Infidelity, Infertility and Adultery- The Elephant in The Room

Infidelity, Infertility and Adultery- The Elephant in The Room

Disclaimer:  This post contains graphic descriptions of sexual acts and hence is not suitable for those below 18 years or for prudes.

This post is going to be about the elephant in the room, more specifically in the bedroom- that big hefty animal looming over the bed but which no one talks about loudly. Yes, this post is about that most delicate of issues which affects a relationship - sexual compatibility between couples. Now that the brief explanation for the title is out of the way let’s get to the actual story.

For the past three days I was temporarily loaned out to a different hospital – don’t ask me why because it’s a state secret. Which meant that the regulars there didn’t trust me (and others like me) enough to allow us to work with their patients. Which in turn meant that I had plenty of time on my hand to catch up with a few other friends who were in the same situation. In particular a friend of mine I hadn’t stayed in touch with much for the past couple of years, ever since he got married, for as everyone knows, when once a guy marries he is lost to the brotherhood of the single men and gradually avoids all his single friends preferring instead to hang out in couples groups.

Anyway I was meeting this guy after a long time and we swapped updates on our respective life stories- mine was easily told as it was just a single line - no I am still single and yes I still haven’t found any girl willing to go long term with me. But his story kept changing over the course of the two days with each telling adding new details. At first he said he was happily married and enjoying life and even though he had no kids yet it was all planned for. And then as he drifted over other topics and came back again to his life he slow started dropping hints about trouble in paradise. As one of my characteristic habits in life is never to force a story out of anyone but wait for them to tell it their own way at their own time, he slowly came around to confessing that he was halfway through a divorce and the reason for it was sexual incompatibility between him and his soon to be ex-wife.

Now sexual incompatibility between married couples is often the elephant in the room when it comes to most divorces. People may say a lot of causes and give a lot of reasons later on for why it didn’t work but underlying all that is often the simple fact that the two persons sexual appetites didn’t match. In the case of my friend it was the simple fact that his wife didn’t factor in the need for sex of a virile thirty year old. She had assumed that a man is satisfied with just looking at a good looking woman, taking her out shopping, going to movies and malls, holding hands together and then going home to sleep soundly. As any half wit would tell you that doesn’t work at all. If you starve a man at home then you can be sure that he is going to find food somewhere else to eat- no exceptions- the male brain (and physiology) works that way. Conversely if a woman plans to keep a man safely around (at beck and call) - the best way to do it is to feed him breakfast, lunch and dinner and keep him satiated (plus sedated) all the time. If not then look out for trouble.

 Which was what happened with my friend too. He had joined a part-time mba at madras university and somehow had made an instant connection with one of the lecturers there- a good looking young lady (note to self: remember to apply for MBA entrance next year) and pretty soon the two were inseparable. the young lady in question seems to have provided an enthusiastic full meals all the time to my friend who had after eating such tasty stuff and realizing for the first time in his life that food provided freely with enthusiasm (instead of after coaxing, cajoling and begging) could taste so much better and especially compared to when its thrown your way halfheartedly out of a sense of duty (are you still following my food metaphors or should I be more explicit??) So he had decided to go for an exciting new life with the MBA lecturer while divorcing his always demanding but never providing wife.

This is why the wise say that those who eat a full course meal at home will never feel the need to stray outside. But if any wife acts like a queen (inside the bedroom) who will only grant an audience to the poor public based on her whims and fancies then there are chances that the public might rebel (remember the french revolution) and get themselves a new head of state. I would blame this squarely on feminists and other assorted busybodies who have forced modern women to swallow the lie that marriage at its most basic does not involve sex between two people. They want everyone to lead a sexless intellectual marital life which might be a good concept theoretically but is not practical – if they really understood the male half of the population.

But our ancients were far more pragmatic when it came to sex issues in marriages. They knew that sexual compatibility in marriages were most necessary and put their wits to devise ways to check it pre-marital’ly. As our samskara culture prohibited free sex pre-marital’ly there was no way to directly check for compatibility in bed between the prospective groom and bride. Hence our ancients invented a proxy premarital check via astrologic predictions when they compare the yoni and vasya matches between two horoscopes. Only if both the size and the vigour of both the horoscopes matched did they allow the wedding to proceed and most of the time such arranged wedding were a success too. 

