Young Couples and Difficulties and Challenges in Marriages

Dr. Francis Eluvathingal

The scope of this paper is to evaluate and to identify the difficulties and challenges young couples face in their married life. As specified in the Canon Law, by marriage a man and a woman enter into a contract giving their personal consent to live together as partners for their whole life. This contract is for a life of love, caring, understanding, communion, fellowship, giving, taking, sacrifice, etc.  The model of Christian marriage as per St. Paul is the way Jesus loved the Church: a total self-giving even at the cost of sacrificing one’s own life (Eph 5: 25).

Various Possibilities of Marriages in the Catholic Migrant Context

In this changed times, one may be surprised to see different types of marriages among the migrants in mega cities such as arranged marriages, love marriages, civil marriage between two free persons, civil marriage between one divorcee and the other free, marriage between two divorcees, marriage into other religion, marriage of convenience, living together of free or divorced, etc. From among the total number of marriages more than 65% of them are arranged marriages between two Syro-Malabar Catholics. The remaining are arranged marriages or love marriages persons of other Catholic or non-Catholic Churches and about 10% with non-Christians.  

Some Experiences

Family issues related to love marriages are on the rise nowadays.

1.          Some love marriages between Catholics and non-Christians are contracted with the provision of the disparity of cult. But when they start living together, the faith matters a lot for each one. The disparity then leads to conflicts especially when there are children.

2.          The parents insist that a Catholic should get married only to another Catholic especially when they come to know about the religion of the other party. This situation forces the Catholic party to heed the plea of the parents and finally give consent to marry a Catholic. Unfortunately in some cases, they secretly continue the relationship with the person in love. This obviously leads to the break-up of marriage.

3.          Undue interference of the parents in the family life and decision making of the children leads to the break-up of marriage. Over possessiveness of the parents is found to be another reason.

4.          Spending time together during the marriage preparation course also benefits positively as they come to know each other in a deeper way. Sometimes they realize their incompatibility and they decide to cancel the marriage. Cancelling the marriages after fixing it or even after engagement is on the increase.

5.          The Church insists that a person must have sufficiently developed faculties of intellect and will, to be able to judge and to will a truly human act. Marriage involves decision making. Discretion of judgement refers to the capacity of intellect and will to specifically evaluate, decide and freely enter marriage. Intellectual maturity is the most basic level expected in the adults who make a commitment for whole life. But unfortunately in some adults this reasoning is overpowered by only emotions. Still worse situations occur when this reasoning is done by some other minds like parents, or other kith and kin.

Difficulties and Challenges:

1.     In the decision making process, who takes the final decision for the new family: the young couples or their parents? A decision forced on by the parents is undesirable. At the same time, many feel insecure about the decisions taken by the young couples alone as it lacks perfection. I would say, a perfect decision making should be a process where the young couples take the final decision with the constant consultation with the parents who would help them to evaluate and decide. A decision made by the parents against the will of the young couples is unjustified.

2.     I see serious dangers when the youngsters got married only because they were in love. The only reason for their marriage was ‘in love’. The other key factors for a successful married life were not taken into serious consideration. Love need not be the only component that sustains a whole life together but rather is one of the many important components. What is necessary is that one loves the partner whom one marries.

3.     Nowadays, one of the major problems of the young couples is having different faiths as a result of the Disparity of cult marriage. I analyse this problem as one where our youngsters do not have the conviction that the person whom they marry should also have the same faith. If our youngsters consider disparity of cult marriages as the fashion of the day, living our faith as one family will be almost impossible and it will result in the disintegration of the family thus the stability of the community will be at stake.  

4.     Conversion of heart only should lead to conversion to another religion. I fear sometimes that some non-Christians, get converted only for the sake of getting married. In these cases usually there is no living of faith in the families. The children, even if they are baptized, they are not given opportunities of family prayers, Sunday obligations, nor they are sent for catechism classes. In some cases, once the marriage is failed, even if they are converted Catholics, they just go back to their original religion and do not care for collaborating for anything further as per the laws of the church.

5.     Among the migrant families, the most of the cases the families are very small. They suffer from the lack of family bond and hence lack of strength. Hence the parents totally depend on their children for their future. Many parents especially mothers suffer from the insecurity feeling and hence show total dependence on their male children. This leads to undue interference in their family life. This phenomenon affects the growth of the newly wedded couple. There are complaints of the friction between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law which also leads to separated life of the spouses.

6.     One or two children in the family sometimes prevent the holistic development of the children. They get all they want and need not share with anyone else. This leads to selfishness and egoism. It is surprising to see the young families resist in sharing including their salaries together. These are against the basic concept of family values of giving and sacrificing. 

7.     The parents at that time of migration in order to get foot hold in these cities had to undergo lots of hardships. And they made sure that their children do not face the same difficulties. Many elderly parents do not share their problems with their children but they suffer in private. And some others do not include their children in the decision making process. The parents take care of each and every need of the family and of the children. Hence most of the children lack practical knowledge and experience even to do small or big house hold activities. When their children get married and found new families, they do not know to take decisions, to handle many situations and do house hold activities.

8.     The young families undoubtedly need follow up programmes after their marriage and looking at the current development , this simply has to be done. The strain and stress of the job situations, increased financial burdens and loans, lack of other family members for offering a helping hand, etc. contribute tremendously to the pressure of the young families and they are not able to cope with the rigorous schedule of family life. These situations force them to neglect their prayer life and Sunday obligations etc.

9.     For the growth in faith, the small children need models and witnesses. In the Syro-Malabar Church tradition, the grand-parents were also god-parents at the time of baptism of their grand-children and they took initiatives for traditionally handing over the faith to their grand-children. They were either living together or close by and it was possible. Now among the migrant families, also because of lack of space in small flats or houses, most of the young families live separately from their parents and therefore the grand parents have no much chance to hand over the faith to their newly born grand-children. This will definitely affect the future of practising our faith in the young families.

10.   Career oriented women become independent in the families. They earn good salaries, sometimes more than men. These situations create problems such as inferiority complex in men, lack of time and lack of interest by the women in the family affairs, consideration of rearing children a burden, no qualitative and quantitative interaction with the extended family members etc. The females demands equality with the males to enjoy certain freedom.   

11.  The young families need lot of follow up by the pastoral team in the parishes. Frequent enquiry about the well-being of the families, making sure of their presence together for the ecclesial activities, informal talks about the life adjustments of the young families, invitation for counselling when problems are observed, etc. should be under the permanent vigilance of the pastoral team.

12.  Family counselling cell and reconciliation forums are the need of the hour to help.

13.  Some Practising Catholics do not have the wedlock. It is a challenge to our community and for its stability. Wedlock becomes a reason for anonymity for some migrants when they have contracted some irregular marriages.

14.  Alcoholism, TV/Internet/mobile addictions, fun-picnic loving nature, free movement with friends, relativism, consumerism, the onslaught of globalization, nuclear family culture, imitation of the western culture, development of technology and the resultant misuse of it, workaholism, wreaked havoc in the life and faith life are the other dangers affecting the married life.

CONCLUSION

The Syro-Malabar church has a very rich tradition and patrimony which our forefathers treasured, preserved and handed down through centuries along with unwavering faith. By upholding sanctity of marriage, fidelity in marriage, maintaining family ties and reputation they carried forward this legacy. The young couples need to cherish these traditions and give due worth for the spiritual customs and life. Though it might seem difficult, the pastors of the Church with the collaboration of all need to address the issues related to the young couples and to safe guard the faith of the individuals, families and the community.