Separation Anxiety
You’ve probably heard of “separation anxiety” in the context of little children. But today, I want to discuss a different kind of separation anxiety, one that isn’t talked about enough - the experience that parents have when their adult children get married or start building a family separate from them.
“You have changed after marriage”
This is a common snide remark that some parents casually make at their fully-grown adult children, when they get married. This usually leaves children strung by guilt. They wonder if they have changed to accommodate the newly acquired family, and if they have thus betrayed the family of their birth in some way.
I know several men and women who’ve had this experience at least once - being accused of loving their partners more than their birth families, as if it was unexpected.
People change after marriage. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Building a new relationship as an adult is hard; let alone an intimate one, and that too for life. In order to build trust and safety in a relationship, you need to spend a lot of time exclusively with each other, and prioritise each other over everyone else, at least temporarily, especially in a world where marriage is optional.
The older generation in India may not always appreciate this - given they always had extended families around, and thus not enough time or privacy with their partners. Not spending enough “alone time” as a couple was never reason for separation back in the day, unlike it is today.
In an intimate partnership, at least one of two things can happen:
You may take certain liberties with your partner that you never took with your parents, as a function of power distance in your relationships. This may help build intimacy in ways you never shared with your parents.
Being the “child”, your parents may have put up with your idiosyncrasies without you ever having to change. But your spouse may not be as generous in an equal partnership, so you may make behavioural amends unlike with your parents.
Your parents, who play witness to this evolution, may find it hard to merely observe without interfering. And so parents do what parents know well to do - inflict guilt. This isn’t intentional, they just don’t know how to deal with this new found anxiety that stems from separating from their children.
Inadvertently, the “child” becomes conscious and steps back from the relationship with their partner instead of leaning in. They choose to punish themselves and the relationship with their spouse to soothe / please their parents (like they have always done in life), but what they may not realise is that there is no benefit in doing so.
But it’s not easy for the parents either.
Watching your kids “grow up”, separating from them and letting them parent themselves is hard. Parents experience an intense separation anxiety when their wards get married. It makes you wonder if they are the same parents whose sole mission in life through your adult years was to get you married.
It’s not like parents don’t get that a new couple needs time to bond, they were once newly married too. Yet, they fail to appreciate this when their own wards get married. When you get married, you’ll notice that mothers get overly territorial. Fathers probably do too, but aren’t as expressive as mothers, except of course, in movies.
This is a predominantly Indian phenomenon (the homeland of kyunki sans bhi kabhi bahu thi). Over 80% of marriages in India even today are arranged, implying that parents are still deeply involved in the marriage of their children. So, the concept of separation between a parent and a child evades us.
The West, on the other hand, did away with arranged marriages before us (thanks to the Catholic Church banning cousin marriages I suppose?). As a result, western parents are more comfortable with “letting” their adult children make independent decisions (and separating from them) at an earlier age.
On a related note, I’d love to interview parents of married folk on their experience with having their kids get married (for my book). If you’d like to share your experience as a parent or nominate your parents or anyone else’s parents, please drop me a note.
What I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:
The Friendship Dip: As a child, I always wondered why parents had fewer friends than we did when we were in school. Now, I am the age they were when we used to wonder, and I can now appreciate how hard it is to make and sustain friendships as an adult with responsibilities beyond oneself.
Home Design: I don’t know about you guys, but my go to TV content for casual viewing off late has been YouTube. I am currently overdosing on home organisation content by Reynold Lowell. It is quite mellow and soothing.
Shapely Gal song: Quiźas by Andrea Bocelli and Jennifer Lopez
Very well written again !
I suppose the core issue is the concept of "arranged marriage" where the daughter-in-law is supposed to be 'given away' to the boy's family and for all purposes belongs to the boy's family ("kotta hennu kulakke horage"). So the boy's parents expect that the daughter-in-law adjusts to the boy's family (traditions, eating style, relatives etc.) with little or no adjustment expected of them in return.
From a boy's parents' perspective they feel they have sacrificed their entire lives to provide life long security to their kids - property, education, money and all the unfair advantages Indian parents give their kids - so they expect obedience in return. It's unfair but that is the social contract engendered by arranged marriages.
If we want a western mentality of understanding relationships then I guess we need to overhaul the social structure in India wherein the parents invest less in their kids and divert that money into their own priorities so that the kids sort of get to their goals on their own. These goal include marriage so that kids themselves find their match and pay for the wedding. This way there will be no expectations from parents and more freedom to kids albeit with more responsibilities.
Definitely, our patrilocal society influences how these relationships have evolved over time.