" I was sitting comfortably in a food joint and munching a sandwich with a friend when she walked in very quietly with a man whom I had never seen before .. By the looks of them , it was very evident that there was an edge of inevitability about them . Inevitability of something not right ( none by the moral term ) , something that they wanted to conceal beneath the carpet . Looking at them , I realised what it was . My friend's wife was here with her beau and not her husband whom I knew for the past decade . And infidelity struck the very next moment as the man made a slight move and kissed my friend's wife on the cheek . Now kissing publicly is no more an outcry in Kolkata but the hide & seek and quietness of their manner raised an eyebrow or two. The food joint was not much populated hence their moves were being scrutinized well . I told my friend about my finding and he told me to leave them at that, but I was quite taken aback not that I never knew adultery existed but that some one close to me indulged in that and here she was quite unshaken by the fact that her husband's good friend was watching her closely .. Luckily somehow I was not been seen by both the paramours and I was feeling bad that behind my friend's back this was going on may be for how many days or months .."
I am forced to cut this real life story which I witnessed in 2016 Nov sitting in a famous Kolkata food joint with a friend .. What happened to my friend and his wife , whether his wife eloped with his paramour , or he went back to my friend ( they were married for more than 10 years ), is not the main discussion here . we are here to understand what is EXTRA MARITAL & that it exists and very much so it did, does and will do..
Now this was well before the decriminalization of 497 - a full 2 years before this was taken off ( although the murmurs and rumbles were there that it was inevitable and a matter of time before it would be taken off ) and Men were still being prosecuted if found guilty by court practising what we now call " adultery ".
My blog today is not on the legal aspect of adultery but a look back at the age old practice which has gained light in view of the doing away of sec 497 ... what is adultery or extramarital ?
By and Large the defn which we accept now is " a relationship may or may not be sexual between a married person and some one who is not his/her spouse ." Over the years infidelity has by and large been loosely attached with sex but there are many platonic extra marital relationships as well to date .
Leave aside the morality and the tension and the damage it brings to a family when they encounter the truth of one of the spouse cheating : we are no moral policemen here , we are looking at the truth and trying to find why it exist .. Now to begin with, I will keep this discussion strictly in Indian society as INFIDELITY is a very common phenomenon in west and no one really cares much .. But we still care and very much so even though 497 has just been struck off , the aftermath will take quite a while to abolish..
Lets get down to the basic points of extra marital relationships :
- Our society still is governed by around 40% arranged marriages .
- Marriages amongst those have many 10 year window of age separation..
- Economic Disparity
- Boredom and mental differences
- Greed and desire
- Lastly the biggest reason of them all , Extra marital happens just for the heck of it .. It was destined for some people bound to happen..
We all have seen one of the most famous movies made in recent times (2002) unfaithful by Adrian Lyne which is considered a classic on infidelity - a cult one . An upper middle class bored house wife ( Diane Lane ) inspite of having everything - a understanding husband in Richard Gere , a loving kid still gets bored in her life and enters a kinky and spicy affair with a handsome hunk Oliver Martinez and how their affair almost ends their marital life forms the film's story ... Its an eye opener on today's social upper middle class life where a middle aged woman inspite of having everything - money , good family , comforts , enters into a sexual relation with a man much younger just becasue she gets what was missing in her life with her husband - SEXUAL ATTENTION..
Is Sex then the only factor for extra marital ?? - certainly SEX is one of the guiding factors but not the only one ..
Why do we feel the longing for another woman/man who we are not married to ? - there could be varied factors ranging from pure lust to as varied as intellectual compatibility . For not a moment am I denying the fact that love marriages dont invite a third person as inevitably after some time the love dies down or so as we are told , still marriages which are so called fixed by our elders have such an amount of inevitable resigning to the fact of finding some one for us that arranged marriages have an aura of one of the partners' inevitably falling for some one outside the marriage . Researches do corroborate the fact as well .. Once again its not that love marriages dont invite extra marital affairs ..
While the popular belief is that arranged marriages tend to last more than love marriages it is primarily because of compulsion and not similar belief or systems .. Arranged marriages are such compulsions that inevitable are the monotonous ways of family life that one of the spouse do look for attaining that X factor which is missing . Give it a thought .. Love marriages break more than arranged ones because of expectations already met or having reached ceiling high that one of the partner feels he/she has seen it all and gets suffocated .
AGE - whether in love or arranged marriage is a huge factor to seek pleasure - physical/platonic outside the marriage. I know a very well settled couple in SOUTH KOLKATA where the husband was 41, the wife 30 they had a kid and married for 10 years happily or so it seemed till the inevitable happened .. The wife met a stranger around 35 years of age and was swept by the masculine guy instantly . They hit the bed within a month and had sex almost every where in town till they were caught one day by the husband and what followed next well I wont share here ... But when the husband confronted the wife in front of her parents', a weeping 30 yr old distraught said she wanted a good fuck which she was missing because her 41 yr hubby was not able to satisfy her mentally and physically. The age difference was the main issue here . It has been noted in couples with age difference in this era that sexual promiscuity is a driving force . Readers now please dont draw comparisons with our parents ' genre when the age difference was always 5-10 and beyond . Moral values were different then . I hate to use the word moral but that's the way it is .. Age has a major role to play in carnal desires and yes CARNAL ways are important to hold couples who get married at 25 and beyond.. Readers might have a different opinion here ..
