From Confused to Confident

By Rupa Gawle-Kale

Marriage After the Honeymoon: Embracing Compromise

When I was single and hadn’t quite met the right man yet, I remember that the operative word everyone around me seemed to use was “compromise.” I despised that word so much that I’d start twitching whenever I heard it. I mean, the whole reason I was single for so long was precisely because I didn’t believe in that word. I didn’t want to compromise in the most important decision of my life.

I wasn’t looking for someone who looked like David Beckham and had the brains of Salman Rushdie. I simply wanted a man who’d rock my world without forcing me to change the foundation. So as time went on and I didn’t quite find that guy, I started to believe in that hype. Perhaps there was something to that god-awful word: “compromise.” So imagine my surprise when, without trying, I actually met a guy who not only accepted me and loved me just as I was but also made me forget the concept of compromise altogether. I, of course, married him within months of meeting him. He was that perfect. Seventeen months into the marriage, I’m still in awe of the fact that I actually found someone so perfect for me and perhaps there was a lot of truth in my mother’s soft-spoken words “You deserve to be happy on your own terms.” Yes, it has been that simple.

So imagine my shock when, in the first year of marriage, my life wasn’t exactly the perfection I expected when I married this perfect man. Don’t get me wrong. The man was still perfect. My marriage was still perfect. But married life simply wasn’t.

The problem? Obligations and change. Those little words were as dirty as the word “compromise” in my books. And while I was smug in the knowledge that I wasn’t compromising or changing anything I wanted out of my marriage, there was this ugly little fact about marriage no one seemed to have warned me about when I got married.

I got some really fantastic advice when I got married. Along with the basic and realistic advice to listen, be respectful and approach my husband empathically, I also got funnies. “Get ready to give up the remote control, have the toilet seat always up and find empty milk cartons in the fridge,” I was told.

Yet, more than a year into marriage, we don’t have TV control issues, my husband has his own bathroom which he uses in a way that’s comfortable for him and, best of all, he pours his milk out in a glass!

No one, however, told me that with marriage came 900 things that were implied and assumed about me as a woman, a friend, a wife, a daughter-in-law and a sister-in-law. People suddenly grew expectations that didn’t exist in the relationship before, and our existing relationships changed without warning. There were two major challenges in my first year of marriage that I can say caused me a lot of ire in hindsight.

First, our relationships with others changed. The relationships with friends and family we had before we entered our union were deeply affected by our marriage. If we didn’t jive as a couple with other couples or single folks we were friends with before marriage, it became really difficult to maintain the pre-marriage chemistry we previously had with these people.

Couples I had been friends with for a long time moved away from us emotionally because the dynamics didn’t work with all four people in the same space. I had looked forward to the day when I’d have a husband to complete some of these friendships I had with other couples. Now, it was really disappointing to realize it wasn’t that simple.

Family that my husband was close to also drifted away. A cousin he was close to perhaps didn’t approve of me from the get-go and their relationship suffered as a result. She snubbed all our wedding events and then simply cut us off.

One of the most heartbreaking experiences in the first year of marriage was losing the few single friends I had. Women I had been very close to before I met my husband simply put a full stop on our relationship by their own volition. After struggling with the change for over a year and still sometimes mourning the relationships, it’s hurtful to think that the same women whom I stuck by during their tough times abandoned me when I found happiness in a marriage.

Needless to say, some relationships actually got better. Friends I had lost connection with because they had moved on in the game of life with their kids and mortgages and picket fences came back to support me and be my friend again, and life came full circle. It really was the silver lining of our friendship.

Our second biggest challenge was managing family expectations. The first year of marriage brought on an insurmountable amount of expectations from us in terms of time with my husband’s family.
Fortunately, my in-laws, who were always very supportive of my husband’s choices, didn’t put up even the least bit of resistance to him wanting to marry me after two dates.

