Actress Sangeeta Bijlani is one of those women who always
speaks it like it is. She doesn't reluctant to mince her words when it comes to
the matters of the heart. She has come up with a blog called Bijli Strikes in
which she writes about love, heartbreak and much more.
In her latest blog titled MARRIED….BUT NOT IN THE MARRIAGE
….!!!! Sangeeta speaks about marriage and extra-marital affairs.
Sangeeta was earlier in a relationship with Salman Khan.
After that, she wedded cricketer Mohammad Azharuddin in 1996 but ultimately
divorced him as there were reports of his alleged extra-marital affair with
Badminton player Jwala Gutta.
Her blog gives her detailed opinion on the institution of
marriage and she still believes that marriage is a beautiful experience.
Here is the full extract from the blog:
Life and marriage don’t workout like they do in the movies.
Modern life conspires to make marriage harder than ever. This leads us to
today’s model, self-expressive marriage, wherein the average modern married
person is looking not only for love from their spouse but for a sense of
personal fulfilment. People seem to be increasingly looking to their marriage
to help them meet idiosyncratic, self expressive needs. People are not just
looking for intense, physical and emotional connections with their partners but
also economic stability, family values, societal acceptance and all traditional
marriage related factors. Having such diverse expectations from one person is a
tad bit unfair and not entirely feasible to fulfil. This is one of the reasons
why “modern” marriages have become so difficult.
Even if one does have all almost all of the above in a
partner, one still finds people seeking for something outside of their
marriage. And then you hear those three words
……………E-X-T-R-A…M-A-R-I-T-A-L…A-F-F-A-I-R…….and the saga of Pati, Patni aur WOH
! continues….
Today regardless of their socio-economic background, it
seems that people all around are having extra marital affairs. With some it
really seemed like things were going great in their marriage, so when you hear,
it does come to you as a shock. You can’t help but wonder…….WHY ??? Something
obviously went wrong somewhere. Has it always been so ? Did people hush it all
up in the olden days ? It’s just that we hear and see much more nowadays as
more and more people are expressing it openly.
A very successful man, married to a beautiful woman, an
enviable couple and were cynosure of all eyes. When people started giving her
too much attention wherever they went he began to feel uncomfortable and
insecure. He then started ill-treating her and isolated her completely. To make
things worse came the news that he was cheating on her and soon he was moving
from one woman to another which left her with no option but to keep her dignity
and move out. Why did the man stray ? Was it due to his value system, his
family background or his psychodynamic structure.
The woman could be everything wonderful and the man may
still stray. The old saying “keep-your-husband-happy-so-he-won’t-stray” puts
too much burden on a woman. I do feel that people can create a pattern in
marriage that is not enhancing, and the man instead of dealing with the
dissatisfaction and complex within himself and trying to work on the
relationship, escapes it and goes some place else to feel better about himself.
Do people even try to understand or identify with what is making them seek
outside of their marriage when in actuality it is something lacking within
them.
An instance of a lovely couple with two kids, they seemed
like a perfect family to all until one fine day the wife decided to elope with
the man’s friend. This man was in complete shock and could not comprehend why
would his wife want to leave him for a loser. What do you think lured her to
take this step – was it physical dissatisfaction, an emotional disconnect or
did she feel the husband stopped loving her ?
Another couple who had an early marriage, where the wife
found out that her husband was cheating on her. She was so devastated that she
decided she will get back at him and had an affair to seek revenge. Having gone
through all they are still in the marriage due to kids, societal and family
pressures. So was this revenge sex on her part ? Contrary to what people assume
extra marital affairs are neither rare nor exclusively male behaviour, nor is
it certain to end a marriage. Statistics show that women infidelity are swiftly
catching up to those of men and chances of a marriage surviving are less where
the woman is having an affair.
Oh and there is much more where the partners are in an open
marriage and both know about their respective affairs yet continuing to live
together. For what sake is this one fails to understand. So is this a kind of a
convenient arrangement ? This is not a marriage for sure though it may have
been in the early stages but now seems like they are putting up a facade for
the society. Our society gives lip service to monogamy but actually supports
affairs through role models, advertisements, TV, news, media, literature and of
course the movies.
Although monogamy is still a cultural norm in many parts of
the world, a huge percentage of men and women end up having an affair at
sometime in their lives. The reality one has to accept is monogamy is not in
our nature. We have just been conditioned into believing that we are
monogamous. The nature of attraction has to do with a fact that people want it
all.
The biggest threat to modern marriages are the internet and
the online affairs. The internet and its booming pornographic and sexual
businesses have probably contributed to not only to an epidemic of online
affairs but to real life affairs as well. The internet population seems to be
exploring sexuality in ways that are unprecedented. So what is the sine qua non
of an affair ? The common belief is that affairs are about sex but in fact
affairs are most often about secrecy, emotional intimacy and sexual chemistry.
No marriage is immune from affairs. Most couples survive the affair
rather than end up in a divorce. In spite of extra marital issues it is
possible for marriages to survive and grow stronger when the coupe deals with
it constructively by facing it, apologising and ultimately forgiving. Truth is
that without conscious effort, marriages can stagnate. All in all I feel
marriage is still a wonderful experience…….
Just Be
Bijli
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