Now for those who still don’t understand what I am talking about here- let me clarify that sex at its most basic has certain preliminary stages like intention, stimulation, lubrication before the actual sex act even commences. Intention is the wants of a person to indulge in sex – from as frequently as three times a day to as infrequently as three times a week. Some are Diurnal and some are Nocturnal- which means that one partner prefers to do it at night and then drop off to sleep while the other wants to do it first thing in the morning as the best way to start the day. And then there was a friend of mine who often went home during the lunch hour and returned later in the afternoon- it takes all kinds doesn’t it? So, when the couples match each other in their appetites for sex- then one partner does not have to ask (or convince or beg or finally force) the other for sex – they both want it equally and enjoy it with a “no favors done” mentality. Otherwise it’s a constant cajoling for sex and its resultant bitter aftermath, for make no mistake if someone has to beg for sex then he or she will definitely hold a grudge for it and show it in other ways (of course, once the sex is done).

The next stage is stimulation which not only involves foreplay but more importantly lubrication – for only when there is full mental acquiescence then there is the necessary internal lubrication to enjoy sex- otherwise it’s just like rape-do it dry. If there is even a minor bit of resentment over any other family issue (when in bed) then there is no real lubrication- and goodbye good sex. This is where so many women go wrong as they bring all other issues to the bedroom and allow it to play on their minds. And this mental turning off in bed can act as a physical dampener to lubrication despite enthusiastic foreplay- sometimes foreplay which leaves the other partner exhausted before the actual sex even starts yet there is still no lubrication. 

This is what had happened in my above-mentioned friend’s case. His wife was mostly dry during sex because she was always moody and brooding on other things in bed and he was no longer willing to spend the majority of his time and effort to coax her into getting a little wet just so he can have a few minutes of sex. And then as fate would have it he had met this other woman who could get wet at just a thought or a kiss, giving him ecstatic instant sex requiring no hard work, then can we blame him for preferring to take the easy option? The “real reason” he confessed for the divorce was the perfect sexual syncing between his new girlfriend and him leading to mind-blowing sex, something which he had failed to achieve at home even after three years of marriage and continuous efforts on his part.

Now for those readers who are grumbling that I am writing this post mainly from a male-centric view and not about the problems faced by women in such sexually incompatible marriages let me assure you that I am getting round to it next. Anyone who lives in Chennai would be aware of the slang phrase "the desperate housewives of OMR". No, it’s not a TV serial. It’s a slang term which refers to the increasing (explosively) number of failed marriages of the OMR/ECR belt - an industrial suburb of Chennai city known for its multitude of companies- where the housewives are all supposedly starved for sex and easy prey to any romeo looking to have an adulterous affair. The reason is rumored to be financial- the EMI/Debt Trap- as many of these suburban families are trapped in the EMI commitments of an apartment, car etc requiring the male of the family to work long, hard hours and come back home too exhausted to do anything else. Though money is important there are other things equally important too and how long can a wife take being neglected and going home to sleep not satisfied and so they stray into affairs. 

You can’t really blame these suburban wives for indulging in their natural appetites occasionally on the sly, especially if the husband is too tired for sex at night (night after night) because of a crappy diet and the hours and hours of sitting down at a desk (staring at a computer) and the stress of beating deadlines which totally exhausts him mentally and even if he tries to do it occasionally he can’t as he mostly suffers from some form of erectile insufficiency which means he is not able to either get it up or sustain it long enough or its not firm enough for penetration on its own- called the floppy dick syndrome. With the result that such long suffering women indulge in extra-marital affairs leading to their husbands being labeled EMI-cuckolds or Code-cuckoos (short form for code writing husband being cuckolded at home). So the next time you notice someone who just passed by being cooed at by his colleagues at work you know the reason why.

So in conclusion (this post is getting too long) most marital fights can be reduced to the unvoiced reason of sexual incompatibility between couples which causes havoc in both lives and ends in ugly divorces. There is no easy solution for this except maybe to check compatibility through pre-marital sex like western societies which have detached sex from marriage. But as that is an alien concept to us in India where 90% of marriages take place just for having children couples who find themselves in disharmony sexually have to learn to live with it and adjust in other ways.

