Dear Jasmine #18: Make Some Space

"To belong and to be a part of something bigger than ourselves ties us to the magic of being alive."

Art by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Question 18: 

Dear Jasmine, 

As a foodie when I was a child, I told my mother that when I grow up I would marry a chef so that I could eat delicious every single meal. To which my mother replied, “That’s great, longing for love. But, if you become self-sufficient and independent you could have the liberty to hire the best cooks to eat delicious meals.”

Years after, here I am — self-sufficient, content, financially independent and successful in my own way. There is nothing more I wish to have except a person I could spend my life with. Every person I choose leaves me a week before the scheduled engagement date, saying, “You are too good for me” “You are studious” “You are over-ambitious in your career” or “You are too dynamic and women who run families and have husbands should not be fast”. I feel broken and fit for nothing. I am torn apart between compromising on myself to fit in their boxes and losing them for they have a piece of my heart! 

Will I find the person who loves and also marries me (the previous one did love me but was scared to marry) for who I am? Even if I don’t will life be fulfilling and joyful? Why are marriages still imposed on people when they are meant to be natural and heartfelt? At 30, a part of me is unable to keep up with the timelines the ‘society’ has set! I am tired emotionally and can’t take it more!
— Longing Love

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Answer 18: Make Some Space

Dear Longing Love, 

In part 1 of the book Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, Sharanya Bhattacharya narrates the break-up of an Indian woman who is successful, financially independent, socially mobile, and privileged enough to cry in a fancy hotel room. She describes this break-up from a third-person point of view in which the woman who has been dumped is analysing why her ex left her and why she wasn’t good enough for him. The author of the book isn’t a ‘writer’ in the true sense, but I believe that the choice to write about the emotional journey of this woman’s break-up from a third-person point-of-view is powerful because almost all women can relate to it. 

Women tend to wonder what is it about them that has driven the men away. Was it their weight, their body type, their friends, their family, their job, their opinions, their expectations in bed and in life, their emotional needs, and on and on it goes. Women are conditioned to keep asking themselves — Am I too much? Do I need to tone it down? If I were a little less, maybe he would love me a little more. You’re not alone in this emotional tumult faced by many, many women, Longing Love. Trust me, and trust the Dear Jasmine inbox, there are multiple 30-year-old women wondering why men are fleeing from them. They keep asking themselves Is something wrong with us?

From time to time, I suspect all of us, irrespective of gender, might ask ourselves if something is wrong with us. Why don’t we fit in? Why doesn’t someone love me? Why are we lonely? I believe all these questions gravitate towards the human need to belong. We want to be a part of a community, to be seen by someone special, to be accepted for who we are, flaws and all. We crave a sense of belonging as an evolutionary trait and as a celebration of life. We are a species that has come this far because of communication, collaboration, and community. To belong and to be a part of something bigger than ourselves ties us to the magic of being alive. 

It is completely natural for you to crave to belong and to be loved. As we saw in the pandemic, more than anything, humans need humans to get by. As we have seen all around us, we need love in our lives. So, why is it hard for us to belong and to find love? Maybe because we’re all trying to find the same, specific kind of belonging and love that everyone else ordered. Maybe because we have been led to believe that all 8 billion of us must strive for the exact same kind of life. To me, that sounds like assembly line capitalism, not complex human needs and emotions. Doesn’t it? 

I don’t know if you will find the kind of love you’re looking for, Longing Love. But I do know you will be happy. I know that your life will be joyous and fulfilling. I am certain of that fact. You will have experiences that will take your breath away, both in a good and bad way. You will be called upon to be courageous, and you might heed that call into pain and beauty. You will realise an underrated fact that all 30-plus single women stumble upon — love comes in many different forms, and every single form of love that you receive will expand your heart and the breadth of your existence. 

Longing Love, you don’t seem to strike me as someone who has hinged her whole life on finding a mate. By your own admission, you’re doing well in other areas of your life and it only seems logical that now, with everything else momentarily achieved, you might want to pursue love. It is absolutely natural to want to be loved, but it is not a measure of who you are as a person. Unfortunately, our society is handing out achievement certificates to those who marry. Are these certificates worth anything? I don’t think so. I know you’re wonderful from how these men describe you. You are too good. You are ambitious. You are dynamic. These qualities are not an insult, so why take them as such? Believe these men and what they say about you, Longing Love. You’re amazing and you are better than them. You only want to be loved for who you are. That’s not a crime, is it?

