Before marriage whenever I used to meet my couple friends, I would always feel like a 5th wheel, like an outcast. Family functions were worst, I could hear my relatives whispering behind my back, “poor soul, she is still single and so lonely”. It was true to a certain extent as well, I didn’t have a partner to dance with, I didn’t have someone to walk hand in hand along a beach or go on romantic vacations.
I thought, once I get married at least I will have someone by my side forever, someone who would be there to tend to my needs when I’m sick, someone who would talk to me when I’m bored, someone who will dance with me and take me out for romantic holidays.
So, to remove loneliness from my life, I got married in the year 2012. Unfortunately, marriage isn’t that simple, it’s not always able to sustain every vow you make to your beloved. It’s not that my husband avoids me or I avoid him, but a strange feeling of loneliness has crept into our marriage despite spending a lot of time together.
I still cannot pin point my finger to what went wrong where. We were very happy and fun before marriage, we would talk for hours and hours without getting bored. But somewhere between the domestic chaos and raising a child, our marriage fell into an autopilot mode. Everyday became a routine, even Sundays or holidays were no different. With occasional movie and dinner dates happening sometimes, rest of the time was like standstill. Nothing really changed.
I don’t blame anyone for this loneliness in our marriage. At some point, discussion about interests, world events, politics, sports and dreams disappeared completely and our conversations became purely transactional or work related – “we need to buy new clothes for the baby”, “project is not meeting deadlines”, “what’s for dinner”, etc. Our day is pretty much tight-locked like a school timetable – breakfast at 9, get ready and leave for office at around 10:30 while I put our kid for small nap, I work and play with the kid during the daytime, he comes home by 8:30, have dinner at 9, I put the baby to sleep by 10, I watch television till 11:30 and go to bed while he works on his computer and then sleeps around 12. We get up at 8 and then the same routine continues.
I suppose in all this routine somewhere love and affection in our marriage got lost. It’s like a vicious circle, we are in marriage to avoid loneliness and the marriage itself dooms us to the loneliness of togetherness.
I’m not sure if my husband feels the same way or not, he is a very self-contained person and is very good in hiding his emotions. But I certainly feel that it’s time that we speak the unspoken and try to find out why we are lonely. Being single and lonely is sad, but being married and lonely is terribly miserable.