Not everyone can afford to divorce and go around looking for the perfectly in sync sex partner to marry. You just have to practice adjustment, tolerance and an obligation to put the needs of the other before ourselves. For that in a nutshell is the secret to a successful marriage- to show (or at least feign) enthusiasm for things which we may not really enjoy. And if someone gets a 5-course meal at home -home-cooked food served with love then you can depend on it that they are not going to look outside for anything else. And that brings to an end my sermon for the day. 

Post Script. I am neither married nor have a girlfriend nor even a crush right now and i even sleep with a pillow by my side and thus I have no axe to grind with this post and am doing this just as a public service message to save others marriages.

The Sins of the Parents

The Sins of the Parents

There was quite a bit of furor in the hospital wards as I entered today. I was in a bit of a hurry to catch the attendance so I didn’t bother to stop and inquire till after I successfully finger printed myself in the biometric machine after the mandatory 3 tries it takes daily to recognize me. Once that important part of my duty done, I naturally drifted back to where the arguments were going on to catch up on the latest gossip.

The facts of the case as explained to me by the nurses was this -a pregnant lady had been brought in the early hours of the night in an advanced delivery state with the child caught up in an awkward position halfway down the womb and hence causing severe bleeding in the mother. The duty doctor had attempted an emergency cesarean and in a twist of fate the child had survived somehow but the mother exhausted beyond her body's capacity to endure had died soon after the childbirth. 

And then had started all the confusion. When asked about the next of kin to hand over the child and the dead person, the people who had brought the lady in for emergency admission declined to accept responsibility for they said that they were just the neighbors of the dead woman. They had overheard the woman screaming alone in her house from the labor pains, had rushed in to see what was up and then seeing her condition had put her in an auto and brought her to the hospital for treatment out of humanitarian grounds only.

After much cajoling and threatening the nursing staff finally found out the address of the dead woman’s parents from them. When they contacted the parents of the dead woman, they had rushed in wailing and screaming at their loss and after the mandatory scene-creation, they said they would accept the body of their daughter only and not the living child who was no relation of theirs. The nurses automatically assumed that this was one more of those love stories/elopements where the parents are dead against the couples even if they are dead.

But there was a further twist to this story. When the parents of the dead woman finally got to control their grief they gave the name (and address) of their son-in-law and suggested that he be summoned to take guardianship of the child. So then the hospital authorities called up the husband of the dead woman and he arrived to everyone’s surprise with a lawyer in tow. The guy was a minor official in some government department and had decided to take an official approach to everything by letting his lawyer speak on his behalf.

The story the lawyer told was that the lady in question, had married his client an year ago and right from the beginning had been creating problems for him. After a couple of weeks she had come right out and said that she had been forced into marriage with him against her will by her parents as she was already in love with an auto driver near her college who looked as smart as the actor Surya – the smart action hero(as described in her dialogue it seems). But the parents had objected to their love and had hurriedly married off to this guy, a government officer, who looks like the comedian S.V. Shekar (her own dialogue again).

The result of this midnight confession by the girl to her husband was seen right the next day when she had disappeared from her husband’s house after saying she was off to visit her parents for a day or two. When the husband learnt she was missing, he was in a panic and so contacted his lawyer first - because there is an obscure little law in the Indian Penal Code which says that any wife who dies within the first 7 years of the marriage is supposed to have been murdered by her husband and it carries the death penalty for the husband (a law which was originally made to prevent the exploding stove deaths but now widely misused for other reasons by our friendly neighborhood police force)

Anyhow the family lawyer had suggested that they give an official police complaint to safeguard themselves- which the husband promptly did. And our efficient Chennai police immediately located the missing woman by enquiring at the local auto stand of her lover boy. They traced her to the house where she was living happily with her lover, the auto driver. When the husband was informed of this by the police, he had called at his in-laws place and told them he was washing his hands off their daughter and he would divorce her after the mandatory two year waiting period specified by law for a divorce.

