Marriage, we were once taught, was about sharing. Your life, a surname, your deepest, darkest secrets, your home, and apparently even a blanket. But it does not have to be like that anymore.
Welcome to the age of micro-divorces, where couples are discovering that you can love someone deeply and still not want to sit next to them on a flight, sleep in the same bed, and not even share the same Netflix account.
Micro-divorces are not dramatic, and they come without lawyers and hefty courtroom drama where you decide who gets to keep the dog and the crockery. These are tiny, highly specific separations that apparently allow couples to remain married while preserving their sanity.
Marriages of separation
Late last year, we all learned about the Airport divorce. It’s people getting divorced at the airport. It’s when, after the security check is done, the couple separates to do their own thing. One might go on a shopping spree, one might relax in the lounge and they can meet later and tell each other about the adventures.
Then comes the holiday divorce where, if an early worm and a night owl can’t decide what and where to go, they just go on separate holidays. I go to Rome, you go to Goa, and then we’ll meet at home and pretend we missed each other terribly.
Oh, I am not done. There is also food divorce where you don’t share food. Your plate is your plate and my plate is my plate. I don’t get a bite of your burger and you most definitely cannot have a “bit” of my fries.
There is a world of micro-divorces out there. A/C divorce, TV divorce, even Roommate divorce. Yes, it’s when the husband and wife say that “I love you deeply. Now go to your own room.” Now, my point is: what is left? If you don’t want to eat together, travel together, share a room, how can you share your life?
Might as well get separate houses and call each other in a while to check up on each other. To be fair, I do find some sense in doing it. Marriage was never meant to erode your individuality. You don’t have to go from two interesting people to one boring couple just because you have exchanged vows and expensive rings.
You still need hobbies, interests, friends, and separate blankets (this one seems important). A healthy relationship leaves room for two whole people, not halves. But somewhere along the way, the language around relationships has started to become really confusing.
If the answer to every incompatibility is “let’s just do it separately”, what exactly are we preserving? Because if you keep divorcing your life from the person you are married to, what are you actually married for?
Don’t get me wrong. This is not an argument for co-dependence. But there is a difference between having your own life and having a life where your partner has no real place.
Because isn’t that the point? Not someone who would accompany you to every destination but someone you would want to experience the world with. What is marriage if not stealing fries from your partner’s plate or having an extra blanket if they like the A/C too cold, or roaming the airport lounge with them aimlessly? What is marriage if not having someone to experience the boring parts with you and someone who is a witness to your beauty and mess?
What about companionship?
Not everything has to be an independence negotiation. There is a strange pressure to make every relationship look frictionless. Fighting about sleep? Sleep separately. Do you bicker a lot during long journeys? Travel separately. Like different things? Pursue them differently.
Every difference ends up in a different separation, all to avoid a difficult conversation.
But marriages, and relationships as a whole, are not meant to be without friction. It is about companionship. The beautiful, often irritating, deeply ordinary experience of building a life with another person.
The point I am trying to make is you don’t need to lose yourself in a marriage. By all means, have your sleep divorce, keep your hobbies. Take that occasional solo holiday. Watch different shows. Protect your fries with your life, yes, even from your partner who you share a child with.
But don’t let the pursuit of perfect independence convince you that the ideal marriage is two completely independent people living parallel lives, sharing a last name and house.
Perhaps the goal is not to find someone you can’t live without but rather someone you can live with, without having to give yourself up.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)