The Politics of Compromising
Growing up, I’d often hear from the women around me that every relationship required compromise. Compromise according to Merriam Webster means “settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions”. Which, makes sense in all honesty; you give some, you take some. But funnily enough, the word itself means something entirely different within the South Asian societies, where the term is rarely ever used to mitigate a scenario. Instead, it is almost always used to remind us of the patriarchal construct that remains deeply rooted in our everyday lives.
August 2018, my cousin is soon-to-be-married to the man she loves. We are all sitting around her, applying henna onto her palms and singing folk-songs. The older women watch over us in an approving manner, until one of them decides to bring up the topic of marriage and married-life itself. It starts off with a list of what to expect, how to always be in the right, to please your partner and your in-laws and basically how to adjust to your new lives.
Adjust, that’s another word now. It is always about easing into the family, making them want you, even after they’ve wholly accepted you as the ideal partner for their son. You leave the house you grew up in, your neighbourhood, your family, everything that’s familiar to you (in some cases, even your last name) and you are now stepping out into new territory. Ideally, this should all be seen as part of growth, not entirely cutting out the comforts of your life but growing as an individual with someone else besides you now, right?
Wrong. Compromises in desi relationships, go beyond that. It is not just the body that you lose your ownership over, it is your entire being. The patriarchal wet dream is to be a married woman who ‘kills’ (the right word here, in my opinion) off any remaining version of her former self and spends the rest of her life in servitude. Servitude does not have to necessarily coincide with dropping any of your career goals or your friends (in middle-class communities, it is a bit different), but little by little, you are expected to let go certain parts of your personality; what makes you, YOU basically.
My cousin is happily married. Or so she tells us. There is no doubt that she loves her partner to bits, has made a pretty good career for herself and now has a baby on the way. Yet I cannot help but remember, all the times when the entire gaggle of cousins would be planning a trip, a picnic or just an informal gathering of any kind — my cousin would always back out. Not willingly that is; her partner would still tell her to go but the elders would chide her for leaving him on his own. On his own for ten days, with his own personal housekeeper and four other people around him, it should be okay, right?
Wrong again. Apparently compromise is not a two-way street in South-Asian societies, it is a never-ending road that women often end up walking alone. Not only is it all about trips and gatherings, but it also comes down to doing things differently. No longer, do you do things for fun; it all means business. You can go out with the girls, but not past a certain time. You can choose to do whatever you want with your own free time, but when your partner returns, you should be completely and utterly devoted to him. Sure, the bedroom is another territory but outside of it everything is prim, proper and should be to the satisfaction of the in-laws.
Some people counteract the ‘C-word’ by moving away early in their lives, dissociating from immediate family at times. But what of the woman, who is told that time and again she will have to keep shedding her skin to ‘adjust’ to her new surroundings, whereas life remains static as ever for the man? I don’t recall any of my male cousins ever having to worry about compromising; sure, finances are one thing; but they don’t really feel the pressure of changing themselves to please and cater to a third party.
People outside of my immediate family masking themselves as my ‘well-wishers’ often tell me that are supportive of whatever I choose to do with my life, yet whenever the topic comes up; I am always told to give in just the tiniest bit because they are aware, (and rightfully so, at times), this society (basically, them)is not kind to those who do not bend even the slightest. I am told that no matter how good of a partner I get in my life, how good of family I marry into; I am told that somewhere down the line I will always have to ‘compromise’.
It is wrong to call it ‘compromising’ in this context. I call it, emotional subjugation. I call it, bending to societal whims. I call it a patriarchal fantasy. Marriage/Partnerships SHOULD be a two-way street. No one should be bending, but giving in to each other and building a relationship on complete trust, free from unnecessary dependence of any sort. To not lose parts of yourselves to please others around you, but to bring these parts together on the table, and use it as the building blocks of a new journey, a new relationship — Now that is a COMPROMISE.
