I and my Husband aren’t MADE FOR EACH OTHER
By: Bhawana Shrestha
Tags: Friendship, Romance, Relationships, Marriage, Couples

It has been two and a half years that we are married. If you ask me if my husband is my first love, I can say without hesitation, he is not. The same goes for him as well. I am not the first woman with whom he has gotten in a relationship. The most interesting part of our relationship is that our relationship is built on friendship more than romance. So if you are thinking how likely are we to fall in love with some other person, please don’t put any pressure on your brain to answer the question because I can give you the answer that it is 100%.

I ask him this question almost all the time, why did you ask me to get married to you. Unashamed he answers, “Because you are a friend around whom I feel like I am growing as a human and thus wanted to have this bond forever.” Then you know it is my turn to answer. For me, it was all about the space that he provides me as a friend, and as a partner. The most interesting part is that he doesn’t feel threatened in his career because of my works and my identity. Apart from that, you will be amazed to know that he doesn’t feel jealous, even a pinch of it with my other relationships. I find that so unique. For considerable years, I had the belief that jealousy is the only emotion that shows how much you love someone. There were days when I used to question this because I did have some sorts of issues when he had more time for his other friends apart from me. It is not the case now given there are a lot of conversations where we talk about how our life would be if we break up. Yes, ‘break up’ and not ‘divorce’ because apart from calling each other’s family members ours, we don’t feel like husband and wife. Because not much has changed in our life after marriage, especially in my life and I see myself as one of the few Nepali women who has this privilege. Again, you might be thinking how much is the chance that we are breaking up? The answer yet again is 100%. There’s nothing called codependency in our relationship. We are two independent beings with no exclusivity in our relationship apart from the fact that we are living together.

As we sleep together every night, actually as I join him later in bed in his deep sleep (most of the time), I am aware that this person has a 100% chance of not being with me tomorrow and falling in love with another person. Along with that realization, another awareness surge in that is how less draining it is to be with him; no pretense, no justification, and no resistance. Of course, I do have the fear of losing him and I guess he has that too, our honest conversations which we have made ourselves comfortable to listen to after a lot of hard work comes into play.

Even within the few years of living together, I have come to experience the varying degree of difficulty in our relationship as we had to transition from one context to another, from one problem to another, from one self-image to another. However, what has been helping us so far is perseverance, particularly during the time of distress, fear, and discouragement. As of now, I have already come to realize that we are completely different people who weren’t made for each other given how different we are when it comes to the places we like to visit, the food we like to eat, the clothes we feel comfortable in, the books that we love reading. I am a movie person while he is a documentary one. I love exploring new places. He is fine watching travel vlogs. I opt not to meditate. He cannot begin his day without meditating. I love plants and taking good care of them. The only time he has them is in his zoom background, that too set up by me. The list of differences goes on.

So, what is similar?

The answer is our values. The value of growth and contribution, not just in each other’s lives but beyond; the value of psychological safety. We try to make each other feel safe because we understand that we both had some difficult past and don’t want to trigger each other’s trauma. We listen to each other not only to respond but to really understand what we are going through as an individual. We know we are to err in any relationship and don’t hesitate to say sorry and are careful not to repeat the mistake. Apart from all this, it is our value of friendship. Given the society we are in, I know this sounds a little weird when I say we are not made for each other. Thus, there’s a maximum chance that we might not be together in the future. But that’s what keeps us going even when we know that whatever we have is based solely on today and not on the belief that we have a secure future together. Since we are not made for each other, we work every day on ourselves to make ourselves better so that we can choose to be with each other every day. But don’t get surprised if we aren’t together tomorrow.