Romanticism was a literary movement that appeared in the early 1800s. It involves deepened appreciation and glorification of something. In a time when people were focused on building fortunes and not making enough money was bringing them discomfort, romanticism taught them that it was ok not to be rich.
It familiarized the concept that besides material possessions and success, happiness can be found by feeling a certain way. A certain feeling can make you happy no matter how distressed or broke you are. However, the same is also true if we flip the statement. A certain feeling can make you unhappy no matter how successful or rich you are, and this is where the problem started.
Like many other aspects of life, love and marriage were affected by romanticism too. Ideally, a person was supposed to romanticize the partner and feel good about having him. But we have romanticized our partners to a level that now we manage to find discomfort in our love life, no matter how amazing the other partner is. It is because we associate love with a certain kind of feeling. This “feeling” usually consists of two popular attributes; passion and pleasure. The problem is that both passion and pleasure fade with time, thus the love as well.
Another terrible side of romanticism is that it deprives people of a practical approach. When a typical couple gets married, the discussion revolves around superficial topics like the dress, shoes, decorations, guest list, the destination for the honeymoon etc. They do not address the elephant in the room. They do not discuss how the expenses of the lavish wedding will drain their budget. They do not discuss when they want children and how many of them. They do not discuss the decorum of the groom’s house or whether the girl will be able to adjust to this new family or not. The DOs and the DONTs for both partners are lost in translation. The bills, the taxes, family planning, and intimacy are the fundamental things that should be discussed before marriage but romanticism does not allow this kind of conversation to take place because it is against the decorum of love.
For example, if someone asks their partner whether they are fertile or not, this is regarded as blasphemy in love. “So you only want me to reproduce? Do you only see me as a baby maker? That’s it?” and the conversation gets sentimental. Of course, he/she loves you, but having children is also part of marriage and the other partner is not selfish to wish so. Similarly asking a guy how much he earns is taken out of context as well. “So you are concerned with my money. My friends were right. You are just a gold digger.” Man, c’mon, she is supposed to spend her whole life with you. It is her basic right to know his income.
A few years back, there was a wedding. The boy and the girl loved each other. When the nikkah form arrived, the bride, drunk in love, did not add any clause to secure her future. She did not add any penalty in case of second marriage or divorce for her husband. She did not want her partner to think that she doubts his loyalty. Years later, her husband was found to have another wife along with two kids.
Keeping in mind the following case, when another friend of mine was getting married, she wanted to be rational. When her nikkah form arrived, she took the form and added strong penalties in case of second marriage and divorce and sent it back to her husband. His family members were quite upset. “Doesn’t she trust our boy? Does she think he will cheat on her? This is so disrespectful.” Her concern for the future was regarded as inappropriate. But her husband understood the concerns and signed up for those penalties anyway. I personally believe that he should have written penalties as well. Regarding marriage, an individual should adopt a rational approach, not an emotional one.
A lot of relationships can get better if we handle them rationally rather emotionally. For example, in our domestic households, the most common and earliest complaint we hear from our daughters are “he listens to his mother, not me”. Wives think emotionally. They think a husband is bound to prioritize them before anything right after getting married. However, a guy who just got married will be definitely drawn to his mother who had been taking care of him for years, over a girl he met recently and got married to and it will take time for trust to build among the newlyweds. This is something very easy to understand if we think rationally but emotions will get in the way.
So if one wants to be truly happy in life, one needs to keep emotions and rationality aside. One has to utilize romanticism carefully. One has to simplify the wants and pursuits. One has to stop chasing a mirage and find happiness in the real things around him. Because that’s the true purpose of romanticism, to find joy in everything, not misery.
