Advice about marriage for men: a trap in modern relationships
There are several problems in modern society that make successful marriages very rare. This also affect us as devotes. Here is one important factor and how to get around it.
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There are several problems in modern society that make successful marriages rare, such as consumerism, hedonism, and individualism. People desire to find happiness and companionship, but it is becoming harder to attain. We see constant chatting on all kinds of platforms, people hiring therapists and matchmakers to try to find someone, or at least understand what is wrong. Still, there seems to be no easy solution in sight.
As devotees, we don’t live in a vacuum. We may wear tilaka and neck beads, we may chant and read, but still, we grew up in the same culture, with the same movies, social media, broken families, and distorted ideas about love and relationships as everyone else. Even though we are trying to change and improve by following the spiritual process, the material programming we receive from living in this materialistic culture takes its toll.
We already discussed many of the problems coming from the men’s side in past articles. Men are often not responsible, not very exemplary in their behavior, etc. It is clear that most of us are still far from the standard of a Krsna-conscious husband that Śrīla Prabhupāda describes in his books.
Today, we will examine one point on the woman’s side, a tendency that has become common with the popularization of social networks, and that can create serious obstacles.
When we speak about men and women, we tend to get bogged down in the material identification with the body, identifying ourselves with a particular gender, but when we see ourselves as the soul, we start seeing that these different patterns of behavior are just traps from which we must learn to escape to be able to continue on our path back to Godhead.
This said, what is this pressing issue?
Looking around us, we can see many examples of women who become excessively demanding and set very high standards for a spouse: must earn a high amount, own property, drive an expensive car, have savings, pay for everything, satisfy all desires. This shows an inversion of values: they are not interested in what a person is; they are interested in what he has.
The Vedic idea is that a woman should become attracted to a man’s qualities, such as piety, austerity, leadership, and so on, and come to the point that she decides to voluntarily follow him. We can see this at work in the case of Devahūti, for example: she heard the qualities of Kardama Muni described by Nārada Muni and decided she could not marry anyone apart from him. It didn’t matter that he was a sage living in the forest. She became attracted to him as a person, due to his qualities, and chose to follow him and build a life together with him, sharing all the glories and hardships. This is, of course, a story that sets an ideal example and can’t be imitated, but we can notice the basic principle at play.
Marriages in previous ages could be arranged in many ways. Devahūti, for example, revealed her desire to a senior lady, who conveyed the message to her father, who in turn arranged the marriage. Rukmini was bolder and directly wrote a letter to Krsna, giving all details of how He could kidnap her. The important point, however, is this basic dynamic in that a lady chooses to follow a great man, not based on what he has, but on what he is. This is love.
In the modern world, this propensity for love is often replaced by self-centeredness and entitlement. We are taught to see ourselves as the center of the universe and classify people according to how much gratification or resources they can give us. We then enter into relationships thinking about what we can get, and not about what we can give. The other side, of course, thinks in the same way, and when both just want to take, a lasting relationship becomes impossible.
Sometimes this entitlement manifests directly in demanding material resources, such as a rich husband who will pay for everything, and sometimes it manifests in setting unrealistic and contradictory demands in terms of personal qualities, such as demanding that a potential husband must be deeply spiritual and renounced, while at the same time satisfying all one’s material desires, never saying no, and prioritizing her comforts over his sadhana. The root issue in both cases, however, is similar: the relationship is approached primarily in terms of “What will I get?” instead of “What can I give?”, creating a fantasy checklist instead of a real human being.
This type of unrealistic expectations, where preferences are treated as non-negotiable moral demands, is often fueled by social media illusions. The result is often that a lady goes from one date to the next, blaming the lack of “qualified” men, without considering that maybe she can also be part of the problem.
What to do? If one is a lady, good advice would be to identify this tendency and try to work on it, identifying it as a pattern that is imposed on us by the modern consumeristic society, and not part of what we are. To not choose a partner based on what he has, but on what he is. To avoid showy, lusty men who want to just use you, and instead try to find a sincere, responsible, Krsna-conscious devotee who has good personal qualities, someone you admire, and just try to love and follow him, despite the natural hardships of life in this material world. Try to build a life together, without considering much what he has now. Try to develop the quality of serving, instead of exploiting, understanding that a successful man is the product of the care of an attentive wife, and not a finished product that comes already packaged out of the womb of the mother.
If you are a man, my advice would be to just ignore ladies who fall into this entitlement trap. Attraction and rejection are two sides of the same coin. The best is to just keep a distance and focus on your own growth. Don’t start chasing and bidding for the attention of ladies who see you as just a provider of material resources. The truth is that a lady creates demands to replace something that is absent: love. When a lady doesn’t love a man, a high salary and other material resources become a substitute. That’s probably not where you want to go. That’s precisely the chronic problem of modern times: people have no love, they just love themselves. Even years of spiritual practice are sometimes not enough to soften it. When love is present, the attitude becomes one of giving instead of taking.
What to do then? It may be shocking, but the best advice is to just forget about women for now. Stop obsessing about finding a partner, and instead focus on developing your spiritual practice, getting an education, building a business, and doing useful things for society. These are things that make a man valuable. Getting involved in problematic relationships too early, however, sabotages this process, putting one instead into a downward spiral, where one failed relationship leads to the other, plundering all one’s resources and potential. Not all early marriages are disasters, but the risk is high when we are still immature.
By following this path, developing your qualities and becoming established in life, you will see that you will gradually start attracting the attention of the right type of woman, who will see you as a great man, and be willing to follow you, and support you in your path simply for the privilege of being there, who will be grateful instead of demanding, loving instead of harsh. That’s the point when you can start seriously thinking about marriage.
It is important to be able to wait, because this usually comes later in life. It is not by chance that in Vedic societies, women would be married to men who were four to eight years older. This age difference creates this dynamic. A 16-year-old boy is still immature; usually, a man becomes an adult only around 24. Girls mature faster; a 16-year-old girl, if properly educated, already understands what she wants in life. If she were to marry a 16-year-old boy, with all his immaturity, things would not work very well. The Vedic idea is thus that ladies would learn at home from the example of an experienced mother, and boys first learn to control their senses, being trained in the gurukulas, and enter into marriage after acquiring the necessary skills and maturity.
Nowadays, we don’t receive proper education, and therefore, we generally take much longer to become mature. Without a good example from their parents, women often don’t develop a realistic understanding of life before their early 30s, and men frequently become mature only in their late 30s or even early 40s. We can see that most successful marriages nowadays are between this age group. Devotees who grow up in good families, learning from mature parents, may mature faster, but when this ideal situation is absent, we have to mature by trial and error, which takes more time. Right or wrong, that’s just the way things work nowadays.
As a man becomes older, wiser, and better established, his chances of not only getting into a good marriage but having the necessary qualities for making it successful rise dramatically. When we face life with the right mindset, the value of a man grows over time; therefore, there is no need to rush.
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