Your Friendly Philosopher & Guide

Forget about divine love for a moment, where they keep blabbering that your love should be unconditional, that you should love your partner completely, that you should accept the person as she or he is, or you should learn your life’s lessons – they are all crap. They don’t help you in practical life. It just helps you in creating an illusion around you, which with time breaks apart completely.

Also the spiritual path is not for everyone and many use it as an escape route. If you had a bad marriage you take up Art of Living course, if your girl friend ditches you - you join Osho meditation centre, when you are full of lust – you learn Kriya Yoga, and if your mood is down – you join Alma Matter!

None in the world has ever grown spiritually when material success – like wife, job, money, power, and sex – has left them. But it was always the other way round – whoever has grown spiritually, were the people who themselves have rejected material success for their love towards God - and there is a major difference between the both.

So let us talk from the human plane –

From my experience, I have seen that MOST marriages break if the couples are bad on bed. And whatever be the problem, if their sex life is good – their marriage survives. This is a hard truth, though people might keep arguing that it is true love that binds the marriage.

Marriage is of course an institution and we can also call it a corporate structure, where in wife and husband are employees who are expected to do their duties perfectly to supplement each other’s life course.

It can be compared to a guy being passionate about joining Infosys. First he has to get qualified to take up a job in infosys, then he should have the desire to work, then he has to apply for a job, and when he gets a job – he cannot sit idle in the chair whole day saying he is in love with the company. If he does so, he will be sacked the first day. He is supposed to do his duties – love, honesty, and attraction takes a back seat after you get into a committed relationship with a company or marriage for that matter.

What a man expects out of marriage / Wife’s duty to provide to her husband

*Good sex
*Good food
*Love for home, family, and family members
*Financial support & emotional support (not mandatory)

(In the given order)

What a woman expects out of marriage / Husband’s duty to provide to his wife

*Financial support/Security
*Emotional support
*Sex
*Children

(In the given order)

Marriages start having problems when the duties are interchanged or when the duties are not done with commitment. Like for instance from the spiritual angle there is no difference between a peon of a company and the CEO of the company both are one and the same. But then you need hierarchy to take the company towards profits. Same way for a family to be run successfully – you need hierarchy, and if you give equal rights to all take my word your marriage will tumble down sooner or later!

So who should be the head of the family? And it should be the man, for he is physically strong, he is mentally strong and also he is emotionally strong. Equal rights work perfectly till you are in love with each other, but then when you are bound in a family – you need hierarchy.

Not that the man should always dominate the show. Let the wife select the colour of the fridge, the brand of the fridge, and the day and date of delivery too. But then it should be the man who should decide whether they need a fridge on the first place!

Marriages have problem when woman earns equal to man, marriage have problems when the woman earns more than the man, and marriage break when woman is more successful than the man. Of course it is man’s ego, and there is no need for a man to compromise on his ego and self-respect – by adjusting to a dominating wife.

I have noticed another subtle thing too that a successful man is always humble to his wife, whereas a successful woman is always arrogant to her husband. Woman by nature seek a stronger person to partner with, and money decides who possesses more strength these days. That is one of the reasons why most women who were or are successful in their lives had or have a bad marriage or would have preferred to stay single – Indira Gandhi, Jaya Lalitha, Jhansi Ki Rani, Mother Teresa, Shobha De, Lata Mangeshkar et al. And whoever married successful woman never allowed their wives to work after marriage – this includes Anil Ambani – who married Tina Munim – a ex Bollywood actress! If you VP is a woman, walk into her cabin and predict that your marital life will be in dismay, and she will say YES, how do you know?

So what happened to the NRI couple whose wife was a lesbian? They are planning to separate and the reason is simple. In spite of loads of love existing between them there is no sex and hence the marriage is heading towards a permanent separation! Not only men do this - I know other cases where wives’ have got separated from their men because men didn’t have an erection!

So ultimately marital relationship revolves around how good you perform on the bed, and not on the unconditional love you might have on each other or would try to have on each other!