Meanwhile the girl who was living her dream life with her lover got a jolt of reality when she became pregnant and discovered by chance that her dream boy had another family in another town- at his native place. Frequent quarrels had resulted from this and the woman had made an attempt to commit suicide more than once but had somehow survived. Meanwhile as the date of her delivery neared the auto driver had one final quarrel with her and disappeared after telling her that he was going back to his original wife and kids back in his hometown. The woman who had been left alone survived for a few days till she had died in childbirth.

So now the husband (the official one) refused to take custody of the child saying it was not his but the illegitimate offspring of an affair. The parents had refused to take the child saying it was not their grandchild. Finally with no one willing to take responsibility for the child, the hospital authorities had no choice but to dispatch the child to an orphanage. And that’s the story i heard this morning to start off my working day.

What this story reminded me of immediately was the recent Madras High Court’s judgment on pre-marital sex which was widely reported in all the newspapers and which ruled that any couple found sleeping together being considered as officially married. But that should by rights, apply only to two people who have sex exclusively with each other. But what happens when extra marital affairs like this happens? The woman legally married one man and had a child with another man. Now both of them are refusing to accept the child as their own despite the high court’s judgment that she is now "legally" married to both of them at the same time- the minute she slept with both. Quite confusing isn’t it?

Human relationships are often complicated. We human beings often let our hearts rule over our heads when it comes to love. We also react emotionally to any issue which affects our happiness- that’s why we often say, in our excuse, I am only human. But we should also remember that our actions have consequences, maybe not immediately apparent but nevertheless real. And the persons who might get affected by our thoughtless (and selfish) actions are often other innocents- like the child in this case. For the child was accepted by neither the hero Surya nor the comedian S.V.Sekar finally.

So though I am a big fan of love, I do believe that the right time to fight for love is before the marriage- at least the night before the wedding or even at the altar, right up to the last minute before the ceremony (remember Julia Roberts in the movie Runaway Bride?). But not after the wedding ceremony is over and thou art wed has been pronounced. If so it will definitely end up in a tragedy for everyone.

And one final word at the risk of falling afoul of the law. Relationships (families) are often complicated and messy, but they somehow pull through in the end. The Law was evolved (over thousands of years) to punish criminals and keep peace in the society and not to hang around the bedrooms and decide who is married to whom, based on who slept with whom. Don’t you have murderers and rapists to hang, your honorable justices? So why are you pushing together two people who do not want to do so by free will, to live together in the name of the law? Do you really think it will last, marriages made in fear of punishment? Will there be any kind of happiness in it, when two people are forced to live with each other just to avoid being sent to jail? I really don’t know…maybe someone who has experienced it will enlighten me, if a marriage made in fear can work well.

ALL IZZ WELL….

My erstwhile colleague Anand called after a long time and asked me “how it was going”. When I asked him back the same thing he started off on a long rant unmindful of the mounting call charges “the economy was going south” he started off “what were the bloody Europeans thinking off when they gave those loans to the Greeks?, first the Americans and now the Europeans, everyone seems to be playing with the world economy..And now look at us..The rupee has gone zooming up to the dollar, how can we buy anything at all? petrol prices are sky high, can’t even switch on the a/c on in the car for fear of fuel consumption, the govt doesn’t care, no one cares” he stopped for breath and I got in a word edgewise when I finally got the chance “How are your kids?” he continued from where he left off  “oh, fine, fine, they are all well, I say, you should come see them now, they are all grown up since you last saw them, the little one is going to start play school this year. And by the way” he added almost casually “I have shifted my house, you should come see the new house, its right behind DAV school”. “What?' I asked in a shocked voice and then the more important “but why?” he hesitated for the first time before saying “well you know the usual family thing - my mother and my wife had some problems, my wife was complaining that there was no privacy in the house for even talk between husband and wife and to make things easier on everyone, I decided to move away from my parents house to a rented flat- its small but it’s very private- no one to disturb us”..I chewed over this for a few seconds, for when I had known him, he had been a very attached and affectionate son, who had listened like the gospel truth to whatever his parents proposed and ultimately marrying a girl he didn’t even like, just because his mother felt she was the right family type..Well, these things come to bite you back, don’t they? Anyhow I asked him the one thing which felt incongruous in the whole logic “so who takes care of the kids now?” for his wife was a lecturer at an engineering college and had to do a long commute everyday outside the city. He replied happily “my mother-in-law has made a big sacrifice by consenting to come and stay with us to take care of the kids till they grow up a bit”. Ha! So this was his idea of privacy.

