{"id":13,"date":"2016-07-07T20:01:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T20:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=13"},"modified":"2016-07-07T20:01:25","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T20:01:25","slug":"till-marriage-do-us-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"Until Marriage Do Us Part"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span>was recently asked about a little household trick I was trying. I think it was some kind of cleaning or cat hack, no doubt. I remember the conversation for something else entirely. I said, \u201cMy partner and I,\u201d in response to a question, and went on to finish my sentence, but I could see I had them at the preface. I could feel the whole room turning toward me. Partner. Hmm.\n\n\u201cYou know,\u201d said my friend, taking a sip of her red wine, \u201cPeople don\u2019t really know what you mean by partner. They probably think you\u2019re gay or something.\u201d\n\nIn the other room, a layer away, the silence broken by a lady asking earnestly, \u201cSo what kind of business are you and your partner in?\u201d\n\nMy partner is a man and I am a woman, but he is not my boyfriend, because we are not in our 20s and have been living together effectively for the entirety of our four-year relationship, but officially for a year and a half. We have cats together, we\u2019re planning a house together, when we make big life decisions, we don\u2019t do it without consulting the other.\n\nWe are not in the holding cell implied by the word \u201cboyfriend\u201d. Our eyes are not fixed on the golden ring of matrimony. For all intents and purposes, we have what you\u2019d call a marriage. Except, we\u2019re living in.\n<\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\nThe Supreme Court of India has blessed <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.indianexpress.com\/news\/long-cohabitation-of-couples-is-presumption-of-marriage-sc\/497075\/\">cohabitation<\/a>. It\u2019s valid: You both have to be of legal marriageable age (check), you have to be unmarried and qualified to marry (check), and you have to have a shared household, not just one-night stands over a period of time, or weekends together (check).\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\">Marriage is such an adult institution. How do you ever know you\u2019re old enough?<\/blockquote>\nSo we\u2019re legal; so legal, it\u2019s a bit boring. We get asked to weddings together, we consult each other on grocery lists, and we get sick around each other. I\u2019m not always wearing lipstick or a red negligee. Nights at home are pizza and a TV show we both love. If we\u2019re feeling particularly crazy, we order in sushi instead.\n\nI always imagined living in sin would be filled with high drama and excitement. But it\u2019s softer and fluffier than you would think.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n\u201cDon\u2019t volunteer information,\u201d says my mother. I\u2019ve got to hand it to her, she has taken this \u201cliving in sin\u201d business far better than most Indian parents would. I\u2019m also rather in-your-face about it. I dragged my reluctant partner to a family wedding\u2014his first, <i>our<\/i> first\u2014and threw him to the wolves. I demanded we be put in the same bedroom or threatened to get a hotel. I introduced him to various extended relatives who then went to my mother and said, \u201cYour son-in-law is so handsome.\u201d She smiled graciously and didn\u2019t correct them.\n\nA few aunts and an uncle cornered us at various times to talk about marriage. \u201cWhy not?\u201d they asked, gentle, humorous discussion turning almost hostile when I rebuffed them for the third time. \u201cWhy <i>not<\/i>?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause I don\u2019t want to,\u201d I said, folding my arms across my chest as a full stop to this conversation. I walked away. I closed the door. The partner was far politer than I was. He engaged. <i>\u201cDon\u2019t engage<\/i>,\u201d I hissed at him. He patted my back.\n\n\u201cWe <i>have<\/i> a marriage,\u201d I said to a particularly overbearing relative, \u201cWe just didn\u2019t have a <i>wedding<\/i>.\u201d She blinked twice. I thought she understood, but she was only drawing breath to ask again, \u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\nOur stance is not this big old political statement either. I\u2019m not opposed to marriage, it\u2019s not off the table. It\u2019s not on the table either. It\u2019s sort of\u2026 <i>around<\/i> the table. I feel my hackles rise when someone implies our relationship is less than someone else\u2019s who signed a piece of paper.\n\nI watched marriages fall apart my whole childhood and teens. I watched as friends\u2019 parents tried \u201cPart Two\u201d, I watched as marriages within my own family, immediate and extended, imploded under the weight of collective expectations.\n\n\u201cI just want to live with someone for a few years before I marry them,\u201d say my friends who are dating. They want \u201cpartners,\u201d they want to play house-house until they have to go do grown-up things. Marriage is such an adult institution. How do you ever know you\u2019re old enough?\n\nAll this would be okay, if we didn\u2019t live in a country as obsessed with marriage as India. Some families have your wedding pictured almost as soon as you\u2019re born. Others hang on to heavy gold jewellery. I have some gold things myself, which had apparently been earmarked for me back in the day, which I had never laid eyes on.\n\nFinally, in my 30s, I said I\u2019d like to at least see them. Get some pleasure out of them even if they were never worn for their \u201ctrue purpose\u201d. No one ever gives you a gold chain for your first lease co-signed with the person you love.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\nThe other thing is, my partner and I are different nationalities. To be married would make everything easier, at least in terms of travel. Then I talk to a friend\u2019s English wife. \u201cI can\u2019t work for two years,\u201d she said, \u201cI had to sign a paper saying I was dependent on my husband and in-laws for income.\u201d She shook her head. In two years, she\u2019ll get an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) card.\n\nI can\u2019t imagine my partner agreeing to be financially dependent on me for two years. \u201cIs this true for men as well?\u201d I ask her. She shrugs, \u201cProbably not.\u201d\n\nI Google \u201cIndia Spouse Visa\u201d. The Bureau of Immigration says, employment\/business is not allowed on a spouse or \u201cX\u201d visa. If my partner married me, in two years, he\u2019d have an OCI card. However, he\u2019s been in this country for six years now, and another few and he should be able to ask the government for a PIO card, with or without me. Or so I hear. The internet is vague despite my search terms.\n\nOn the other side, I check my requirements to go to his country, if we were married. I still need a visa, the website tells me, but I\u2019ll get it for free.\n\nIf we both still need visas, it makes the whole thing somewhat pointless. So little paperwork involved when you are not followers.\n\nI know someone who knew someone who broke up with her partner. They had a child together. I was always struck by how easy it was to walk away: homes divided, child comforted, and voila, you were free to live your life.\n\nThat\u2019s an argument people use a lot. So easy to walk away. They think of marriage as an obstacle course, of people unhappy in a marriage as goldfish in a shark tank. Even if they\u2019re unhappy, they won\u2019t leave, because it\u2019s so difficult to. However, in my experience, the only thing more difficult than months of paperwork and lawyer visits to \u201cunmarry\u201d yourselves, is the stab of crushing loneliness you feel at 3 am when you still can\u2019t sleep because the person next to you is someone you\u2019d rather was very, very far away.\n\nThis relationship is not old India, not at all, but neither is divorce. If you can live with that, maybe you can live with this as well.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a people big on weddings, the \u201cno-frills, no-fuss\u201d of live-in relationships takes some getting used to. We\u2019d better. Living in sin is in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex","tag-boyfriend","tag-divorce","tag-family","tag-india","tag-living-in","tag-marriage","tag-relationships","tag-sin","tag-spouse"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Until Marriage Do Us Part<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For a people big on weddings, the \u201cno-frills, no-fuss\u201d of live-in relationships takes some getting used to. We\u2019d better. 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