What is your best advice for married couples?

Dear men and women, kindly don't make your marriage the victim of ‘equality syndrome’.

Now before you start criticizing me left and right, read the article completely.

A marriage isn't supposed to be equal in the ways we want but that doesn't make it unequal.

For Women:

As a girl, I know you and I expect our husband to be supportive of our dreams, and would want him to take up half of the household chores and other family responsibilities of family and children.

I know how unfair it is when we work for the same hours but somehow magically it is us who always do the 80% of the house hold work. We might come around at the same time from office, he relaxes while we toil in the kitchen.

Seems misogynistic? Right?

Well, before making opinions, how about a thought about the financial management of the house? For example, in most cases, who earns and puts in more money in the Indian house? The man or the woman?

And let's talk about an average Indian household.

Most financial stability and securing financial future is provided by men in the Indian marriages even as of now in 2019 in majority of marriages.

If you earn 40k and your husband is making 80k, and you're putting in 20k and he is putting 60k in the active household, that means he is shouldering 75% of active financial aspects.

Maybe the woman and the man works for the same number of hours, but we cannot deny that in India financial security and department is given to men. I have seen almost all women who gave up their jobs after marriage and pregnancies in their early to mid thirties to take care of their home and family.

This choice, sadly does not lie with men.

A woman can choose to work if she wants and not if she doesn't want it.

Men just don't have the luxury of that choice.

For Men:

The first pillar of equality falls down the moment she leaves her parents, family, city, surname, job, friends, lifestyle and move into your world. Her in-laws, I. E your family becomes her primary family which should be given preference over her own birth family. As a man you might not realize, but this is a huge, a huge and a very difficult sacrifice to make. Imagine leaving your everything and moving into a completely new world.

Secondly, just like the major portion of financial aspect falls on the man no matter what, the domestic aspect of marriage falls on a woman most of the times.

Her career, her dreams, her own individuality suffers a setback. Even if she continues working and makes money, she still has to come to a home and family that is waiting for her to cook and clean and be the traditional woman.

So if she's shouldering the major aspect, say 80–90% of domestic chores, it would be unwise to expect her to participate equally in the money game.

You might call her a gold digger, or you might call him misogynistic and patriarch. You might want to protect your assets from her and demand she shares the equal money burden as you or you might be the most modern woman around who feels bad in cooking meals for her husband, but sit down and take a deep breath and for once think about what's your spouse is doing for the home and the marriage too.

In most case men take up 80–100% of the financial aspect of a home. The ratio rises after the age 35. Same way most women in their middle age tends to take up 80–100% domestic chores in the Indian society forgoing their career.

This mind is of the traditional way of establishing equality and might not go well down with lots of guys and girls now where men took up money and women took up home.

This is called as sexism now.

You might say that back in the time people had unhappy and abusive marriages.

Well has the modern approach changed that?

I see unhappy and unhealthy marriages even now.

I see the children who are an outcome of unhealthy marriages even now.

I don't see any positive change in the marriage system. Are modern marriages any more successful than the traditional ones that happened 30 years back?

The modern approach that believes in perfect equality gives an ethiopian approach where the girl and the guy should earn almost equally, they should contribute equal money, have equal assets, equal work hours, equal domestic contributions, be equal in everything and should maintain this equality for their entire life.

Anyone who is a rational human will know that such kind of equality does not exist.

This perfect equality myth might be good for Quora upvotes, but in reality marriage doesn't work on such parameters. In some cases, the burden falls on the man, in other cases, the burden falls on the woman. I don't know about you, but I have never seen a couple who has achieved a perfect equality in their marriage in all aspects, especially after kids and have maintained that equality for their entire lives.

The ratio might be 110:90 or 115:85, but it will work. The ratio should never be 150:50, 140:60 though. This won't work.

The modern approach of equality can only work where:

The women: I know it feels nice to have a husband who can pamper us and can contribute equally in the home, but it would only be fair when we will be up for contributing exactly equal to him monetarily in the house. Else it will just burden him more.

The men: I know it feels nice to have a wife who can support you financially by contributing almost equal money in finances, but it is only fair when you can support her by taking up half of her domestic responsibilities. Else it will put much more burden on her.

Either we need to live by the traditional way of equality, or if we want to establish the modern approach, we need to inculcate it in the right form in our lives.

Mixing both traditional and modern approach of gender equality in marriage that too all at once will lead to what is already happening around us.

Unhappy marriages and divorces.

‘Once a tree was crying out loud about a boy eating the fruits it had grown after several seasons of hardwork and how unfair it was. A bird sitting on the branch smiled and told the tree to wipe the tears and look down below at the same boy working day after day bringing in the best of fertilizers and water for the tree, working tirelessly for the tree’s betterment, thus empowering it to grow those very fruits which the tree thought to be only his hardwork and ignoring what the boy was doing for it.’

Equality comes in different sizes, shapes, patterns and actions. We just need the maturity to recognize it.