Anyway the point of this post is not about anand's marital problems but about the culture of negativity and pessimism some people spread about as if it were perfume. I have never actually believed in the glass is half empty philosophy for I thought that any fool can look in the glass and see that it is half full and until it drains to the very dregs tat the bottom it is not time to start worrying. But there are people around who perfectly epitomize JK Rowling’s description of Dementors – those who spread negativity and suck the fun out of everyone around. These people are a walking talking miasma of misery.

I have met quite a few of these oh my god, my life is so depressing, types. The worst among them are the ones who try to psyche you into a “Oh my god, your life is depressing too”, by enumerating what are all the things going wrong in your life which you are not giving a damn about right now. They seem to know a lot of things about you and your troubles, things which you dont know yourself. In the guise of admiration they say “I really don’t know how you can be this happy with so many problems, if I were you I would fall into a deep depression and never get out of the bed. You are soo brave”. Well hold on, I seem to think when confronted by specimens of this kind – buddy, what seems to be insurmountable problems to you are merely specks in my eyes. To the man who has control over his emotions nothing seems to be unsalvageable- there is always some chink somewhere you can find and solve the problem with. Every problem has its own solution they say- so give me a problem and I don’t look at it - I look at solving it

Lots of people around me, look like they are - always boiling cauldrons of emotions. Me? I am a pool of cool (ahem! Ahem!) But seriously I do take my own sweet time in expressing anger, outrage or even getting depressed. I have never been the violently emotional drama queen type which more and more people nowadays aspire to be, as I stay cool without meaning to or making an obvious effort to be so.

My mother has this proverb which she oft repeats to me “aluvara kozhandaiku dhan sorru kedaikum”...in simple English...The crying child gets fed first. That people like me who wait patiently for their turn, get neglected. Is being patient such a drawback then in reality? Do the fussers and tantrum throwers get everything to the exclusivity of others? Maybe at first – but not always I feel.

The longest I have ever been depressed (as far as I can remember ) is three hours – and that's when the bloody result is stuck on the notice board and some bloody girl scores more marks than you in an exam you swore you had aced. Other than that, I don’t have long lasting depressions which last for days and days. Something or the other always tickles my sense of humour or I find funny and once you start smiling or laughing it’s pretty hard to stay depressed. If I can find humour in even the most depressing of circumstances, it’s a good thing, Right? 

Wrong- according to some people. Those people find it strangely eerie that I am not depressed like them, that I don’t have the necessary gravitas for the situation and I am blamed for being an unfeeling type. Hold on, I want to say, being basically happy is also a feeling – you can’t say that being sad is the only worthwhile emotion. Even our films have this bias - heroes who cry a lot (in strange heinous tones) are called thespians and great actors while stars who take things light are not afforded any respect.

So what should I tell people who look at me and tell me my life is so sad and I should be depressed and I should grow a beard or hit the booze? That I only grow a beard during study holidays, to prevent wasting time on unnecessary bodily comforts, time better spent studying? Or that drinking alcohol, will give me the shivers, make my fingers shake and make me professionally useless. And as someone who handles connective tissue grafts the thickness of human hair every day, I cannot afford to have the minutest tremor or vibrations in my fingers and on entering this profession I knew and accepted wholeheartedly that I had to deny myself all indulgences that may produce such adverse results?

 What do I tell these oceans of negativity, these Cassandra’s of gloom and doom..Get lost you evil ones...I may stay hungry, I may stay foolish, but I will stay happy? That nothing’s wrong with India, a falling rupee doesn’t matter, that we have a robust economy and a talented population who will see us through tough times? That petrol prices are simply going to make solar power more interesting and viable and that’s the way we should have already gone if not for the addiction of cheap petrol? That the world economy will balance itself out, that science will find a way, innovations will happen, evolution will advance and the human race as a whole is always moving forward incrementally, one small step after another and we will beat all this gloom and doom and one day successfully straddle the entire galaxy as one civilization? If I tell them all this will they believe me or at least listen? You tell me...