I was trying to summarize my day while sitting at my window looking at the starts with a cup of tea in my hand.
It had been a long time since I had such a productive day. Haven’t felt this way for a long time. Well,In the end,it’s just about doing the things you like with a smile on your face and without any regrets.

We live in such a competitive world where everyone is trying to outdo the next person but is it really necessary? And is it not enough that you have lived to see one more day of your life and to be with the people who love you? Well, we all have different perspectives on life and different ways of living our life. And it’s better to live your life on your own terms.

For me i to let my heart free from the suffering, It was the moment when I realized it was better to leave than to fight with the person i have loved so much before. Where I have to force myself to say or do something, or live with someone I am not happy with. I have been separated from Ashis (my husband) for two years now. And yes, I feel lighter at heart and free from the obligations.

It is possible that I did not succeed in my married life and its nobody’s fault if a relationship does not workout. When you get married to someone, there are some unsaid expectations set towards each other, which without your knowledge become obligations and become a roadblock to communication at a later stage.

I too have seen people having problems in their life and trying to fix it at any cost as the first rule of marriage is not to give up on each other. I agree that to make this beautiful relationship work it needs a lot of adjustments and sacrifices. But in most of the cases its the women in the relationships who do it often. Why is it like that !
Are the guys a little incapable of handling emotions or is it the tendency of showing off that nothing is affect them.

My experiences may have led me to assume many things since I did not have the same level of effort in that relationship. We both knew each other before we got married and we made a conscious decision to get married after we had known each other for a long time. I liked his vibrant personality and he liked the calmness in me. We thought we could strike the right balance in life.

But the expectations that were set at the beginning of the marriage did not last for long .Truely, marriage is a test of your patience every day. Its not easy to put yourself in someones position and to understand the situation before reacting to it. It had been almost 7 years since we got married, and everything had been going smoothly. But then the point came where we could not stand each other’s presence in the same room ,

I would never complain that Ashis has not tried his best, because he has. Knowing him and his personality he had tried his finest to come in to the same page as mine .Yet instead of both of our efforts it didnt work out .It does not matter who has done more mistakes or why did it end . Both people involved in that relationship were suffering. And maybe its for the good that it ended.

For the initial years Ashis and I were the perfect couple in our friends’ group. Though we both were the exact opposite personalities to each other. Me being indoersi and him being an outdoor person who loved travelling and spending time outside, where as I preferred spending time in my room with my books, music rather than in my comfort zone. I never liked travelling much.

During those years, I tried my best to convince myself to go with him to parties and outings because I thought that would make him happy. And he too had compromised a lot of time to stay with me rather going out and spending time with his friends.

One thing was there that we could never lie to each other about anything and we never felt the need to do it. He knew what type of person I was and i knew what type of person he was before marriage. And we had agreed to make the relationship work at any cost .

Even though i tried to go out as often as possible but i didnt enjoy it much and he too understood that and he never forced me to go . In time, I stopped going to his things and he began spending more time with his friend, while I began spending more time at home with my books and doing household chores, and we had fewer things to discuss even when we were both at home.

When I realized we were losing communication and that something wasn’t going right. I had to do something and I asked him to spend more time with me. When you have been in a relationship for more than five years at that point its not just about love . Its about the commitment to make it work. At that point you might know everything about each other both good and bad things . And maybe you will start noticing the bad things more than the good things.We both had decided to take out some time for each other keeping our work aside .

You might not like few things about your partner after a certain period of time. However, it takes a lot of courage and commitment to stick by a person after knowing the bad habits of him . I never liked his habit of drinking habit that he had . Though i know its very common to have a drink ofent when you work in the corporate world ,and it never bothered me until a point when one night he didnt come back home and i was trying to reach him all night. Later tomorrow morning, I found out he had been in an accident. Though he was not injured much , but as he was drunk he didnt realize he lost his phone at that time and i was dying being worried and running from one of his friend’s house to anothre.

