Marriage has become an outdated concept today. There is hardly any sustainability left in this system. Interestingly, apart from the two individuals directly involved, no one seems truly keen about it. Yet society continues to force both people into this act.
You might wonder why I call it a crime, or perhaps even feel anger at that word. But think about it. In most cases, marriages today end up in the police station, the legal court, or the invisible court of society. What else should we call it, if not a crime? One becomes the victim, the other the accused, and the entire process becomes a social drama played in public.
I came across the tragic news of two women who took their own lives abroad. Whenever the victim is a woman, the media flashes it across every platform. But when a man takes the same step, it hardly gets noticed. The second case that caught my attention was from Sharjah, a young woman who hung herself. Her father later admitted that they already knew the man was a drunkard with mental health issues. Yet they went ahead with the marriage because they feared, “What will people say if we cancel it after the engagement?” How reckless is that?
This mindset shows the deep decay within our society. Parents are often the silent cause of these deaths. Being someone with Malayali roots, I can confirm that many households in Kerala still suffer from this disease of social pressure. Men, especially, have not evolved much in their gender understanding. They appear modern on the surface but remain outdated within.
No marriage today seems truly successful. The very idea of giving full-time space and legal binding to another person under an imposed contract feels suffocating. And ironically, while marriage itself is collapsing, customs like dowry and social status still thrive as if frozen in time.
Another disturbing layer in modern marriages is the increasing use of drugs and intoxicants. Many young people, both men and women, fall into substance abuse, sometimes out of stress, sometimes out of influence. This destroys not just their bodies but also their emotional and sexual health. A relationship that could have been built on affection turns into one of tolerance, suspicion, and distance.
Adding to that, there is a severe lack of sexual awareness. Many couples step into marriage without understanding physical intimacy, compatibility, or emotional respect. This ignorance leads to dissatisfaction, frustration, and eventually, alienation. Instead of partnership, what grows between them is silence.
In many cases, women end up in trauma bonds, staying in abusive or manipulative relationships because they are emotionally trapped, believing that endurance is love. The fear of loneliness, family reputation, or children’s future often keeps them bound, even when they know it is destroying them inside.
Marriage, once considered sacred, has now lost its soul. It has become a mere social ritual, an event of expectation, pressure, and pretense. Until we redefine it with mutual respect, equality, and freedom, it will continue to create more victims than unions.
Very true
In my family itself my mother started tension when my eldest sister turned 18 . She wanna get her married to someone because she thinks after 18 it’s a big problem in the society if she didn’t get married
And when I talked to another friend of mine , she was forced to get married becoz the groom is a government employee n that end up in divorce