'.....and they lived happily ever after'

On one of the chat messengers, a friend of mine had the following as his status message:

"For sometime nothing happened. And then.......

the nothing continued to happen."

I used to find it amusing and have often thought about the above line and laughed to myself. But recently, I noticed that the above is true about numerous married couples - young and old! 

Let's take for example, the lives of Chimp and Champ. For sometime, they were dating each other - nothing special about that. Nor did they do anything to make it special. They didn't do anything extraordinary to proclaim their love for another. They lived in different cities, yet their eyes didn't glow, hugs didn't come naturally when they met. Yet they believed they were deeply in love with another. This continued for a long time, but nothing happened. 

Months became years and finally they decided to get married. They had a beautiful marriage and they say, a truly beautiful honeymoon. "Only we wish the honeymoon lasted forever," Champ said. We didn't get the hint right then. 

Over the years, as I met more and more married people, I realized that almost everyone had the same story to say. Some actually said it aloud, while some didn't. Maybe because I married a little later than some of my friends did, I understood their feelings even when they were silent. Fortunately or unfortunately, they communicated a lot through their eyes. 

Because I was close to Chimp and Champ, I was aware that they didn't seem to have the '....and they lived happily ever after.'  If you see around, you would find a lot of couple like that. Deep down inside your heart, maybe you will feel that this is true about you too. Why then are we conditioned right from our childhood that such a concept exists and it is the most ideal concept? Ideal, yes. But does it exist? Which couple (married/ unmarried) does not have its ups and downs? Which couple can genuinely say that every single day has been a happy day with their partner? Every single fairy tale that was read out to us had a ''....and they lived happily ever after.'  Hindi movies in those days had all the twists in the love story but the ending only portrayed the marriage of the lead characters. Rarely did we come across a movie which talked about post-marriage crisis. Every movie talked about they finally became committed to one another and the society allowed it, but none talked about their life post-commitment. However, in recent years there have been a few movies which have touched upon it - the number can be literally counted on fingertips: Chachi 420, Chalte Chalte, Saathiya, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna. Do you know more?

Why do we want to ignore the aspect of life after marriage or life in a live-in relationship? Is it so sad that we don't want to talk about it? Are we scared to communicate to our near and dear ones that we are not happy or that we need their guidance to resolve issues and attain happiness? Or is it that we don't want them to think negative of ourselves or of our partner? 

Do we not want the world to know how our relationship/ marriage truly is?  Do we want to talk only about the good things of our relationship and hide the bad things? If we hide the negative and keep suffering, are we not causing pain to ourselves and to our partner? Should we not speak the negative too and get as much help as possible, so that the problem is solved and we become "happy"? Why have we made this silence so mandatory in our society?

And what about children? Since childhood, thanks to those fairy tales and movies, I didn't know adults faced so many difficulties in their relationship and that ....and they lived happily ever after' is only partially true. Right then, I didn't know it was partially true because I completely believed that.

Why then are we making children believe something which probably does not exist? And if it does not exist, then why are we reading stories which have such endings? Doesn't that count as fooling them? In some ways we need to convey it to them that in a relationship some days are happy days and some days are not. For some couples it will be most days as happy days and some days as not or maybe even vice-versa.

If we don't then,

Nothing will happen to make the relationship better and the nothing will continue to happen!