Reacher versus Settler

A friend once told me that she has decided to marry a guy even though she doesn’t “feel like it” because she feels like she cannot do any better given her age, energy levels, available men and those who will like her back.

This was the classic cry of a “settler”. This has nothing to do with the guy she wanted to marry being good or bad, it’s how she felt that matters. She was settling to be in a marriage she was already not excited about - this is dangerous.

Marrying someone “feeling” like you are “settling” is the worst way to make this decision, and as her friend, I couldn’t hold back from telling her that.

I’ve had a few clients who’ve ended up getting married like this, despite their better judgement. It’s NEVER ended well. Again, this is not because their partner was bad, it’s because NO ONE can sustain a decision they’ve made only half heartedly, that too, not for a lifetime.

Once you get married, the problems that you shoved under the carpet just to be “done with marriage”, will start re-surfacing, and it’ll be pretty hard to ignore them now that you have to live with them 24X7.

Also, when you are married, you tend to take marriage itself for granted, so you feel much more confident questioning your past choices. Once you start doing that, you are likely to feel like you deserve better now (with the benefit of hindsight, of course).

There are only two ways in which this can end - you will either end up getting divorced, or you’ll end up feeling like a victim of your own choice.

Now, it should be fairly obvious, but turns out that the opposite of it is what helps sustain a good marriage.

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We’ve been raised by a generation of settlers. Most of our parents had arranged marriages, and had very little choice in terms of a partner. Even those who did, had far lower choice than people today, given limited mobility and access back then.

This generation just bottled up their frustrations, and grew bitter in their marriages. Over time, their frustration just manifested into virtuous suffering they gloriously endured out of sheer respect for marriage as an institution or society or children.

How many times have we not heard our parents’ complain about having to put up with their partners’ idiosyncrasies and their “fate”, as if, they were doing someone a favour?

So, you see, we are conditioned by this victim mentality of the previous generation in our marriages, and don’t believe even for a second that we can influence the quality of our relationships.

Yet, we see our current and future generations being afforded greater choice, and we feel inspired to be “reachers” too. When we are choosing a partner, all of us want to be reachers. There’s no doubt about that.

But once we are married, it’s much harder to choose to be a reacher, every single day. If you had to choose between being a reacher, and a settler in your marriage (once married), what would you choose?

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As you know, I am writing a book on Modern Indian Marriages. I’ve been interviewing lots of people (very diverse individuals) on their experience being married, there have been so many insights.

I want to share one insight that I thought was pertinent, but articulated very well by one couple. They told me that they attribute their marital success to mutually and independently feeling like they are the reacher (as opposed to being the settler) - they both feel lucky to have found each other, and couldn’t have done better.

Choosing a partner who would’ve otherwise seemed out of your league is a fantastic feeling, and if that feeling somehow sustains through your marriage for years, it builds great positive momentum into the relationship.

But is there a formula to create and sustain that feeling as a recipe for marital bliss?

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Sometimes this happens naturally, sometimes it is a mindset.

If two individuals are constantly growing independently, they can inspire each other in a marriage and make them feel like they’ve married well. Or, sometimes, some couples focus only on the positive aspects of their partner, and feel grateful constantly, which again leaves them feeling like they’ve done well for themselves.

The strange thing is - I even saw this in couples who’ve otherwise had unconventional marriages by societal standards. Couples in open relationships, couples with incidents of infidelity, couples where the men didn’t earn or the women didn’t cook.

So, I wondered, if the ability to ignore each others’ mistakes and continue to mutually accept or respect each other trumps everything in a marriage?

What if you’re not yet in a marriage where both of you independently feel like reachers? Can you turn yourself in with the switch of a button?

May be, but it depends on what your goal is.

I recently read this book called The Courage to be disliked by Ishiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, which is an interpretation of individual psychology by Alfred Adler. The basic idea is that life is a series of moments in the present, as opposed to being a line from the past to the future. This means what you choose to do here and now matters more than how things were up until now or they might be in the future.

Essentially, your actions today matter.

You can choose to do your best today, and inspire your partner, while focussing on their strengths, to take inspiration from and start building that positive momentum you desire in your relationship.

Whether that momentum gets built and compounds over time doesn’t matter. What matters is that you try today, and now.

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What I’m reading/ writing/ watching/ listening to:

The Paradox of Liberation: This is an interesting debate about whether sexual revolution has failed or not. Rob Henderson articulates it well - more freedom doesn’t mean more happiness. I can’t help but agree - this was a hypothesis I’d tested and validated with Dinner Club. There is an optimal level of freedom or control that is necessary to make dating a pleasant experience.

Safe Area Goražde by Joe Sacco: Found Joe Sacco through Arun Simha’s Substack. As soon as I saw this book, I knew I wanted to read it because I know nothing about the War in Bosnia. I’d heard a story of an ex-colleague who had escaped the war in Bosnia and walked all the way to France as a little boy, and made it out on his own without a family. He’s one of the smartest people I knew from Amazon.

In the Wild, in Tanzania: I continue my travel writing spree on LifeofPri. My recent account of my trip to the wild in Tanzania last year, being amongst the coolest creatures in the world.

Shapely Gal: Demon in Me by Midhun Mukundan, Anjali Sankaran and Rakshitha Rao. I recommend you watch the music video, else it’s hard to appreciate the music if you’ve never watched the movie, it’s from - Garuda Gamana Vrushabha Vamana.