Amit Thapa, 28, and Ritu Shrestha*, 27, had been together for two years when their families decided to get them married off. But the two of them had other plans. They wanted to live together for some months before they tied the knot.
“Our families were aghast. They couldn’t understand why we couldn’t get married right away,” says Ritu, a Masters-level student who had to convince her parents to let her spend some time with Amit before she decided to take the plunge.[break]
“But they just couldn’t digest the idea of a live-in relationship and we had countless arguments and fights,” she adds.
Their parents, however, relented and Amit and Ritu have been in a live-in relationship for six months now. They have plans to get married in December this year.
Going by the definition, a live-in relationship means “a living arrangement in which an unmarried couple lives together in a long-term relationship that resembles a marriage.” Nowadays, with people becoming increasingly individualistic and career-oriented, many marriages don’t work out due to failures from both sides to adapt and compromise.
Moreover, divorce laws are too cumbersome. If one has to get a divorce, it takes months, if not years, for the process to get through, not factoring in the traumas suffered by the partners during these years. This perhaps is also one of the biggest reasons for some people opting for live-in relationships.
“Married in haste, we repent at leisure,” a line by William Congreve, English playwright and poet, truly defines the mentality of live-in couples. There are too much legality involved in the institution of marriage which one can easily escape in the case of live-in relationships. It is a much popular analogy of live-in relationship that it is like “taking a car for a test drive” as the couple can easily walk in and walk out of the relationship without any legal bondage.
Narrating an account of a friend who lived with his girlfriend for three months before deciding to call it quits due to the differences that cropped up when they lived together, Amit explains that you don’t know a person until you’ve lived with one.
“These friends of mine had been living together for some time when they realized how different they were from each other. They had entirely different lifestyles that didn’t gel well, and they came to figure this out only after staying together,” he says.
Amit’s statements, however, don’t ring true for all couples. Nidhi Pant, 30, got married recently. She didn’t opt to live in with her fiancé before tying the knot because she felt it was needless to do so, considering they had already known each other for 10 long years.
“I think being in a live-in relationship is only necessary when you aren’t sure that you’ll get along well with the other person,” says Nidhi, adding that she feels people opt for this lifestyle because it doesn’t restrain their freedom and individuality.
“Marriage means compromise, and there’s a certain sense of finality in it,” she adds from her experience.
People want to experiment with new things in life instead of just lingering onto the old customary traditions levied on us by the society. Live-in relationship does provide a remedy for a carefree life free from the hassles of responsibility and commitment which is the very prerequisite of the institution of marriage. Marriage promotes adjustment while in live-in relationship the emphasis is on individual freedom.
But our society still seems averse to the idea of live-in relationships. When Bishal Pradhan, 31, wanted to live with his girlfriend of four years before getting married, he had difficulty in finding an apartment.
“Everyone told us to look somewhere else when I told them we weren’t married but would get married soon,” says Bishal, adding that he finally rented an apartment claiming to be married to Swati Tandukar, his girlfriend then and now fiancée.
As a justification to why our society hasn’t accepted this somewhat rising trend, Aruna Magar, 48, a teacher, says that the culture of live-in relationships is far too progressive in a society where children still live with their parents after marriage, and the culture of joint family still largely prevails. She also believes that live-in relationships are frivolous and hence a social evil.
“Such a relationship is a way of escapism. No relationship can get stronger and meaningful if there’s an escape route available,” says Aruna who had tenants vacate her home when she came to know that the couples weren’t married.
Aruna justifies her actions saying that she didn’t want her children to witness such anti-social behavior.
“The psychological impact on children borne out of this relationship would be very bad and it could give rise to an unstable society,” says Madan Kumar Rimal, Associate Professor of Culture at the Central Department of Tribhuwan University further re-enforcing Aruna’s statements.
But being involved in a live-in relationship, or being part of a marriage, is a matter of individual decision, which, one should be given the freedom to make. Uproar on this issue, just for the sake of preserving cultural identity, is debatable. Some tend to think it is a boon, given the fact that it is more or less a marriage minus the obligations, while others think it is far too advanced a notion for our society.
“I didn’t want my son to live with anyone before getting married because our society tends to look down on such practices,” says Amit’s mother, Madhu Thapa. “I also think such relationships are taken very lightly and without proper commitment, and it can fizzle out any moment,” she adds.
But how can anybody claim that there is no place for bonding or attachment in such relations? It is far better than a marriage that exists without love, say the ones who have opted to be in live-in relationships.
A transition period between two contrasting phases – being single and then married – is always full of contradictions and complications, and that is the bandwidth where this relation lies. Getting a social mandate over this relation seems to be dim as of now, but change being a constant phenomenon, many hope that it gets an acceptance someday.
cillakhatry@gmail.com
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