The Illusion of Love I Learned… from Movies…

Ever since I was a child, I watched movies where a perfectly ambitious, self-dependent woman would get married and almost instantly dissolve her identity into a good wife, a good DIL, a good mother, a good daughter --- everything… except herself.

She would stop relying on herself and become dependent on her husband. And it seems nobody cares, not even she herself.

How ironic! 

She is not the only one losing herself in this arrangement.

He is too.

Two things happens with him also, almost instantly:

1. The man, who is ambitious, settles into being a “family man” and somewhere along the way,
 forgets what he truly wanted. 

2. The one who could barely understand his own emotions is now expected to carry hers too, manage them and live around them for the rest of his life.

How ironic! 

If she can become a GOOD mother, wife, daughter-in-law, daughter, yet fail to be GOOD AND KIND to herself, 

And he can become a GOOD husband, father, brother, son-in-law, yet fail to be GOOD AND KIND to himself.

THEN how exactly is this “good” supposed to complete a relationship of two incomplete individuals?

Or

Does it leave them even more empty, even more alone?

It took me years to understand this:

Watching these movies can be as harmful as watching p*rn. Both sell an illusion. Both distort intimacy. Both teach you something that isn’t real.

They feed you a fragile, polished lie of what a nurturing, fulfilling relationship looks like.

Maybe couples should take a different oath while marrying:

Let us love each other, but not lose ourselves in each other.

Let us fill each other’s cups, but never drink from each other’s cup, so the choice to give, and how much to give always remains our own.

Let us be intertwined, strong, connected, inseparable, yet still showing our own bright, beautiful colors.

Let us stay whole in our own ways, even as we become one.