Love and War: The Marriage We Don't Post

This is a late post. But maybe some things are worth writing about even after the Instagram stories disappear, You Tube reels stop playing, and everyone has moved on to the next “perfect couple” video.

Around mid-September, my Instagram and YouTube feeds suddenly filled with Suriya and Jyotika’s wedding videos and moments from their journey together.

Twenty years of marriage. Renewed wedding vows. And, of course, the crazy comments from people:

“The way Suriya’s eyes changed when he saw her…"

“Couples should be like Suriya and Jyotika.”

“20 years and still so much love. I want a marriage like this 🥹❤️”

And somewhere between watching those videos and reading those comments, I had one very simple thought: What happens to the rest of us? The couples who don't look like that every day?

The husband gets irritated because his wife says, “Nothing, I’m fine,”

The wife who doesn't feel like talking to her husband after an argument.

The couple who can spend an entire evening sitting in the same room (Scrolling) without speaking.

The couple who fight about children, housework, work pressure, holidays, forgotten anniversaries and sometimes… absolutely nothing. Are they in wrong marriage?

Because somewhere along the way, we started confusing the term "perfect marriage."

We see the husband holding his wife's hand. We don't see the conversation they had at midnight when one of them said, “I don't think you understand/love me anymore.”

We see the cake. We don't see the resentment that existed before the cake was cut.

We see “Happy Anniversary, my forever.” We don't see the ordinary Tuesday when one person was exhausted, the other was irritated, and neither had the energy to be romantic.

And that's the problem, we sub consciously compare marriage to someone else's Instagram.

You are comparing your behind-the-scenes with somebody else's edited trailer. And then comes the dangerous sentence, “They never fight.”

I remember seeing an interview of Jyotika where she said, “We never fought even once. He is a green forest, bla bla bla…” and went on to saying.

And honestly, if you are sitting in a marriage that has survived so far, you might look at that and think: “What the hell are we doing wrong?”

Because some of us have had fights every single day. Some couples have mastered the art of fighting, eating dinner, sleeping in the same bed and waking up the next morning as if nothing happened.

Because fighting isn't automatically the opposite of love.

Sometimes the opposite of love is indifference.

You can be angry because you expected something from the person you love.

Two stubborn personalities trying to share one kitchen, one bedroom, one family and one life? That's marriage. Maybe marriage was never supposed to be peaceful all the time 😼

Think about it. You take two completely different people.

Different childhoods.

Different families.

Different habits.

Different ideas about money.

Different ideas about parenting.

Different ways of expressing love.

Different expectations.

Different wounds.

Different egos.

Different dreams.

And then society tells them: “Now live together happily ever after.”

Again.

I think we have romanticised the beginning of relationships too much.

The proposal. The wedding. The honeymoon. The couple photos.

To every husband who thinks his marriage is failing...Because your wife doesn't smile at you like that celebrity couple. Because she gets angry. Because she complains.

And to every wife who looks at another couple and thinks, “Why isn't my husband like that?”

Please remember: You are seeing a few minutes of their life.

He may not know how to say the perfect thing. But Perhaps he waits until you come home.

Perhaps he takes care of the child when you are exhausted.

Perhaps his version of “I love you” doesn't look like yours.

And maybe your version doesn't look like his either.

Stop looking for a marriage without problems. 

Maybe they renewed their vows after 20 years, but why should we wait 20 years to choose each other again?

Why don’t we marry each other every day? Every day, look for a chance to fall in love again. Make a little effort. Tell them they still look beautiful. Look at them the way you did the first time you met. Remember the little things that made you fall for them.

Yes, you may fight for 23 hours. You may say nonsense, get angry, misunderstand each other, and even wonder why you married this person in the first place.

But what if you kept just one hour aside for love?

One hour to stop arguing. One hour to sit together. One hour to look at each other without the anger. One hour to say, “I still choose you.”

Maybe that is what marriage really is, not a life without fights, but two people who keep finding their way back to each other.

Don’t wait for an anniversary to celebrate your marriage.

Make every day a little love hour.

The Day My Hormones Decided to Tell My Entire Life Story

Some days, life hurts.

And some days, your hormones apparently decide that every hurt you have ever experienced deserves a reunion. Today was one of those days.

Something happened. 

On any other normal day, I would probably have just shrugged it off and said, “Easy-peasy” 😄

I would have walked away, complained for five minutes, had some tea, and continued with my life.

But today? Today, that little incident didn't remain a little incident. It walked straight into my heart and suddenly, I cried.

Naah Not those cute, cinematic tear rolling down the cheek kind of cry.

Its a wave of emotions I could no longer hold back.

The kind where you start remembering things that happened 15 years ago for absolutely no reason.

The friend who broke your heart. The person who walked away. The opportunities you lost.

The things you said that you wish you hadn't.

The things people said to you that you wish you could forget.

And, for some reason, even the childhood memories came running in.

At one point, my brain basically opened a folder called:

"EVERY BAD CHAPTER OF YOUR LIFE : PLAY ALL."

It felt as though someone had collected all my worst memories, arranged them and said, "Here is the teaser of everything that has ever hurt her."

And my hormones were sitting in the front row eating popcorn.

I remembered everything bad thing happened in my life. 

I had to pause for a moment. I checked the date, and then it hit me. I knew exactly what was happening. Those hormones had decided to turn the emotional volume all the way up, making everything feel heavier, darker, and far more painful than it normally would.

And that's something I think many women understand.

Before our periods, our emotions can sometimes become unbelievably intense. Hormonal changes can affect mood, irritability, sensitivity and anxiety. For some women, the emotional symptoms can be much more severe.

I knew what kind of day this was. But for a moment, I felt deeply sorry for women. Why does being a woman have to come with so much physical and emotional pain? For a moment, I questioned God or perhaps nature itself. Why do we have to fight an emotional battle before our periods even begin, only to face the physical pain afterward? It felt so unfair that our bodies could put us through such an intense emotional storm and then say, “Okay, now let’s add cramps.”

I cried and cried again. 

It was one of those dark emotional days when everything feels heavier than it actually is.

And I know that for some women, these emotional crashes can go much further into severe depression, hopelessness, or even thoughts of harming themselves.

That is why I don't want us to laugh at women's emotional struggles and simply say: "Oh, she's on her period."

No. Sometimes she is genuinely struggling. Sometimes she doesn't even understand why she feels the way she feels. And sometimes what she needs isn't judgement. She needs someone to sit beside her.

So I went and sat quietly.

The tears started rolling again.

I let them.

I cried.

Then I washed my face.

Looked at myself in the mirror.

And made myself a promise:

Whatever happens, I am not going to make the hormone win this time. 

Today may be a terrible day.

But it is still only one day.

And then, as if the universe had been watching this entire emotional drama from somewhere, an email arrived.

The subject? A menstrual-cycle-related leave announcement.

I opened it.

And I could almost imagine some men reading it and thinking:

What the hell? One day of leave every month for this? As if women are actually suffering!

Dear men…

Trust me.  You don't have to understand every hormonal change to understand that sometimes a woman's body is fighting battles her face doesn't show.

And no, we aren't asking for sympathy every day.

We are asking for a little understanding on the days when our body, hormones, emotions and life decide to hold a conference without inviting us.

Today reminded me of something important.

Being strong doesn't mean never crying.

Tomorrow, the hormones will calm down.

The heart will breathe again and the bad chapters will return to their shelves.