Sunday, April 2, 2000		Lead Article

Separation in the sunset years

The number of elder age divorces and separations in Indian society have increased by leaps and bounds in recent decades. What are the causes which drive apart couples — married for 25 or more years — in the twilight time of their marriage? Vimla Patil finds out

I WAITED till both my sons were married and settled in the United States. Then, at last, I decided to have nothing more to do with my husband," says Nirmala Kapoor, heaving a sigh of relief. She is the wife of a highly-placed government official who retired a year ago and a mother of two brilliant computer wizard sons. She now lives in the city home of the family in Ahmedabad while her retired husband lives in their country cottage so that he can play golf and do gardening to his heart’s content. The couple has had differences for more than 25 years, and suddenly, with the departure of the children, the animosity has become insurmountable.

"The secret of every relationship is communication and the willingness to negotiate on the basis of mutual respect and the understanding of the views of both parties," says Nirmala, "This does not exist in our marriage. My husband, who was a sales tax commissioner in his career, is used to settling every issue on his terms. According to him, I need him more than he needs me. ‘I can do without anyone. You will suffer if I stop co-operating with you.’ This is what he has said for years. This attitude has been evident in his words, deeds, body language and speech all through our married life. He is very strong-willed and does not stop to consider what he is saying when he is violent and angry. He was the same with our sons till they married and left. Today, he really has to do without anyone of us and is unhappy. His language was always harsh to the ear and his verbal violence has driven all relatives and friends away from him. I stuck it out because I had two sons to bring up and no financial resources of my own. He was and still is a good provider. He educated the boys well and pays for my home. We meet on weekends and are peaceful now."

These are but two instances of elder marriages collapsing in the late years of the couples. Both the couples cited above are above the age of 60 and not really healthy or self-sufficient in the real sense of the word. They have both spent long years of their lives depending upon each other for help and sustenance, co-operation and nurturing. Yet, they are now prepared to give up their dependence and risk loneliness or solitude to do away with the traumas which made their marriages a death well of pain and suffering.

Nirmala and Rani are not the only elder wives to opt out of their marriages in late age. In India, at the turn of the millennium, thousands of couples in the upper, upper middle and lower middle classes are finding themselves trapped in meaningless marriages and are gutsy enough to risk losing their support systems to earn peace in their twilight years. The causes of this wave of separations, divorces and ‘mental rejections’ are manifold.

One of the major causes is that the end of the millennium has been a natural turning point for many people. They have re-evaluated their careers, their relationships, their financial status, their dreams and aspirations and taken the opportunity to drop excess baggage and get on with life. They have taken risks of limping back to normalcy but have severed painful associations. Secondly, the number of people reaching above the age of 60, has multiplied almost like wild fire in recent decades.

The population of India was 247 million in 1947 and today, it has reached 1000 million. Those who were born before Independence, are now retired and working for self support or relaxing in retirement, according to their choice and security needs. In many such cases, the women comprise the first generation of female university graduates in India. They have earned and/or been homemakers for 40 odd years. They have borne the burden of being the links between tradition and modernity. Even after they are 60, they are active either in their chosen area of work or social activities. At best, they are engaged in their own satsang groups or kitty parties. On the other hand, retired men become progressively cantankerous and without work and the losing the excitement of an active life, they are like immature people who demand attention all the time like small, dependent children.

This chasm between older men and older women becomes wider and wider till the relationship loses its hold on both people. Old men, as the saying goes, become boring whereas old women continue to be motherly, caring and useful to their families because of their home skills. This situation is reversed in many families where the old woman folds up her life and cannot stimulate her husband any more as a companion. Sex disappears, children go away, social life is restricted and locked-into-each-other couples get on each others’ nerves. They are not used to friendship as a basis of their life, because there are too many expectations of each other. In this fertile soil of a barren emotional life, old grouses and complaints grow like monsoon creepers to complicate the last years of a man or woman.

If, for instance, a man has been inordinately bossy and inconsiderate and has sought to control and design his wife’s life, she is sure to escape out of his ‘net’ later on in life. If he is violent and abusive, old age is her chance to seek revenge. She is more at home with the peer group of her own age and experience and seeks support from her grown-up children for her emotional well being. If the husband is a miser, old age is the time for his wife to break loose from his clutches and have whatever fun is available to her.

For a man riddled by tensions and stress of work, life often seems empty in old age. What have I earned and where did all my effort go, he asks himself. If he cannot accept his failures or the failure of his relationships at work, or with his children, he blames his wife and in turn, she blames him. The piling of guilt becomes a war of strength between the two and they reject each other when love literally turns into hatred! If the super ego of a male is added to all these situations, then the relationships die faster than one can say ‘Jack Robinson’!

Property and money are often the cause of a break-up in elder age. If a man keeps everything in his name and deprives his wife of security and comforts, their bond is weak already and a break takes no time at all. Conversely, if a woman has earned and stashed away her money, she causes distancing between her and her husband. Disagreements on inheritance, property division, monetary rights and expenditure cause differences of opinion and marriages break bit by bit, till they do not exist any more.

In this category, there are also marriages where the wife has been exceptionally successful in her career and popular among her colleagues and friends. Her husband may genuinely be proud of her achievements through his working years. But when the chips fall down finally, and he sees that she has had a fruitful life which continues to give her happiness, whereas he has left behind only financial success with no network of friends, he begins to undermine her success and humiliates her till she rebels and fights back, with the marriage becoming a cesspool of bickering in the late age of the couple.

In yet other marriages, the inability of an old woman to provide sexual pleasures leads an elderly man to seek younger women. In olden days, women were submissive and conditioned to tolerate all the wrongs piled upon them by their husbands and in-laws. Today’s women are different. Whether they earn or not, they stand by their dignity and quit the relationship whenever a good opportunity presents itself. At worst, desperation drives them into an ashram. Men too, driven by the harrowing time given to them by their wives, find solace in solitude, with other women and friends with whom they share a club life.

A new force which breaks up elder marriages in the present age is the rivalry of children and their squabbling amongst themselves. Many old parents are forced to take sides in their children’s sibling rivalry. They end up breaking their own marriages in the skirmishes which entangle them with the children and their spouses. The bahus or jamais of a couple bring new attitudes, positive or negative, and the whole family has to redesign its relationship structure. Sometimes, failures occur in doing so. In the din of demands made on the elder parents by the stressful relationships of their children, the parents end up burning their own fingers. Jealousies among brothers and sisters and their spouses often cause fractured relationships in the whole family.

However, the two most important causes of the breakdown of elder marriages are as follows: Firstly, women tolerate less today. They swallow bad treatment, humiliation or deprivation for long years because of the responsibility of rearing children and because Indian culture and tradition offers them no other option. They prefer staying in a traumatic relationship rather than quitting. In later years, when social prestige or the question ‘what will the family say’ cease to matter, they break their shackles and take the path of loneliness and peace.

The second reason is that partners blame each other for whatever has gone wrong in their lives. A husband raves and rants about his lost opportunities and progress and blames his failures on his wife. A wife blames him for the misbehaviour of the children, lack of money in the family and loss of dignity for herself. So the battle goes on. Some wisecrack has said that marriages are traps in which each partner tries to destroy the other. Perhaps this is true. But depending upon the gentler qualities of the man and woman concerned, a marriage can still be a companionship of two people who have shared their failures and successes. At any rate, human society has not invented a reasonably good alternative to marriage which is why young men and women still think of it as a desirable goal of any romantic journey!