Economic issues - This is an important social scale . In infidelity and cheating we dont pay much heed to this factor but in a third world country like India , adultery due to money matters are also not that less. Chauvinist I may sound but this is horribly true that the fairer sex is more guilty in this category of adultery . Falling for a more wealthier man is more common in women rather than in men - I havent heard of a man falling for a richer woman and leaving his partner while the reverse has happened a no. of times . No MCP please !!! Just statistics..
Boredom & mental difference/ Desire - I would probably treat these two equally as these constitute more than 60% of the reasons for adultery . Be it arranged/love , be it 10 years apart or same aged partners, be it great economic parity or not , mental incompatibility is the biggest threat to keeping married relations together these days ... women and men both get tired after a while in marriages ; differences creep in and there starts the biggest problem .. If one of the spouse had a love affair before marriage which was unfulfilled, it adds fuel to the troubled waters .. Given the complexities through which our modern society is going , mental fatigue in a relationship is bound to creep in and the moment it does chances of extra marital becomes high .. Some may not be bold enough to accept it socially but most of them in their inner soul crave for that intimate call/touch , have that sense of longing .
Remember Aparna Sen's 1984 movie Paroma where the docile house wife Paroma gets so bored with her chained life that a husband's friend in the form of a 10 year younger photographer Rahul gets in her life and they have a kinky affair ? Its because of this boredom - Rakhee played the role to wonderful perfection . In most of the marriages after a period of time and when life becomes a total boredom doing the same chore of things over and over again - adultery is bound to happen given the complex nature of society we are going through .. Husbands dont have time for wives - running for their careers and making money - and wives dont have their husbands by them when they need them emotionally ... We tend to tag SEX loosely with any and every form of EXTRA MARITAL relation but a relationship actually starts from a deep VOID ..... a deep sense of vacuum from either of the partner , not getting what he/she wants from the other that leads to a relationship of this nature ... Seldom it is seen that an adultery happens just because of pure lust .. It does happen but those are rare . Mental compatibility still ranks no.1 for all adulterous relationships . We constantly tend to seek what we dont get in our partners, the biggest feature of our identities.
I would like to conclude this very contemporary & everlasting topic by saying that given what may , we may list 1000 factors for and against it, its the human nature which controls everything .. And such is the dynamicity of human nature that we cant lay down given formulae for people so as to fall or not fall for relations outside their marriage . Extramarital was there ( only it was punishable under a very draconian law ), is there and will exist . Lets not criminalize it for the sake of it but understand why extra - marital exist . There are reasons and there will be reasons . Like sex lets not make it a taboo but treat it as something which is natural for some of the world's greatest extra marital affairs have given birth to classic love stories - Roberto Rossellini & Sonali Dasgupta , Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd etc ... I have tried to find the reasons for the same without advocating neither FOR nor AGAINST adultery . Like life and death, this too shall exist and pass. Amen !!
Remember Aparna Sen's 1984 movie Paroma where the docile house wife Paroma gets so bored with her chained life that a husband's friend in the form of a 10 year younger photographer Rahul gets in her life and they have a kinky affair ? Its because of this boredom - Rakhee played the role to wonderful perfection . In most of the marriages after a period of time and when life becomes a total boredom doing the same chore of things over and over again - adultery is bound to happen given the complex nature of society we are going through .. Husbands dont have time for wives - running for their careers and making money - and wives dont have their husbands by them when they need them emotionally ... We tend to tag SEX loosely with any and every form of EXTRA MARITAL relation but a relationship actually starts from a deep VOID ..... a deep sense of vacuum from either of the partner , not getting what he/she wants from the other that leads to a relationship of this nature ... Seldom it is seen that an adultery happens just because of pure lust .. It does happen but those are rare . Mental compatibility still ranks no.1 for all adulterous relationships . We constantly tend to seek what we dont get in our partners, the biggest feature of our identities.
I would like to conclude this very contemporary & everlasting topic by saying that given what may , we may list 1000 factors for and against it, its the human nature which controls everything .. And such is the dynamicity of human nature that we cant lay down given formulae for people so as to fall or not fall for relations outside their marriage . Extramarital was there ( only it was punishable under a very draconian law ), is there and will exist . Lets not criminalize it for the sake of it but understand why extra - marital exist . There are reasons and there will be reasons . Like sex lets not make it a taboo but treat it as something which is natural for some of the world's greatest extra marital affairs have given birth to classic love stories - Roberto Rossellini & Sonali Dasgupta , Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd etc ... I have tried to find the reasons for the same without advocating neither FOR nor AGAINST adultery . Like life and death, this too shall exist and pass. Amen !!
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