SEPTEMBER 25 — In the past few months, I have been trying to write a piece on marriage and the fallacies surrounding it. For many years, I was not able to fathom the reason why people decide to tie the knot.
But I struggled to find the exact moment to get started on drafting one.
Until a Eureka moment came along earlier this week, when a group of parties decided — prematurely in some eyes — to formalise their relationship. Talk about originality.
One of the precepts of marriage is that it has to be done so that one looks good in the eyes of the public.
Not much importance is placed on how one would deal with the challenges and intricacies which any formalised relationship would entail.
A case in point was when I visited a hypermarket to get the weekly essentials.
A couple — presumably married — with their child in tow sounded like they were in a heated conversation as the husband held up a tin of baby formula. Filled with curiosity, I walked over to get a sense of what was going on, and this was their conversation.
Husband: “You see, I told you not to have kids. Now, the milk so expensive. You never listen.”
Wife: “Now blame me lah. How we got the kid first? My fault?”
The poor child looked bewildered at the parents arguing over its existence.
I caught a glimpse of the price of that tin of baby food and it sent shockwaves through my spine.
RM121.50.
For one tin of milk!
Clearly, the cost of goods — among many other factors — is putting an unbearable stress on married couples, leading to cracks appearing.
Such situations open the gates to people calling it quits at an alarming rate. Today, at least one couple divorces every 10 minutes, going by the numbers posted in a Malay Mail Online article.
And the numbers for couples who split could be much higher, as not many want to go through the tedious legal process of separating.
That is downright shocking.
But many still choose to walk down the aisle, looking forward to their wedding than the marriage life which lies ahead.
People are driven into marriage because it is convenient, we tick off another box from our “to-do list”, or we do it because everyone else around is signing up for it. We do it to fit in.
However, marriages of convenience never usually stand the test of time, because what is convenient at a particular point of time may not be so five years on.
We aren’t equipped sufficiently to deal with struggles that come with relationships. No amount of books or articles can find an answer to this age-old dilemma.
Add to that the monumental task of raising a kid and things start to get more complicated.
For every break in a marriage, there are bound to be others who are affected, especially when there are kids involved.
Or when political parties decide to go their separate ways, it is the rakyat who are left disillusioned. In both instances, the affected people are usually treated as collateral damage.
Perhaps, if we do not view relationships and marriage as something one has to do in order to feel complete, we could begin to live our lives to the fullest without feeling incomplete.
And only walk down the aisle when we are ready to, not because we have to.
Because if we keep repeating mistakes hoping for a different outcome, pure insanity that.
* Jay Jay Denis is a policy analyst at Malaysian research organization Monitoring Sustainability of Globalisation, and member of the recently formed Demi Malaysia coalition.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or organisations and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
