ESL Blogs

She yelled at him, “I did not hurt you, you hurt yourself”.  Yes it’s another fight between husband and wife. That is what usually they do after the initial period of romance.

Well, this particular couple had differences. Differences not only in the way of living life, but also in the way they perceive it. Ideological differences! And maybe this is the reason they tried to avoid each other. Their silence speaks with them not their words. Did not share the things they were supposed to be. They were like those tracks of railways which run parallel all the time but never meet anywhere.

In such circumstances what creates in between is vacuum. An emotional vacuum and a physical vacuum. It’s not uncommon. Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do spring from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great. It’s the second urge I am talking about. People sometimes go for extramarital affair once they do not meet the basic human needs from their legitimate partners.  Studies suggest that while female have an emotional need, males have physical need!

People may find this topic ridiculous, some may find it waste of time others may call it unethical to discuss (sorry for those who find it offending as well). But for me what lies inside is the deep human craving. A craving of being free that could not be realized openly due to institutions like marriage, social responsibility and public imposed ethics. Oprah Winfrey said, “If a man wants you, nothing can keep it away, if he does not want you nothing can keep him stay.” The same happens here and the individual goes against the established norms of the society. They start living two lives and it’s the beginning of hypocrisy.

The paradox is that while most of the people including those who are finding guilty do agree on the note that it’s morally wrong, but they still do it. May be is an obsession or addiction that is hard to come out of. It’s not easy for leaving creatures to go against the hormonal secretions of the body for the sake of rules made by society.

Let’s go into genesis of the institution marriage. Most of the historians agree that is developed when due to property rights. To get the legitimate heir of a person and so the women was not allowed to conceive from anyone except her husband. The husband had a faith that the son his own and he can pass on his property to that boy.

But what if in the time of DNA testing where one can easily know whether the son is his own or not? What in the time when there are 100 ways to avoid pregnancy? It would not be correct to use marriage institution as a way of getting children only. In fact in many liberal countries, some couples have children though they are not married and its legitimacy is accepted by the legal bodies.

It would be imprudent for me to neglect the institution of marriage altogether. There are emotional attachments, a commitment and the most important aspect is that it’s a symbol of love. But in this argument the inherent fallacy is that if the couple had love then there would not be any (secret) extra marital affair (and hence hypocrisy). In fact in such cases there is a marriage only with dearth of love. To say in one line love does not need certificate of marriage. If there is honesty and there is trust no matter whether you are married or not there will be faithfulness. So in true sense I want to discard a marriage in which love is absent.

And if there is no love, lack of affection and feeling then it won’t be right to call an extramarital affair as morally wrong. This is what happens most of the time. People do it secretly, behind the curtain. And those who do it are afraid of this society, although logically they are not doing anything wrong as such. It’s just they are stuck in between the old values of society/civilizations and basic human needs as the body demands for it.

I do not know how far my defense to extra marital affair is right. Some people might say that it hurts the family members and the partner who is betrayed in such cases. But I want them to look at it once again. We feel hurt not because we got betrayed by loving once. We got hurt when we expect too much from people whom we think we love. And it does not mean that they also love us. So it does not stop them from hurting us. As they lady said in the beginning, “I did not hurt you, you’re hurt yourself”.