How to Escape a Bad Relationship?
Acharya Prashant: Why are people afraid to step out of even abusive marriages? The reason is exactly the same as for those who feel compelled to get into marriages. That is the pressure to conform, that is the pressure to belong to the crowd, the fear to not to be labelled abnormal, the urge to not to miss out on something, that has been glamourized as extremely important and central.
Here in India, what are 90-95% of our movies about? Man and woman getting together, right? In some way or the other. Right? So that’s what it is. Obviously, there is the biological urge embedded in the body itself. But much more than that, it is the social norm that, first of all, pushes us into this institution of marriage and then compels us to stay there even if that institution is sapping the very life out of us.
See, don’t we wear what Bollywood does, or Tollywood or whatever, depending on your taste? We are in the South right now. So, we speak the way they do. We even raise our kids the way they teach us to do. They tell us how to handle our maternity. They tell us how to be good parents. They are our teachers, mentors, guides, philosophers, de facto gods. Do we see how much is our life dictated by the forces of entertainment? We spend such a lot of time on avenues of entertainment, that we are bound to fully absorb the values they are giving us.
If you read the Gita, there is no man-woman angle. So that kind of centre, that feeling, that very issue will not even be activated in your mind. Will it be? Some other more important issues will take dominance. No? “What is the right action?” “When to indulge in a war and when to retreat?” “How to pick the right battle to fight?” “Who exactly am I?” “What is my relationship with the world?” If you spend time with the Gita, these are the issues that will get activated within you. You will feel involved with these issues.
Whereas if you watch a movie, what is the issue that will gain importance in your mind? “How do I get my man?” “How do I get my woman?” Right? Even if you go to the Ramayana, what you find is that a noble and honourable man is prepared to give up on marital, conjugal pleasure for the sake of a higher ideal. Right?
Now this kind of a higher thing you will never find in the avenues that supply you your values. And all the time we are with entertainers. And so much of our entertainment is simply related to sex. If you think of ten jokes that make you laugh, seven or eight, or nine would be sex-related, right? Directly or indirectly?
So, right from the age of six or eight, we become deeply indoctrinated, please understand this, we are forcefully made to believe that the purpose of life is to chase a man or a woman. And the highest possible ideal is to spend time or life with some nice and right person. Right? That is what you also call as settling down. Now that ideal is ingrained in our minds from a very, very early age. And it refuses to leave us even after we turn 80 or 90.
What is life for? No, life is not for a noble cause. Life is not for liberation. Life is not for knowledge. Life is not for exploration. Life is so that you can have somebody’s hand in your hand. Life is for romance. Right? Life is, when you have that right and perfect person with you, next to you. That’s when life is right. It becomes impossible for us to even imagine a life that is not welded to somebody else’s. What else is wedding? Welding? That’s why so much fire is there.
It sounds scary if you imagine, if I tell you, “you have to spend your life without being hitched to some person of the other gender.” Most of us will start feeling scared. I can understand the situation of those who are already welded. But even those who are fortunate enough to not yet have been welded, even they will start feeling scared. “Oh my God! what a scary vision! All alone, what will happen to me! “
Where did this feeling come from? Definitely this feeling is not coming from the body. Definitely, this feeling is not Prakratik or genetic. Because this kind of feeling is not found in animals. Animals do form pairs, but only for a while, and then they go their own way, till the next mating season, they are away. This kind of a welded relationship, this concept does not exist in Prakriti. So surely it is coming from the society, not biology. And from where in society is it coming? It is coming from our avenues of entertainment, right?
Songs, you go to YouTube, which is the most-watched YouTube channel across the world? And what do you watch there? Songs. And what are those songs necessarily about? Man and woman, man and woman, man and woman, man and woman. The entire world is watching that. That particular channel is in Hindi. But even otherwise, east or west, that’s what we are constantly crooning. Where is my man? Where is my woman? Where is my man? Where is my woman?
That’s a reason why the day you turn twelve, you actually start looking for a partner. I’ve heard kids of age six and eight have boyfriends and girlfriends these days. That’s because this mass culture through media is now reaching them even earlier. They all have mobile phones. So even they are thinking, that the highest thing possible in life is a boyfriend or girlfriend. And if you have that, then you have arrived, you have succeeded.
With that kind of ideal, how will you ever have the courage to walk alone? And when I say walk alone, that does not mean that you cannot be in a relationship. When I say walk alone, that means, being free of the compulsion to be in a relationship. These are two very different things. You can be in a relationship out of your freedom. It is an expression of your freedom that you are in a relationship. That is possible, right? Since I am free, hence out of my choice, I am in a relationship.
But that’s not the case very often. Most of us are in relationships not because of freedom, but because of compulsion. And that’s the reason why we have so many husband-wife jokes. Otherwise, how can there be something to joke about in that? You don’t have mother-son jokes. You don’t have brother-sister jokes. Why do you have so many husband-wife jokes? Just to mitigate the suffering a little. Just to be able to laugh at your own sorry situation a little.
Isn’t the mother-son bond an important one? Why don’t you have mother-son jokes, then? Why only husband-wife jokes? Because without joking, it will be even more difficult to tolerate. This institution has ruined so many people and continues to do that on a daily basis, especially women.
Here we have a man stating his predicament and suffering. But this institution has been equally, if not more, harsh upon women. Because they are even more scared to step out. “How is it possible for a simple, normal, average, powerless lady like me to survive all alone in this big, bad, bullying world?” So, she will tolerate all kinds of nonsense and abuse and violence but will stay put. And she will say, “Oh! I am doing it for the integrity of the family and welfare of the kids.” Same goes for men, because now women are as nastily empowered as men used to be. So, they are as nastily exploitative as well.
Kindly get into your own mind and ask yourself, who has taught you to put up with daily abuse and humiliation? Who declared that to be your destiny? Who is that scriptwriter? Whose is this decree that cannot be reversed? Why must you act as if you are helpless and powerless? Why must you behave as if there is no choice?
I do not know what you must do. You have been with me only since a week. I do not know the intricacies of your situation. But I can talk of a general principle.
Nothing in life is irreversible. Please. The only thing that you should never compromise on, never negotiate on, is the central purpose of life, and that is liberation. All else is dispensable. Nothing is cast in stone. You are free to be; you are free to not to be. And there is no God sitting upstairs to declare a mandate. Existence will not curse you if you are solo. And there is no special reward for remaining hitched.
You know, the curse that we experience in our daily life acts both ways. One, we feel compelled to stay in rotten relationships. Second, we feel constrained from entering the right relationships. Both. And I am not necessarily talking of, you know, giving up on one woman and being with another one. No. The right relationship might as well, with travelling, travel that you cannot afford because the other person won’t allow you to. So, that relationship is not only abusive in itself but also an impediment to another right relationship.
That’s the reason why wisdom literature right at young age is so important. So that you may have higher ideals, especially girls. Both. It’s the age of empowerment. Else the only ideal you will worship is the ideal of a couple, the happy couple. And that’s the ideal almost everybody has. “Done your UG, done your PG, now what? Now I’ll happily settle down.”
