RELATIONSHIP SPECIAL..... JUST MARRIED AND ALREADY DIVORCED

JUST MARRIED AND ALREADY DIVORCED  Marriage appears to have an earlier expiry date today than ever before. Younger couples are choosing to call it quits rather than work on the relationship, sometimes just a few months into their union. Are rising impatience and communication breakdown to blame?      Last year, a 20-something couple indulged in a lavish marriage that appeared to be straight out of Band, Baaja, Baaraat. Their marital bliss, though, faded along with the mehendi. Elsewhere in South Mumbai, a young couple, both children of successful businessmen, couldn’t stand their union just a few months into their marriage. They ended it with a nine-figure settlement.     Instances of marriages dying a quick death are not unusual today. Lawyers practising at the family court in Bandra say the trend is for divorce to come through at a younger age among newly married couples. “There is a certain impatience among new couples to fit in well within each other’s expectations. If that fails, an increasing number would rather walk out than work on their marriage,” says Mridula Kadam, a leading lawyer at the family court, which is where most such couples head.     A young woman of 25 married to a man of 27, both professionals—she into computer software and he a finance consultant—had a marital meltdown within four months of getting hitched. Their only communication mode were their mobile phones and iPad. Last year, 12 months after they exchanged garlands, they exchanged court documents, ready to move on.     Younger couples usually end their brief wedded life amicably, without ugly allegations, and file mutual consent divorce petitions right away. What comes in their way is not their family or ego but the one-year mandatory separation prescribed in the family law that even applies to a joint divorce plea. And after it is filed, a sixmonth cooling-off period, which is still a law though the Parliament had mooted a bill to drop it.     Mrinalini Deshmukh, a celebrity lawyer in Mumbai, says, “Mutual consent petitions among young couples are clearly on the rise and younger people prefer going about it amicably more often than not.” A six-month waiver to speed up the path to a hassle-free freedom would by far be the most helpful edict, say urban couples and reformist lawyers.     This trend is also partially a result of communication disconnect, say therapists. Varkha Chulani, a psychotherapist at Lilavati Hospital, gets such couples on a daily basis. She says, “The biggest problem is communication. The point is to save the individual and work towards a common path. If it is not workable, it’s not advisable to stay in an unhappy relationship.”     Chulani, though, adds, “The stigma is diminishing but there is still a kind of emotional non-acceptance that one had no choice but to get divorced.”     “What you need to build in a marriage are compassion and patience, which need emotional energy. People lack it in a fastpaced urban lifestyle,” adds social psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty. “A divorce is not about shame or applause. It may be a necessity, at times.”     Divorce data shows that the “necessity” to file for divorce has more than doubled in the past decade in family courts across Mumbai, Delhi and Madurai. The associated stigma has reduced even in semi-urban society and couples often quickly conclude within months of their wedding vows that they are just not that into each other anymore.

Swati Deshpande | TNN TOI130502