Social traditions, patriarchy and comfort zone

I have met several guys in my parents attempts to get me married and settled. All of them had one common expectation. They did not want to separate from their parents. To all the guys I said, “Yes. I understand and I would not expect you to do so” (or something similar verbally or non-verbally). I am true to my word. I would not expect any guy to live in a separate house, leaving his parents, just for me. However, when answering this question, I always have had things to say that I never said out loud. (To understand more why I didn’t say them out loud, read my article ‘Honesty is not always the best policy’.)

Now, let’s get straight to the premise of this writing exercise. What do I wonder about when guys tell me that they want to live with their parents. Here it goes.

I respect family as an institution. As psychologists, we learn that family is the first social institution that we encounter and it is also our first learning space. I am happy about the fact that men love their parents and are clear in their thoughts about taking care of them. I respect that. On the other hand, I know that I am a woman. I know that tradition dictates that women leave their parental house and live with the man’s family. However, this does not mean that I love my parents less. This doesn’t mean that I would not want to take care of them. A person may have hundred complains about one’s parents; nonetheless, they are the source of one’s existence. Hence, parents always remain a priority, no matter where the child goes (exceptions exist for this and I would not be analyzing and considering them in this article as they would not have this problem in the first place). Parents are a child’s comfort zone.

So, it is my sincere request to all the men out there who are considering marriage, think whether you would be able to give what you are asking. Did that become difficult to understand? Here, I am putting it in simpler words.

We live in patriarchy. So, currently, women leave their comfort zone. And leaving one’s comfort zone is never easy, be it for a woman or a man.

However, imagine a world where a man leaves his parents’ house and settles in with his wife in her house. You would be celebrating your birthday, your anniversary, your promotion, and so on with your in-laws and all you get with your parents is merely a phone call or a short visit. On the other hand, your wife who stays with her parents, your in-laws, gets to do everything in her comfort zone. Imagine that there may be some tricky situations in which both sets of parents need assistance. This is 100% situational. Neither the wife nor the husband can be held responsible. You have to put your in-laws needs before the needs of your parents. This is tradition. You have to follow it.

So, men, when you tell women that you won’t leave your parents after marriage, understand that what you are asking women to do is to leave their comfort zone and make your comfort zone into ‘a shared comfort zone’. Think for a minute. You cannot even imagine to leave your comfort zone, yet you are expecting the other person to do it.

I am not saying that men should separate from their parents. Please don’t get me wrong. If I don’t want my parents to be alone, I would not want anyone parents to be left alone.

But, men, you need to think about what you would do for the woman’s parents, if she is going to leave her house and take care of your parents.

And this holds true for some women as well. These women fail to understand that men are raised to expect women to leave their comfort zone. When women ask them to leave their parents, for men, it sounds something very close to criminal and unfathomable. Again, the same argument goes here. If you are not leaving your comfort zone, expecting it from the other person is simply unfair. Like men need to think for the women’s parents, so do women.

Let’s look at the corporate world. When you are a business partner, you share responsibilities. So, you make sacrifices for the company together. You bear losses and celebrate profits together. If only one of the business partners is taking responsibility and making sacrifices, that partner would know the company more and eventually the other partner would merely become a namesake.

Look at the person you are marrying as your partner. If you don’t shoulder half of the responsibilities, you are going to be like an alien to your partner. You would become a namesake in the long run. Believe me, this would also rob you off your happiness.

I know and understand that this isn’t easy.

I am going to quote lines from the scientist by Coldplay: Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard, oh take me back to the start.

The key here is to be willing to start over and not give up because someone once told me that relationships are always work in progress!

Honesty is not always the best policy

I am an honest person. To put it more factually, I don’t mind being brutally honest. Frankly, I love to be very straightforward. However, experience, a book and a sitcom have changed my mind on this issue.

My experience has showed me time and again that honesty ends up hurting people and accepting facts is not what people are ready for. This, in turn, makes them blame you for anything and everything under the sun. They hardly (read never) have the guts to say so on your face but use your honesty as a weapon to hurt your loved ones. Then, though you may not regret your honesty despite this, you eventually become really lonely as you become surer than ever that people don’t understand you.

I love the book ‘The road less traveled’ by Scott M Peck. In it, there is a big chunk on withholding the truth. I admire that chunk and identify with it. Hence, every time, I am going to blurt out my version of reality, insight, epiphany, I bite my tongue and remind myself to withhold.

I am a fan of Sheldon Cooper from the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. In it, it is shown that he cannot keep a secret and is quite straightforward. He doesn’t understand sarcasm either. I am more or less the same. Oh Oh. I was. I learnt to keep secrets as a psychologist (doctor-patient confidentiality). As I mentioned earlier, I stopped being completely straightforward and learnt to withhold the truth. I do understand sarcasm every now and then, nowadays. I could do this thanks to this sitcom. In one of the episodes, Sheldon’s mother tells him how important it is to not point out certain things, even thought they were factual. Sheldon has ended up losing his job due to such rude honesty. Being really good at what he does, he gets his position back.

However, I understood something from this. People do not want to hear honest answers even when they start their questions with ‘tell me honestly’. They want it to be sugar-coated at the least. When you wrap reality in attractive masks, there is high chance that people will look at the masks and be happy with them. So, reality is lost. Without the flimsy coating reality is like painful yoga poses and bitter potions for immunity building. So, all in all, fans of reality remain at an all-time-low.

