The Knotty Butterflies

These butterflies are inevitable. They can be suppressed at times but can’t be avoided. We try to fool ourselves by focusing on all the bright and good things waiting for us, but time and again they pop up making us uncomfortable. They have nothing to do with our soul mates or partners. We may be marrying someone chosen by our parents or may be marrying our love, these butterflies are certain. They come up with hundred unknown, undefined fears and leave us sleepless. We try to share it with our friends and cousins but hear the same line which does not comforts us at all, “Oh! This happens. It happened with me too.” We feel clueless and then console ourselves thinking these butterflies will go with time. And yes, they go.

After talking to all my friends who felt these butterflies and analyzing my own fears, I tried to wrap them in words. Here are as I think our two biggest fears about tying a knot.

2) We dread being ALONE

Yes, you may disagree at the first look but it’s true. Among those unscripted fears, one is fear of being alone for the rest of our life. We may say that this has not crept our mind even once. How can we be alone? Marriage gives us a life partner. But, being alone may not necessarily mean absence of someone in-person, it refers to absence of someone compatible to talk your heart out. There are many aspects of us which we abstain from showing to anyone. Some things are so personal that no one can play a confidante - neither family nor friends. We feel a hundred things but are scared of being judged. The judgment is worse when it comes from the spouse. Lifelong we have been waiting for this one person who will understand us completely but our heart skips a beat by even thinking of a scenario when that one person is not able to understand us. What if there are misunderstandings? What if our silence is overlooked? What if our words are misread? These questions sound familiar, right?

1) We wish to be LOVED FOREVER

This is a funny desire which fills our mind with a lot of confusion, often makes us irrational and forces us to do things which we won't consider otherwise. A marriage is something which we wish to cherish till our last breath. There is no turning back, especially in a country like India, where a broken marriage fetches no respect. We wish the love to last forever. Even the thought of not being loved and cared for disturbs us deep down. The feedback from people who have been in a marriage for years are often disappointing. They tell us that this love will fade with responsibilities and we are petrified to even picture it for us.

Bottom line remains the same, VULNERABILITY MAKES US ANXIOUS.

But I think there is a scarier situation which Gregory David Roberts has described in his novel , Shantaram, 'At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread instead is that we won't stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone.' Sometimes we change ourselves so that we are loved more. It starts with very small compromises which are easy but can take an ugly turn later. We sometimes just want to be perfect. We don’t give the other person a chance to love us for what we are, we just try to blend. Unfortunately there is nothing known as blending when it comes to human emotions. We don’t blend, we change, often deliberately.

Then a day comes when we miss ourselves. Although we are equally to be blamed for the situations, but we give ourselves the shelter of being madly in love and fire all the arrows to the other side. We start hating them for something they are not completely responsible for.

Things happen to us when we let them happen. Let us not forget that the person with whom we are spending our life loved us for our qualities. I think it’s unfair when we try to be perfect and refrain the other person to love us as we are.