Live-in Relationship

By Chakpram Priyanka *

Live-in relationship? Living with your BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND?

Without getting married?

This is the kind of response that the present youngsters come across in the Indian scenario when they decide to share a live-in relationship with their partners.

The credit for opting such a decision or step goes to the Western Culture where couples, before getting married, think that it is important to know each other in and out before shouldering the entire responsibilities that come along as a package along with the nuptial thread.

Well, so far, this is an accepted concept in the Western milieu but --- in INDIA?!

How can a conservative culture like ours allow such a contemporary idea that transmutes our very sacred social culture for which many of our great-great-great-grandparents have sacrificed their lives and have been preserving down the ages?

Orthodox families are, indeed, taken aback when they hear about the mantra of live-in relationship. But, at the same time, we cannot deny the fact that India is rapidly changing (whether towards the good or the bad, it is left for the public to judge).

What was once regarded as abhorrence has now become trendy in today's locale. A small instance such as Public Awareness Campaigns which vocalize on AIDS or the use of contraceptive pills or condoms would, at one point of time, had been stigmatized but now it has become a must to let youngsters as well as the older generations know the various pros and cons of certain issues in societies.

Whatever different attitudes people may have towards this modern idea of a live-in relationship, it is important – in fact the main reason why two people opt for it – to keep in mind that such a kind of relationship is for the better understanding of another human being with whom one is going to spend the rest of his/her life and whose actual nature and behaviour would not have been, otherwise, known thoroughly.

Before committing ourselves to a sacred institution like marriage, we have to know whether both the individuals are ready to take the plunge and maintain the vow forever.

It is better to break-up a love relationship rather than to get a divorce and turn the lives of a married couple into an everlasting hell.

However, the above view or idea on live-in relationship does not carry my personal inclination towards practising it. I don't believe in raising fingers of contempt to those who are unconventional or call them immoral.

I would very much appreciate them for challenging social confinements and for their bold individual definitions of life and contentment.

But, this does not necessarily mean that I will stand by their opinion or reject it. My own outlook towards life and making the most out of it may follow a different route but is never out in the battlefield to demean others' voices.