To wed or not to wed.

There was a time when marriages were arranged, when neither of the persons entering a marriage was familiar with the other. It was the family that decided who was to live with whom. Marriage was used an indication of commitment of one party to the other. It was a commitment made in front of the society, thereby making the couple answerable to their respective families and the society that stood as a witness to their commitment.

However, one question remains. Does a marriage guarantee the happiness of both partners involved in it? A lot of people enter into a marriage not because they want to, but because they have to. Pressure from the family members, fear of being outcast by the society and the prospect of living their entire life as a single, drive people into entering marriages with a person they don’t fully understand. This is more so the case in orthodox and conventional settings. In such cases, apparently, the institution of marriage can do little to the resulting relationship, except, perhaps, limit the freedom of choice each partner has with his or her life. The result, more often than not, is a bad or a failed marriage.

It is such failed marriages that have given birth to the idea of live-in relationships. Today’s youth wants to have the freedom of choosing if, when and with whom to spend the rest of their lives. They want to be able to fully understand and comprehend what they are getting into, and thus try to avoid disasters at a later stage. For such people, live-in relationships seem like an ideal solution and thus, marriage ends up as being a redundant and a rather expensive ceremony.

But how many of us are open to live-in relationships? It remains a fact that, in countries like India, where parents still want to decide their children’s lives and grooms still have to be bought under the name of dowry, not many people are comfortable with the idea of their sons or, especially, daughters choosing whom they want to spend their lives with and worse so, living with that person before or without getting married.

Let’s face it….. In a country like India, despite their growing popularity, live-in relationships are a taboo; like sex, drugs, AIDS. But do they threaten the institution of marriage? I think not. Married or living in, whether bonded legally or by choice; the success or failure of a relationship entirely depends on the two people involved.