The love of both my parents is less poetic and more practical. Through their life, I have learned that masculinity is not about dominance, but about endurance, humility, and silent strength.
As I hold my parents’ wedding card from 58 years ago and watch them on screen from October 26, 1968, I wonder how time has flown so fast between the autumn of 1968 and the autumn of October 2025. To many, these might be just numbers, but for me, they represent so much more: patience, love, care, respect, endurance, support, and so much else. Their marriage is not about materialistic luxuries but about simplicity and mutualism. My mother, the cornerstone of our house, turned the foundation of our home so strong she made a non-living space into a living and loving one. My father, whom I call the backbone of our house is a laborer . He has mingled his blood and sweat, day and night, to make our lives beautiful.
Every civilization is built on families. I believe families are the basic unit of society. A family starts with two people, and when children, the flowers, are added, its essence is enhanced. As I hear the stories from my mother, from books to baking, her sudden shift in her early 20s placed more responsibilities on her compared to our generation. At that time, the fear of social life, the deeply rooted stigma, and the prejudice of being a stranger’s daughter, a “lukh garich koor,” must have put immense pressure on her.
Despite what I believe were the constraints of that society and era, she became a mother of three and the most responsible wife. On the other hand, my father is a man of infinite efforts and few words. For 28 years, his morning has begun while the whole of Village Bhagota people was still asleep, and at dusk, his fatigue turns into prayer.
He may not have labour titles, but the work he has done silently for society has sustained his dignity through honesty and hard work. The love of both my parents is less poetic and more practical. Through his life, I have learned that masculinity is not about dominance, but about endurance, humility, and silent strength. He respects my mother not out of obligation but from admiration. Together, they prove that equality in marriage is not a Western idea but a human truth that existed long before we named it.
When I asked my father what this bond means to him, he replied, “Marriage is a union of two unknown souls written by fate at the wheel of life, settled in heaven and celebrated on Earth. But beyond that, a great marriage is not when ‘I’ and ‘She’ become ‘We,’ but when ‘I’ and ‘She,’ even after 50 years, still become ‘We.’ Our love is a flame that burns brighter with each passing year.”
Asking the same question to my mother, she replied, “When we got married, we were nothing, but by being together, we are everything now.” Although my parents are not the only example of such a partnership, there are indefinite examples; the quality of the parents’ bond profoundly affects a child and their future, and that is the main reflection here.”
Within Hinduism, marriage is considered to be divine and sacred. It is about creating love, righteousness, and tranquility between partners. The Gita tells us that God has made pairs so they may find comfort with one another. Marriage serves many roles, such as morally educating people, continuing one’s family line, and socially stabilizing society to foster respect for one another and for orderly and lawful relationships.
Psychology and science support the viewpoint that a positive connection between parents is also vital in maintaining a child’s physical, psychological, and social well-being. In particular, Bowlby and Ainsworth’s Attachment Theory illustrates how responsive and reliable caregiving promotes secure attachment, which produces empathy, trust, and confidence. Alternatively, a poor relationship between parents has harm in its own right. Social learning theory explains that children imitate hostility or aggression observed at home, increasing defiant or antisocial behavior. Additionally, the strength of the marital relationship is the underpinning of the family unit. Nevertheless, in many social contexts, the extended family will impact the couple’s lived experience in significant ways.
As I have witnessed, when joint families harbor prejudice, rigid expectations, or unhealed grievances, these tensions often spill into the marital space. From my own research, I have met more than twenty women who shared experiences of being asked to remain silent to preserve “family honor,” suppressing their grievances and carrying the emotional weight alone. On the other hand, the husband remains stuck among his parents, siblings, and spouse, unsure whom to support. He is truly forsaken and teased as to where he needs to place his loyalty.
The dynamic develops a circular tension. The woman is asked to be quiet, and in being asked to be silent, she feels pressure to hide her frustration. At the same time, anxiety is created in the man’s divided loyalty, disconnecting him from himself and his girlfriend. Stigmas and biases compound small infractions, turning molehills into mountains, and harboring small disagreements into larger confrontations, and sometimes precipitating into verbal or physical violence.
Breaking this cycle requires conscious boundary-setting and a shared understanding between partners. To act as buffers against external pressures, there must be open communication and mutual respect. While changing entrenched family attitudes is not easy, a couple can create a protected space to address grievances, validate emotions, and make collective decisions. The first step toward preventing its destructive consequences is to recognize the interplay between family prejudice and marital well-being. In societies where honor and stigma dominate, the emotional resilience of the couple becomes both a shield and a silent act of resistance.
As I look toward the future, a pressing question arises, will new generations be able to maintain strong marital bonds? Will they be able to address the pressures that have complicated relationships for years? Pressures that come from anywhere except love.
The connection between partners is often judged by outsiders via their judgments, unwanted roles, and weighty burdens, not by the bond itself. The strength of a marriage is not only through the love between two people; it is additionally expressed when they can agree on strategies to address these pressures together. If the legacy of hierarchy continues to dominate, then the fragile fabric of these connections may continue to fray.
The challenge for the next generations is to protect the sanctity of partnership by remaining open, pushing back against the dead weight of social prejudices and redefining respect and honor as a means to enhance the bond rather than suppress it. Only then can a marriage exist not as a silent acquiescence to tradition, but as engaged parties in a shared intention that burst with life even in the midst of societal chaos.
Mental health distress is often caused by relationship matters. In India, almost 50% of suicides among youth are connected to familial conflict, romantic issues, and marriage-related stress.
The family is indeed the basic unit of society and the centre of care and trust where hearts become one. A home becomes a world to share. Here, love and patience, the untouched things, build the frame of both family and society. I believe that if there are strong bonds at home, it is definitely a nation’s pride, for in its strength, a strong India lies.
THE AUTHOR IS A REGULAR COLUMNIST AND FREELANCE WRITER