I have to say my in-laws were amazingly supportive. When my mother died right after we got engaged, and I had a falling out with my entire family, they rallied around me and supported me through a very difficult time.

But after marriage, I realized that it all came at a steep price tag: our personal time. We are both very hard-driven professionals, working 60+ hour workweeks and barely having time for meals and sleep during the week. So while in our single lives, weekends meant unwinding, relaxing catching up on sleep, running errands, grocery shopping, cleaning up and doing the laundry, in our married lives, we found ourselves trekking out to visit family. And this happened nearly every single weekend. We were an hour and a half away, so it wasn’t a quick trip.

At my in-laws house, my mother-in-law ran a tight ship. She was always so excited to have us over, but when we visited, there were always friends and relatives visiting to catch up with us. Having a house full of relatives every single weekend meant a busy kitchen the entire weekend. She enjoyed showing me off, and I had a seriously busy schedule. While my husband was left alone to catch a ball game or two or even sleep, I had lots of things assigned to me. While she never ever asked me to do anything, it seemed entirely appropriate to help her with her house guests. I would have done the same if it were my own mother. As much as I felt useful to help my mother-in-law, it left me drained and exhausted by the end of the weekend.

We were asked to be in their home on Friday night after work and before we knew it, we were driving home late Sunday night arguing and fighting in the car the entire way home. An hour and a half later, we’d arrive at a home that still had laundry to be done and still needed to be cleaned up!

My husband and I barely dated before we got married and we moved in together the day after our wedding, so our first year of marriage really was the time to get to know each other. And not having “us” time after marriage started taking its toll. We constantly fought over nothing but visiting his parents. He couldn’t understand why I simply couldn’t chill out when I was there. I, on the other hand, couldn’t get him to see that it wasn’t just the work and lack of relaxation that made me cranky. Rather, it was the fact that we had so little “alone time” and had to rush through our own domestic duties back at our place. In addition, I was still working long hours and needed some time during the weekends to relax.

I would complain to my friends who kept telling me to be patient and that time would make things better. They told me it took years to “train” their husbands to understand their needs. This left me really disheartened. I didn’t want to “train” my husband. He wasn’t a pet. I had married this man because he was the best man I had ever dated. He understood me like no one did and he was the most sensitive to my needs. I needed him to understand my struggles without compromising that special bond we naturally had.

Eventually, he saw that the only thing we ever fought about was family time, and when I started planning trips for us to go away at every corner, he realized I was looking for an escape. A year after marriage, when the demands on our time by his parents didn’t lessen, he finally agreed to sit down and talk to his parents. It was a painful decision for him because it meant he had to criticize his parents and point out something they were doing wrong. It was an interaction he had never had with his parents. I knew it was tough on him.

The day came when he finally had a chat with them, while I slept in late one Sunday morning. And voila, just like that, the whole game changed. They weren’t just receptive, but completely understanding of the situation. My father-in-law, a psychiatrist, and my very practical mother-in-law were supportive of our needing space and that magic that everyone promised me finally happened. Sure it didn’t happen naturally, and we had to ask for it, but it definitely made us wonder why families don’t talk more often.

I’ve seen marriages and families fall apart over these very same issues in the first few years of marriage. Couples who couldn’t quite balance the family demands either fell apart or had a falling out with the parents. This made me wonder why everyone simply couldn’t talk with each other like we did. It seemed to work so well for us and I highly recommend the approach to everyone. And while I realize it may not be the easiest approach with South Asian parents, it is definitely worth a try.

Today, I have the best relationship with my in-laws. When we see them, I actually look forward to it and the time is always more quality than quantity.

It took a year of a lot of painful experiences to learn that that word I dreaded so much, “compromise,” was exactly what I ended up embracing. I learned to be sensitive to the needs of my in-laws and understand them better, and they did the same for me. I also learned to accept the changes in our relationships and embrace the positive ones. I had, after all, compromised and, you know, it wasn’t so bad after all.

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