Column

I think God must be a man. A man intent on making me eat humble pie. (I fervently hope it’s low-fat at the very least!) Why else, after writing tomes on the reprehensible commitmentphobic man would I be repeatedly brought face-to-face with an urban relationship phenomenon so alien that it ostensibly belies all Mars/Venus logic?

Move over Monsanto soybeans, the hottest GM phenomenon today is the commitmentphobic woman. Years of dating gambles, heartbreaks, ugly spats, infidelity and male vacillations have genetically altered their emotional map forever. Yes, the essentially male bastion of commitmentphobia has been stormed by modern chiquitas, who rather than gushing ‘I Do’ at the sight of the man on a bended knee with a Hope Diamond ring, are running a mile... in the opposite direction!

I have more and more men friends SOS dialing me to relate their woes of love where the girl just won’t say yes though she doesn’t quite ever say no either. They hang around for years trying the ‘just friends’ and then the ‘jilted ex’ routine, all ostensibly in a bid to ‘get over her’. But they are all convinced that ‘she is the woman’ for them and thus keep taking umpteen rounds around the mulberry bush, waiting for her to have the eureka moment and say yes.

It’s ironic really; more and more young men today consider marriage a safe haven they can’t wait to enter. After all, a well-kept home, home-cooked meals, guaranteed sex, and a pretty and intelligent girl on your arm to call your own (even better if she brings in some dough) is the fairytale they have been falling asleep to since childhood.

The women on the other hand have woken up, grown beyond fables and moved on.
They earn their own money, have their own minds and don’t necessarily want to ‘settle down’ even if they fall in love and want to exclusively be with that person. They want to have their careers on their own terms, travel, meet people and continuously expand their minds. All of this of course, is severely askance to the man’s nuptial idyll. Further, it doesn’t help that the women have started seeing scores of relationships before and around them as they really are. They see the sweetest of promises and poetry turn sour under the shadow of infidelity, acrimony, accusations and eventual separations. And when people opt to stay together there are the marriages of compromises that are scarily clinical in their unspoken quid pro quo agreements. ‘You support my fledgling entrepreneur ambitions, I turn a blind eye to your ‘business trips’with your pretty colleague’ or ‘You keep my house, my name and my children, but don’t try and have an opinion on my work and my life. You’re a woman after all!’ Then, rather than risk an ugly ending, women desist from the ‘I Dos’ altogether. It just looks too painful an eventuality to endure.

How foolish one might say, turning away from love for the fear of loss; that’s almost akin to cutting off one’s nose to spite the face. But then again, what is love? Is it just chemistry, attraction and affection for another good human being? What if beliefs, ideals and life goals differ drastically? Grandma’s advice would say compromise. But life has shown us time and again that one can perhaps adjust to a toothpaste tube squished midway and musical snoring in the dead of the night but ideological gaps aren’t that easily bridged. And the girls are waking up to this reality and taking a long hard re-look at love which ‘sometimes just ain’t enough’ as Patti Smyth sang heartrendingly many moons ago.

But who’s to explain all this to my lovelorn friends as they nod sagely at whatever I say and then go running back, bouquet and diamond in hand the minute the girl looks like she might give the nod. And much as I sympathise with the romantic cul the sac my friends are stuck in, I can’t help but stop a minute and have a hearty laugh to myself. God HAS TO be a woman; who else could have turned the tables on men so smoothly? It’s so deliciously ironic that it’s almost wicked!
deblina@dnaindia.net