Accountability
By: Vinutha Mohan
Tags: Marriage Counselling, Brene Brown, Accountability, Relationships, Marriage Vows

’Tis the season for weddings. Almost everyone I know, whether friends or clients are attending one wedding or another. Some weddings were postponed from last year due to the Pandemic. Over the years, I have attended many wedding ceremonies. They range from Indian weddings which can span many days, to White weddings that are a few minutes long, to some combination in between. While many of my friends love the brevity and simplicity of these short weddings, I have always loved the beautiful wedding rituals of my culture — the colors, music, flower garlands, dancing, the henna, beautiful mantras, various ceremonies all replete with meaning for me. One such ritual is called the Saptapadi meaning “Seven Steps”. According to Hindu Law, the Saptapadi is the most important ritual in a marriage ceremony. Without the completion of it, the marriage is not valid under the Hindu Marriage Law. In the South of India, these seven steps are conducted in the following way. The groom leads the bride by hand and goes around the fire three times. With each round he takes a marriage vow. Next the bride takes his hand and she leads him around the sacred fire for the last four rounds taking four more vows with him. These seven sacred vows are the foundation on which the marriage is built on. They are not written by the couple as their own unique vows but are from a standard template. Perhaps that can change in the future to make it more personal to the couple getting married. But then, it begs the question: who is tracking whether these vows are being honored? Who is holding the couple accountable?

While there are many literal and symbolic interpretations of these seven steps/vows, I choose to think of them as the couple taking turns leading one another in life. When one stumbles, the other picks him or her up. Together, they build a life based on some common values, principles, goals and they not only support each other but also hold each other accountable. It is in this area of “Accountability” that I find many couples failing and especially in my culture. Research shows that over a long-term relationship, couples both physiologically and psychologically regulate each other. That means that if each person in the relationship brings their wholesome self to the marriage, then they thrive both individually and as a couple. On the other hand, if one of them is struggling let’s say with a mental health condition, substance abuse, addiction, or intergenerational transmission of trauma, then over a period of time, it affects the other partner. The healthier partner begins to suffer from vicarious trauma (second hand trauma), manifesting their own set of psychological and physiological illnesses. Many a time, I have seen spouses overcompensating for their partner’s depression, anxiety, trauma, personality disorders and eventually the once healthy partner starts to develop health issues of their own.

Very often, fidelity to the marriage is understood as blind loyalty to your partner. However, that is not helping but enabling your partner’s dysfunction and maladaptive coping strategies. In sickness and in health doesn’t mean helplessly watching them suffer, ignoring or denying the problem or not holding them accountable for their well-being. True fidelity to a relationship means that each partner takes a vow to take personal responsibility for their well-being and promises to do whatever it takes to maintain it. True fidelity also means that each partner vows to hold the other accountable to their part of the marriage contract by providing both support and consequences.

In one of the famous epics of India called the Mahabharatha, considered to be the world’s largest epic, there is a character called Queen Gandhari, who is the princess of Gandhara, modern day Afghanistan. When Gandhari realizes that she has been betrothed to the blind King Dhritharashtra, she immediately decides to tie a scarf around her eyes in solidarity with her future husband. For the rest of her life, Gandhari lives in complete blindness just like her husband. While some may praise her for her loyalty and empathic resonance, I for one think that was not a smart strategy. I would call it idiot compassion. She could have as easily decided to be his eyes, both physically and spiritually guiding him both as a queen and as a wife. As the story turns out, she begets him a hundred sons and the oldest son is a troubled soul who is arrogant and out of control. The King has blind love for his son and is unable to guide him. Gandhari eventually fails both as mother and wife. Alas, her solidarity in sharing her husband’s blindness results in the complete annihilation of her clan.

This is such a metaphorical story on how blind fidelity can lead to destruction rather than constructive growth. Love is not a noun; it is a verb. Brene Brown says that Love in Action includes both accountability and responsibility. In relationships, she says that holding someone accountable takes lot more work than denial, shaming and blaming. Many spouses resort to numbing themselves, spiritual by-passing or overly investing in their careers or their children because it takes too much work to hold your spouse accountable. Such strategy is a penny-wise pound foolish one because it only results in long term disengagement and in some cases dissolution of the marriage. In any relationship, Brene encourages one to choose discomfort over resentment. Holding your spouse accountable requires you to lean into the short-term discomfort of conflict. Conflicts generally tend to be about lack of intimacy, unequal share of the housework, parenting, mental and physical well-being, lack of boundaries with extended family and so on. However, if you decide to avoid these short-term discomforts, over a period of time, resentment builds, which is then cancerous to the relationship.

Marriage is a Sacred Contract. Like any legally binding contract, it needs to be well negotiated, values have to be carefully spelled out and aligned, responsibilities have to be clearly outlined and mutually agreed upon, and each person should hold the other accountable for their part of the contractual obligations. As we all know with any work-related contract, construction contract or any other legally binding contract, without proper accountability, it is bound to result in some form of failure. Hopefully we will make accountability an integral part of the marriage vows and not interpret fidelity as tying a scarf around our eyes resulting in the blind leading the blind.