any sex for that matter.

"I can't write," I mock-wail to my partner when he enters the bedroom, rocking his new ethically-manufactured, space-themed boxers and even newer muffin top.

"What's the topic?" he asks without even me asking for help.

He's a typical man; an Amol Palekar character from a 70s slice-of-life film, trapped in present-day Salman Khan body.

A millennial who juggles generational complexes with biceps.

This basically means that he expends the same emotional energy in solving a problem that he would in taking a leak in the middle of an important meeting.

"Write about how you need to forgive yourself first above anything else.

"How you need to be kind to yourself," he offers up the first thing that pops into his head.

Before you go "awww whatta cutie" and all please stop right there. My partner is a fast learner and an even more astute finder of things worth learning.

One of the cornerstones of our rather turbulent relationship has been him picking up cues for affirmative action.

His suggestion solidifies my suspicion -- as a survival tactic, he is now paying attention to what I want to hear instead of what he thinks I need to hear.

This brings us to the rather befuddling concept of forgiveness.

I am low-key infuriated at myself for speaking of my SO in a breezy tone.

I don't want people to get the wrong idea... that this marriage is breezy and all kinds of wonderful.

The truth is, it is as messy and complicated and frightening and devastating as any other marriage.

There are a thousand ways of describing a marriage but I can't think of a single one in which ours can come off as different, special, one of a kind, better than, above and beyond others.

But having involuntarily committed over three decades of my life to being different from others has helped me find a way in which I could make my marriage stand apart. With complete honesty.

A complete log of microaggressions, the lows and lows of marital drudgery, the emotional and sometimes physical (sorry to break it to you but this, too, happens) upheavals staged for the express purpose of dealing with said drudgery.

Because you're already seeing loved-up pictures, terms of endearment borrowed from popular sitcoms and lifestyle influencers, small romantic gestures recounted with big feelings everywhere.

Aren't you sick of the basic bitch-ery of it all?

I know I am.

I am also bitter and disappointed in society, for just when you're leaning nicely into its dysfunctions, the inner structure of it moves ever so slightly, just enough to make you uncomfortable, just enough to go unnoticed by those around you.

Sometimes, when I am feeling uncharacteristically charitable, I feel like existing within a marriage is like sitting in a really uncomfortable chair.

No matter how painstakingly someone describes all the crimes the chair has committed against their ass, you will only know the true extent of it if/when you sit in the chair yourself.

This analogy would work if everyone was getting just that one chair to sit in.

Sadly, everyone who decides to marry gets a brand new chair made JUST for them, so only they know what it's like to sit in it.

Anyhow, the point I was getting at is that long marriages (till we find a better benchmark to measure the success of marital bonds, longevity will have to do, I guess) are not a result of everlasting passion, shared ideologies or even sexual compatibility.

It's a result of your appetite for forgiveness.

Every day, you must wake up and decide whether you're ready to forgive your companion.

For missing emotional cues, for not suffering enough, for saying things like "it is what it is" -- not because you need a reality check but because the scale of "it" was designed to forever tip in their favor.

In a marriage, you must wipe the self-helpy, holier-than-thou grime off your forgiveness to see what it truly is.

Because sometimes, to forgive is to claim superiority over those we are forgiving and those who are unable to forgive.

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com