The Living Death (1 of 2)

 One of the scariest things about the concept of marriage as a lifetime commitment is what I call 'The Living Death'. 

This is basically losing a part of yourself due to certain circumstances. The living death isn't just exclusive to marriage. Over the course of our lives, there are certain parts of ourselves that die. Like a snake that sheds its skin, over time we lose habits and aspects of our personality, some more prominent than others. These changes define us and form our sense of self and personality over time. And like any death, the grief we feel over these losses differs based on how prominent these aspects of our personality were; sometimes we don't recognise these deaths until months and years later, and sometimes we never do.

The thing with most of these deaths is that for most of them, it's unintentional; they happen because of indirect external influence or change in preferences. Take sagging, for example. For most kids, they sag during their teens through the early twenties and stop in their mid/late twenties. Everyone says you outgrow it, but it's not an automatic process; it's more gradual and subtle than people think. You start working and realise you have to dress more formally; your circle of friends changes, and the next thing you know, you're dressing different and talking different.

But with marriage, it's actually more intentional. It's impossible to live with someone and talk more of being in a relationship with someone without having to compromise to some degree. These are necessary sacrifices for love, and it's quite normal and expected. When this becomes a problem is when the sacrifice is a good part of the self, a part that doesn't make you a bad person or hurt anyone but fulfils a great need in your life, an intrinsic and irreplaceable aspect of your being.

These are not just the normal run-of-the-mill sacrifices like giving up a small habit; I'm talking about major life changes like religion or a career change, things that define your identity. These kinds of changes affect the person on a conscious and subconscious psychological level. There's a vacuum that whatever was taken away or changed used to fill and can't be filled by whatever is new. This vacuum creates a kind of cancer of the soul that kills the person slowly till they become something different, usually darker and sadder. 

In Africa this mostly happens to women; they're forced to change parts of themselves to fit the man who they married, irrespective of their desires; sometimes these women are deceived into these changes. The man tells them nothing will change, but a few months into the marriage, he's demanding something else. 

Imagine a lively outdoorsy woman who likes to have fun and go out, the life of the party to some degree. She probably has some excuses; maybe she drinks too much or is too flirtatious. Now she meets a guy who acts cool with it; maybe he even thinks he's cool with it. They get married, and in the beginning they have fun and go out together, but because it's not really who he is, he can't keep up. Now he has to decide whether to stop her from going or let her go on her own; he tries to be an understanding guy, and he lets her go out. One day a picture of a guy grinding her on the dancefloor finds its way to him. He stops her from going out, and she agrees. This will most likely lead to either disobedience and ruin the marriage, or she'll obey him and suffer 'The Living Death', a part of her dies and she becomes a bland version of who she was. Her man doesn't like this new her; he complains that she's boring and always moody, her libido is down too, and she's always sad. What he doesn't realise is that she's dying; she has lost that part of herself that makes her who she is. Instead of curtailing her excesses, he cut her off from what lights up her world.

The same goes for men too. Some men never really prepare themselves for the lifestyle changes that come with marriage. They still want to hang out with the boys and keep late nights and all the other things they used to do; some of them still do it deep into the early years of their marriage (to the detriment of their wives), but when they finally have grown children who actually see and understand what they do, they're forced to change. This change forces them to become something they don't want to be and leads to bitterness and resentment. 

All this pain could be avoided if we do proper introspection and tell ourselves hard truths, not just about our partners, but ourselves. Be sure about what you can and can't manage, this is the rest of your life, the stars will fall from your eyes someday, and when it does will you still be cool with that thing that 'slightly' upsets you. 

Know yourself too, question your motives and reaction to situations, especially novel situations. Listen to the criticism of your loved ones, sometimes they know you better than you know yourself.