#Letstalk
While love itself is still a taboo in many Indian families, getting your parents’ nod for loving someone with a significant age difference than you can be all the more daunting and far less fruitful. I was in a relationship with someone 9 years older than me. Though we did come across problems due to the age gaps, we loved each other above all that. I often imagined how he would look as a middle-aged man, and when he is graying.
I often imagined how he would look as a middle-aged man, and when he is graying. He is the man with whom I imagined to have kids with every time I imagined my future, and he was always a perfect father. And during the initial years of marriage, we would destress with takeouts and mouthing and be dancing to our favourite songs alone in our simple, happy home. He was the one with whom I imagined to fight in the mornings and make up by nights. The guy I imagined will animatedly talk my family into bouts of laughter when I sit in a corner and admire the moment. He was a baby to me, and I didn’t mean the slightest harm to him. He is the one I hardly went on dates with, kissed or even hugged for over a year, but someone I still imagined a future with. Despite all the pressure from all sides for both of us, I struggled hard to keep it going and was at times proud of what I had achieved. For someone who hates people, a picture of his family’s gathering pulled some part of my heart and I felt like I missed the fun and wanted to be a part of it. Despite voices around saying this will never workout I always wanted to see it end happily. Today, both the families have spoken and with my parents having said a stern ‘no’ to our relationship and chiding me for doing something ‘wrong’. I am struggling to stop myself from thinking the bag of tears in the brink and so far, doing a decent job of it. I wish we had the luxury of time for I am sure, I have it in me to fight it out with the families and make it work. After all, For someone brought up in an abusive household, he was the one I imagined to have a family with. But time is not even a luxury to us now. We have been fighting for ourselves for months now.
He is 32 and nine years older to me, with very old grandparents who wait to see him married. To every person who saw us and thought it was very weird and some who said that it is not love at all, thanks to you, I will bear the scars for life. He might soon be married to someone off a matrimony website. It was the practical step ahead and I’m sure he isn’t very doing it. And I am feeling raw, wounded and scared to face all those who know about us and will look at me sympathetically upon hearing news about his marriage.
Parents never try to harm their kids. If your parents don’t want you to marry someone with a huge age gap, they will have their reasons, he said.
But what hurts me is that my parents never got beyond the age gap. They have never spoken to him till date and did not make an effort to even consider why I liked him. They stuck to their ‘morales’ and didn’t care, even a little, as to how it would affect me. We in India have a lot to be worried about, for many houses have an unhappy kid like me, bearing the brunt of their parents’ fear of accepting reality.
Today, I cannot talk to him for I am not strong enough to hear or accept a closure, the reality that we might have to end it.