It
was yesterday that I stumbled onto an Instagram post by a cousin and close
friend saying that separate bedrooms for a married couple or partners who
choose to live together is a relationship bending route that shatters taboos
and ‘works wonders for intimacy and sanity’. I am mixed in my views about this growing
trend. The post speaks about how it also allows for hobbies, privacy and space.
My first reaction on reading this is that the entire day most couples engage in
own thing anyway and that bonding is oftentimes only at night. Intimate time
together in a ‘cocoon’ like space cut off from the rest of the universe to grow
your relationship is time bond in the busy schedules a couple normally keep. So you have the entire rest of your time to
pursue a hobby or a preoccupation in a den or an office in the time away from
each other.
On
further reflection I begin to realize that not all individuals are the same and
couples can begin to get onto each other’s nerves after the initial romance.
Maybe some individuals are better with each other in small doses? I have seen
older married couples being rather off-hand with each other to the point of
riding rough shod on each other’s opinions and conversation. Would some
distance help the kind of relationship which has begun to see the ravage of
long term taking for granted?
As
I spoke to couples I began to see that different body thermostats also could
become a serious issue in a marriage. I know of a childhood friend whose
marriage fell apart because he wanted the room chilled with the air-conditioner
and his wife couldn’t bear the cold, which had led to bitter battles. Differing
body clocks is also a big issue with a husband wanting to see the match late
into the night or the wife addicted to her sitcom. But does all this mean that couples lose the
ability to adapt and grow together into a unit that morphs and adapts ‘into one’.
Is it archaic of me to expect love to conquer all and be the uniting force.
Time was that families lived
together and now you hardly come across joint families. You see nuclear
families and especially in the big cities an old lady stumbling along alone is
a common sight. No family member to help her or be with her. An old man
carrying groceries with none offering a helping hand. Will this further extend
to couples fragmenting and marriage becoming an institution about two
independent minded adults asserting rights and brandishing pre-nups at the drop
of a pin? Changed values have diminished
joint families and married couples often communicate in short notes
matter-of-factly and many even place careers over having a child. Or worse
singledom over marriage. Not because they wish to but because it's more
'convenient'. So how far will this convenience thing go? Will it finally
arrive at separate homes? There is no end to the convenience lure.
In my book- with relationships- the best is the old fashioned way of
making things work with love, meeting halfway and adjusting timings,
temperatures, hobby timings and enjoying the journey savouring time together or
the wedge grows bigger and wider with excuses and self-centred desires. The gap
can gape bigger and wider with time until nothing is left. And yet the National
Association of Homebuilders in the USA predicted that dual master bedrooms
could become the new norm in custom-built homes.
Does this paint a rather pessimistic picture, reinforced by a changing
psychology that's more about "me”, 'e-mail' and 'myself"? Somewhere
in all this "advance" we seem to be defeating the joys of existence.
Personal contact, warmth of unscheduled interactions, touch- the human feel! We
don't need a psychiatrist to tell us that people, at least in cities, are often
painfully lonely. They want caring,
sharing people around.
It’s a paradox. I think while we want loving, caring, sharing relationships,
yet maybe we are not prepared to extend these qualities ourselves in this
‘me myself and I’ trend that is taking over the world. The answer lies of
course in realising that it is not only about sex and intimacy but about the
warmth and caring that grows with sleeping together, hugs, caresses, adapting
and sharing a space.
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It
was yesterday that I stumbled onto an Instagram post by a cousin and close
friend saying that separate bedrooms for a married couple or partners who
choose to live together is a relationship bending route that shatters taboos
and ‘works wonders for intimacy and sanity’. I am mixed in my views about this growing
trend. The post speaks about how it also allows for hobbies, privacy and space.
My first reaction on reading this is that the entire day most couples engage in
own thing anyway and that bonding is oftentimes only at night. Intimate time
together in a ‘cocoon’ like space cut off from the rest of the universe to grow
your relationship is time bond in the busy schedules a couple normally keep. So you have the entire rest of your time to
pursue a hobby or a preoccupation in a den or an office in the time away from
each other.
On
further reflection I begin to realize that not all individuals are the same and
couples can begin to get onto each other’s nerves after the initial romance.
Maybe some individuals are better with each other in small doses? I have seen
older married couples being rather off-hand with each other to the point of
riding rough shod on each other’s opinions and conversation. Would some
distance help the kind of relationship which has begun to see the ravage of
long term taking for granted? 