It is great being in love, isn’t it? You are willing to open yourself a little bit more for that person. You are interested in their idiosyncrasies, in what makes them tick. You have vivid dreams about them that make you question the depths of your own mind. You listen to the songs they like and think about whether they are thinking about you. The music is heightened. Their slightest touch makes you shiver. The last words they said to you keep playing on your mind. 

Then, one day, all this becomes routine and we start to look at the plateau of life with this person. Is that when they say you’re a little too much for them, a little too ambitious, or too focused? Is that when the music stops and before the engagement altar, they flee? Tell me something, Longing Love, why do these men deserve to be with you if they’re not going to take you as you are — in banal and in enthral? 

Walk away from anyone (and I mean this also for non-romantic relationships) who makes you feel small in any way. Thank these men for making you feel giddy in the head and butterflies in your gut, and let them leave. I’m sorry that this is the way your relationships have panned out, but they are not a sign for you to bend and mend into another way of being. Maybe this is a sign that you deserve to choose better men going forward. Maybe this is a sign that you need to heal the childhood wounds that put you in these patterns. Maybe this is a sign that men have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe this is a sign that there are no signs — sometimes life is unfair, society hasn’t caught up with your emotional evolution, and your self-worth has nothing to do with anyone else but you. 

You are not the only 30-year-old Indian woman who feels the pressure of marrying, Longing Love. Statistics suggest that there are numerous 30-year-old women in India and across the globe facing the same conundrum as you. In the Indian context marriage, after all, is social insurance. It allows women (no matter how independent) to live a little freely. You can go out with a man on your hand at any time of the day. You can continue to work and hold your own money. You can have sex without prying eyes, shielded from the moral vanguard of Indian society. Marrying well allows Indian women continued social and financial mobility. Marriage is a privilege. Marrying the ‘right’ man is freedom. It surprises me how everyone still keeps asking women what they want when it is amply clear that women want the freedom to make their own decisions, they want the freedom to live their lives unencumbered. Even if it means marrying someone in exchange.

After I wrote my last column for 2022, I took a break from everything, including my house, and went away to be with myself. I did not pine, outrage, or break down. If nothing else, I decided I wasn’t going to feel sorry for what had happened to me. I wasn’t going to mourn the people I had lost. I wasn’t going to stand in front of a mirror and wonder why men didn’t love me – healthy body, great breasts, fascinating mind and all to take me home. I wasn’t going to mull around drinking red wine wondering what was wrong with me and how I could possibly turn it into poetry. As far as I was concerned, nothing was wrong with me, nothing still is. I was heartbroken, disillusioned, and didn’t know what would become of me. So, I started to do what I had written here for so many of you — I started fighting for joy and being defiant for love. As I write this column to you, I have not felt sorry for myself for a single day since then, and you know what? I don’t miss it.

I was so tired of being emotionally strung around and spread thin that I ceased to care. My whole life had become a travelling circus moving on foot from town to town trying to please this crowd, that village, and some motley mix of unknown faces. I was tired of being performative. I didn’t want to do it anymore. So, I just stopped.

Stop it. Longing Love. Stop thinking you need to have a society-approved life in order to be happy. You don’t. 

You get to decide the terms of your life. It is a battle, yes, but you have the courage for it. You get to re-imagine a social order by living a different life that is so glimmering and so bold, it knocks the daylights out of everyone. You get to choose what this chapter of your life looks like instead of mimicking others. You get to change the way single women are perceived (not that this is your burden, but you could make a dent in the single-women-are-pitiful universe). Someday a man worthy enough of you will love you for it. Or someday you’ll realise why not having a man opened up your life in ways you couldn’t have imagined. Either way, let go of the idea that your life needs to be a certain way. Let go of your own expectations of the template you need to follow. Let go of your own pity party. 

Make space for possibilities to rush in and surprise you. I promise you, it will be more magical than what you could have asked for. 

Love,
Jasmine

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Dear Jasmine is a monthly column by an anonymous writer. If any of you want to send in questions, please send them to Jasmine here.