Missing Marital Adventures

I had a very strange dream last night - I was running a weekend retreat for couples to help re-ignite intimacy (physical, emotional and intellectual) like a desi version of Goop events, if you will.

It was happening in this serene resort in nature. I was the chief orchestrator with some partners facilitating sessions - like movement, meditation and so on. Towards the end of the weekend, couples were feeling closer and more securely bonded. They had no clue how a simple weekend had transformed their relationship so much.

I felt like a magician, who’d done the trick. It was such a great dream.

In the last few days, a few friends had mentioned that I should start a desi version of Goop, and I’d laughed it off. But the more I think about it, maybe there’s a need for it?

Marriages are undergoing a rapid transformation. Back in the day, you got married and stuck with it, without ever questioning it. Then divorce became normal. Now, it’s not so black and white - people are trying to find the fifty shades of grey in between.

People are opening up their marriages, some are quiet-quitting them and the rest are constantly trying to figure out how to make them work.

There’s no single issue that plagues all marriages - people have very different reasons to hit a slump in their relationships over a period of time. But they all build up into a massive blob of unclear mess and manifest in a handful of ways - boredom, exhaustion or missing a sense of adventure in the marriage.

What does this even mean?

Most of the time, people only tread the surface with this mess. They don’t dig deeper. During some of my conversations with clients, we’ve tried to uncover the feelings and the issues underneath.

Reasons I’ve heard in my sessions are - I don’t feel valued by my partner, we are not physically intimate, I don’t connect with my partner emotionally, we don’t have shared interests, being co-parents is exhausting, we barely spend any quality time with each other, I don’t feel excited about spending time with my partner, etc.

People view these feelings as aberrations in a happy marriage. I can see why. People view this is as a sign of marital failure. But the problem is even more basic. It’s got to do with our misplaced expectations from long-term relationships.

Where does it stem from?

We expect to sustain the level of “excitement” we feel about our relationship or our partner from the courting period, which isn’t representative of real life. We don’t realise that then, but its’ okay.

During this period, we bond with each other based on shared interests or values, and it is especially exaggerated. We tend to extrapolate this coherence to everything else, and for the rest of our lives.

Well, that’s how we convince ourselves to be with one mate for eternity. When this idea starts to degenerate in reality, a few years into the marriage, we struggle to grapple with it.

This sense of void doesn’t creep up on you overnight. It gradually builds up over a longish period of time, and before you know it, it feels like there is little else holding your marriage.

Every stage in a relationship is different from any other. Boredom is inevitable. Instead of running away from it, it helps to embrace it.

A lull in a marriage is like a strand of grey hair. It’s a natural part of ageing.

But, we feel completely thrown off by it in contrast to what we’re used to (darker hair) or what we expected at that point in our lives (either based on genetics or looking at friends our own age).

Similarly, when people say that they are missing a sense of adventure in their marriage, they are experiencing a void in contrast to feelings they either once experienced or based on what they perceive others’ lives to be like.

These deficiencies in marriage arise out of a conflict between what is and what should be. You can’t possibly ascertain if you are “missing” something independently, unless you expected it to exist and it doesn’t.

Marriages were never meant to be a perpetual trip of adventure. But it’s sold as if it is - by movies, society and every single one of us feeds this vicious narrative even further. We are simply unwilling to sell our lives as is, including the boring bits.

What if marriage offered a whole buffet of emotions and the lack of it, would we still go for it? In an attempt to establish “order”, a predominantly patriarchal society sold the notion of sex on tap to men and surprises / attention on tap to women. Maybe.

But if any of us were to feel like we’d landed a sub-par deal at any point in marriage, we freak out. We don’t know what to do. We let our worries pile up like laundry when the washing machine is broken. We don’t deal with it when we can still contain the problem. We hope that time will resolve it, but does it?

I don’t think so.

So, how do you deal with it then?

Simple - just join a swingers club, problem solved!

Bye.

Ok no. I really wouldn’t recommend it.

People stray out of boredom. In fact, some couples even agree to open up their marriage to lead “happier" lives. It’s like re-cycling your own old denim pants into a grocery bag just because you have trouble letting it go.

Even worse, some people just quiet-quit their marriage and do nothing constructive about it, not because they don’t want to, they just don’t know how to.

If you ask me, I prefer that people treat the cause rather than just the symptoms, and do so with a sense of urgency.

The most basic way to deal with this is by trying to understand what it is that you are experiencing in absolute terms. Sounds simple, but it’s hard as hell to do that.

Even arriving at a “I don’t feel valued by my partner” is better than stagnating at “we’re missing a sense of adventure in our marriage”. You can then start to explore where you aren’t feeling valued and why it may be the case independently, before you invite your partner for a discussion about how you are feeling.

There are a few obvious traps to avoid - catching your partner off guard for such conversations, acting like you are the only one in the relationship or feeling frustrated for the lack of “results” at the end of one conversation.

Nothing gets resolved in one conversation, but nothing will get resolved without at least one either. Creating the right ambience to nudge a couple towards a more coherent future is tricky.

Here’s where I think the idea of a couples’ retreat could really work, you know?

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What I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:

A line in the sand by James Barr - Going through this world history phase in life, and enjoying reading and writing about different corners of the world.

Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments - This is my friend, Hema Sukumar’s debut novel. When I was leaving London in 2019, I remember her telling me that she wanted to write a book someday. I’m so proud that she’s just published it.

Shapely Gal song: One last time by Vize, R3hab and Enny-Mae.