"HAPPILY EVER AFTER IS NOT A FAIRY-TALE... IT IS A CHOICE"














“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone…
It has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

– Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven


Twelve years ago, when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got married, the world began to hail the couple as ‘Brangelina’. It became a fashion for couples around us to call themselves so… Norbert and Teresa renamed them as ‘Noresa’…  Amol and Vishaka baptized their relationship as ‘Amoshka’… and, Salman and Nargis became ‘Salgis’!

I and my wife, too, got tempted to re-christian our matrimonial relationship as ‘Germa’... That is, Gerald and Anima, to be precise!

Before I proceed any further, let me make it very clear, here… that, I have no business to judge on the break-up of Brad Pitt and Angelina’ Jolie’s marriage. I have no inclination to go into why, how, what when etc behind it…

The couple ‘chose’ to split. And, it’s their choice… Only they know how good or bad… how joyful or painful that decision is for them…  I do not wish to gossip about it, nor sit on any judgment seat…

The fact, that I and my wife could stay together in a marriage for more than twenty-five years – yes, that fact stares at me and makes me only humble, grateful and graceful in life…

“Happily ever after is not a fairy-tale. It’s a choice,” says Fawn Weaver. The advice continues,
“A happy marriage doesn’t mean you have a perfect spouse or a perfect marriage. It simply means you’ve chosen to look beyond the imperfections in both.”

The more I think about any long-lasting, rock-steady and lifetime marriage… the more I think about how my wife and I could last in marriage this long… the more I get convinced, that we ‘chose to’… Yes, we chose to look beyond our imperfections… we chose to overlook our flaws… overhear our outbursts… we chose to come back and say ‘I am sorry’… we chose to renew our promise made on the wedding day… ‘In good times and bad times… in our health and sickness… I shall be by your side”…

Yes, a happy marriage is not a fairy-tale… It is a ‘choice’ the couple makes…

Well, happy in marriage all the time?

Come on… Don’t tell me that!

I like what Diane Sollee says about marriage:  “They say it takes a village to raise a child. That may be the case, but the truth is that it takes a lot of solid, stable marriages to create a village.”

Did you hear that?... Solid, stable marriages!

I repeat in the end: I have no business to comment on anyone else’s marriage. I only want to assert here – rather, my wife and I pray – that we want to remain solid and stable in our marriage… no matter what comes along our way…

We sincerely pray!


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Internet

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