At least a thousand times I’ve
desperately wanted to strangle the man sleeping next to me, blissfully snoring
away to glory! He is the man I willfully chose to spend the rest of my life
with. In sickness and health, for better or worse. In this case, when I have
sleepless nights – for worse! This weird specimen being my husband. He not only
snores at the highest decibel, but also throws tantrums like a child when you
ask him to eat a perfectly fine vegetable like Brinjal.
Marriage is already a complex
and difficult thing, especially when 2 strong headed individuals decide to
spend the rest of their lives together. They both believe that they are right
and do not really compromise on certain things that they intrinsically believe
in. But what happens when both the partners are more or less in sync, and
yet it’s the small things that get in the way.
You might feel that these
trivial things don’t really matter and all of it must be taken with a pinch of
salt and sometimes a wad of cotton to prevent hearing impairment. But I feel
that it is these small things that one really discovers after living with
another human being who looks all sweet and perfect in the beginning. It’s only
after spending considerable time with each other that you discover the hidden
behaviors and the small things about a person’s personality. Some pleasant and
some not quite pleasant.
When I met my husband, he seemed
like an absolutely harmless creature. Little did I know that he had not yet overcome his Dennis - the menace phase. And
someone like me who ridiculed married folks got lured into the prospect of
sharing my life with this young man who I’d met only 3 months back. Once we got
married, nothing really changed other than my address. I moved to an amazing
city, got the kind of job I was looking for, made some friends and some
enemies, basically ensured a normal existence. And it all seemed so great in
the beginning till one night lightning struck. I discovered a great truth about
my husband. One that pulled the rug below my feet. He occasionally snores! The
first time I witnessed this debacle, I just gaped at him in horror. I wanted to
instinctively grab the pillow and suffocate him. Luckily the rational side of
me immediately pictured me in prison and that was more than enough to deter me
from suffocating this man who was completely oblivious to my scheming, plotting
ways.
I resolved to deal with this
problem heads on. I decided to consult my best friend – Google! Google as usual
did not disappoint me and gave me some really sane advice. The next time I was
shaken up from deep slumber by the snoring creature, I simply turned him to the
other side. And voila! Like magic he shut his mouth and did not even wake up.
Thank you Google for being my friend in dire situations always.
So, the learning from this is
that a lot of small things will happen in life and people will tell you that
you should not get bothered by them, but the honest truth is that it does
bother because it’s eventually the small things in life that really matter.
Having said this, there is never a problem that does not have a solution.
Sometimes the solution is very obvious and sometimes it requires some effort.
But eventually, when you do find a solution, you also realize that the problem
was not really that big to begin with. Marriage requires work but it is
beautiful if two individuals accept each other just the way they are. You can
give your partner grief over the fact that he snores, or doesn’t spend enough
time with you or that he watches football all the time. And he might just stop
doing these things out of fear of upsetting you, but is that really the point?
It’s not about massaging your ego. It’s about accepting the other person just
as he/she is. Without imposing any conditions whatsoever. We always chip away
parts of us to adjust with the other person and so does the other person, but
the chipping should not destroy your intrinsic self. It’s not important to be
the perfect match or the right fit, but to celebrate each other's individuality, because there are no
parts that were chipped away in order to just fit in!