Despite adjusting my vocal and overt life to the social norms, customs and traditions as far as I can, my reality keeps itching my head. Hence, my honest outlet becomes these blog posts.

So, thank you for reading the three reasons that hold me back from being honest.

Understanding is rarer than common sense

There is this thing that I have heard and read many times.

When a small child falls down, it gets up and if no one is watching, then it goes on about its business, i.e. playing and other stuff. However, if he notices someone watching, then it cries. After all, attention is something that children learn.

This is accentuated in a woman’s upbringing. Women are brought up to be damsel in distress! All the fairly-tales yell at a girl to be pretty, well-groomed, yearning for a gentleman, ready to be swept off her feet and surrender to love. Learning the household chores is also made a step towards earning the heart of a prince charming.

In the time of a disaster, don’t they say that first women and children need to be saved. Long ago, it had some other meaning. Saving women and children was important due to the investment syndrome, for saving the future of the race, a greater survival instinct. With time, the reason boiled down to weakness.

I am not saying all women are strong and powerful and can do anything and everything. Women may need help at times as anyone would. Let’s take a simple example. We all try and reach for our desired object that is kept at a higher level. If that is out of our reach, we use a table, a ladder, a chair or anything that may help us reach it. Simple! This is true for men and women. We all need help sometimes. Yet, in many dramas this simple situation would be used to portray the woman as a mere damsel in distress.

When I come across such instances, I think that I was never brought up to be a damsel in distress. I did not like even my own dad thinking that I call him when I am in trouble. Whenever I fell down, I tried to get up as fast as I could without waiting for anyone to come forward and help me. I didn’t like to be pitied. I didn’t want to be helped when I didn’t need any.

I wanted to be understood though.

Sometimes, or rather many times, it has happened that I was nicely busy in not showing my pain and was so successful that people attempted to check whether I was really hurt. This is true for emotional as well as physical pain. People would end up poking my wound too deep because I tried to compose my pain.

This experience taught me one major thing. It is not only that women are taught to be the damsels in distress but that men and society at large is taught to expect that women would showcase their weakness and helplessness in the face of calamity.

I believe there is no greater pain than the pain of being misunderstood or not being understood at all by our near and dear ones. This holds true for all beings (humans, animals, plants, inanimate objects and so on) alike.

Here, I have but discussed one of the social schema that makes us behave the way we do without even realizing it. But there are many more such things that lead us to not understand or misunderstand. I sometimes feel that understanding is rarer than common sense.

Let’s see!!! 

Once upon a dropping of 377

Part I: It’s an internal fight

Long back when she was fighting her prejudices, a 15-year-old student of psychology, was aversive to those who killed the animals and ate them. The strong sense of what is right and what is wrong that was instilled in her by her strictly vegetarian family and community made her pass a moral judgement on all those who chose to eat meat. She, being a woman, championed her cause of how women were ill-treated but continued behaving differently with those who ate meat. Then, while learning prejudices and understanding them through some literature, she came across an anecdote and that became something that changed her perspective towards life.

One day a person was hanging from a precipice, almost about to fall. There was no hope for life; death was waiting. When all hope had vanished, a hand came in the view. The person thought it to be an illusion. But it wasn’t. The person held on to that hand and climbed up. Neither could see the other till they came face to face. A life was saved.

The person hanging was a staunch patriarch with a notion that women are lowly creatures and should be treated as animals. The person who saved this man was a feminist who constantly embarrassed the man.

The girl asked herself every time she thought there was some pre-judgement, “Will I not accept this person’s hand if I was hanging from the precipice? Will I not extend my hand for help if this person was hanging from the precipice?”

Life became easy. Living beings just remained living being. They stopped being a category.

The 5 elements that make the body of a living being and death that ceases its existence never seem to treat it differently. It is “we-the society” that emphasize the differences and decide and create the need to label.

The judgement given by the supreme court to drop 377 serves as a hope in the face of despair that surrounds. Today, I do not write to comment on what this means to a particular category because I believe that we all are simple living beings trying to live our life as we deem fit.

Part II: Coincidence?

I have a conversation with my friend. We are kind of updating ourselves on what are the things that are happening in the country. We have always done that. I mention about the amendments to the atrocities act and we realise that article 377 was to be discussed by the supreme court and it’s pending. We talk about everything under the sun.

Next morning, we are both surprised to learn that finally it was dropped.

This morning is not only iconic for us but for others who believed and discussed this issue. I am going to learn about this in about 36 hours.

The day after the verdict, I was on an assignment with Japanese artists as an interpreter. They were scheduled to give a talk in yet another art gallery. There, one of the artists had showcased his angst by making a death room. It was symbolizing the murder of emotions by the so-called morality. The outlet to that was a corner of love where everyone wanted to fight for the dropping of the article 377. Surprisingly enough, on the day that his art was exhibited, the verdict came out. All of us including the artists were in awe of the strength of art and emotions.

During the day, I had read about psions (a person with psionic ability releasing vibrations in the universe; they may act for protecting or pleading). I thought that everyone must have released so many psions that kept wishing for some positive actions and finally the collective energy led to healing.

If you ask around, there would be people who would tell you that there is no such thing as coincidence. On the other hand, there would be people who would tell you stories after stories of confidence. At the end of the day, it is what you believe. And believe you must. For, when you believe, the universe starts conspiring in your favour.