I had thought he would stop drinking after the incident and he would realize the seriousness of the situation but he never did. And the drinking game continued. I had tried my best to keep him out of it. However,it was not in my hand to control a person’s will power if they don’t want to give up a bad habit. And the frequency of him staying out with his friends has increased since the time we have been distant from each other.

I had tried to talk to his friends and hoped maybe he would listen to them. But nothing worked on him. And it had started affecting his work as well, without him realizing it.Wheenever i tried to explain it to him and make him understand the seriousness of the situation. We ended up fighting and he left the house with anger. And I would end up crying all night trying to find more ways to make him come back to me again.

I would call up his father (my father in law) to tell him about Asish. Throughout our marriage, he has treated both me and Asish as his children. He understood the situation i was going through. And he too had tried his best to make him understand the situation. Though my inlaws were staying in a different city, my father in law came running when he got to know about the situation. At that time, he sympathized a lot with me. Asish was not anywhere near to be saved anymore. He has moved in a different direction in his life.

After a few months, I realized I had been so focused on a person who does not want to change and i have been losing myself and my patience meanwhile. It started affecting my work as well. I could not take it anymore. My father in law was the first peoson who i had informed about wanting for a separation . I could hear the trembling voice of him on phone . He had been there for me and supported me all along .My family too was in a shock but end of the day it was my decision and I knew what I wanted from life at that point of time .

I had moved out of the house. I was living with my parents for a few days but after i found my own place and decided to spare my parents from seeing their child go through something everyday . I knew i would feel lonely and i knew i would have breakdowns which i had on consecutive nights. Yet i survived those nights somehow. And i got to a point at least to ahev the courage to get up from bed and go to my work everyday , And after i started going back to work, I felt like my life was getting back on track.

One and a half years later, my father in law passed away. Me and Ashish hadn’t spoken at all since then. And when I had gone there, I saw Ashish and I felt sorry for him. I wondered if I could have tried a little longer or if I could have given him a second chance.

I rushed to him and hugged him , he cried like a baby in front of me . Though he never listened to his father but i knew how close he was to him in his own way.
I knew he needed that emotional support at that time and even though he has done some mistakes , i will have to be there for him in the respect of the relationship we had and the time we spent together .

After his father passed away, he had stopped drinking. Being the only son in his family he had to act responsible and be there for his mother at that point. I could sense the grief he was going through , even though I had not forgiven him for whatever he did , i just could not see him going through it all alone and i had to be there for him.

I had been going often to his house to check up on him and his mom . And luckily i had the same loving bond with his mom that i had when ashis and i got married . Later one day me and ashis were talking about some of the finances that he had to take care and as i was the one who always take care of the finances , he had asked me for help .

That day while going through his dad’s things he boke down and maybe he also realized the moments he had missed with him and things he didnt do for him and moments he was not there for him in need . He said “maybe its too late to say sorry to my father for all these but i can say sorry to you for being so distant from you and not being there for you whenever you needed me ”. I could not say anything but i knew that it came with the feeling of realization of his mistakes .

Later, after a few months, he asked me to give our relationship another try . Though i knew he has changed now , but i could not let go of the negative emotions that i had gone throgh.Then i thought everyone diserves a second chance then why not our relationship. At this current time we both are not staying at the same house but or we didnt just to the conslusion to restart our relationship instantly , But we dicided to understand eachother a little more this time. We are meeting each other on dates and getting to know each other all over again without any obligations. And this has certainly helped both of us to get a new perspective on life and on each other.

I don’t know what the future of this new found relationship with a person whom i knew from decades or how is it going to turn out in future . All I know is that situations in our lives make us better people. And maybe the same has happened to Ashis. Any kind of relationship needs a lot of work in order to survive the ups and downs in life. And humans do make mistakes, but we correct those mistakes and move forward.

Life’s plan for you is much better than yours. Just trust the process, it will get better.

Yours Dotting Writer
Anindita Rath