Is marriage really the end of love?

Socrates had a quarrelsome wife but when disciples asked him whether they should marry, he always advised them to. "If you are fortunate you'll get a good wife. If you get a wife like mine, you'll still be fortunate as she will help you become Socrates!" But people like Socrates are rare. Most men cannot handle the misery, and either escape or get frustrated. The same goes for women as well. In her marriage, a woman may find the most terrible person who makes life hell for her. In fact, in most Indian marriages, women suffer more than men. What is the way out of this misery? German politician Gabriele Pauli recently proposed that marriage contracts should be valid for seven years; after that couples who didn't feel the proverbial itch could renew them, else walk away. This may sound radical but it isn't. People are divorcing faster today and most of the marriages in the so-called first world don't last more than three years. Those that last have little life in them. Love is like a real flower. It doesn't live longer than it's meant to. But when love is converted into marriage, it starts to lose its tenderness. It acquires a plastic nature; plastic lives for as long as you wish it to but doesn't pulsate with life. Love, like life, is always insecure. It cannot promise to be forever. That's why it is really very precious. One moment of real love is more valuable than an eternity of plastic life. But most people with deep insecurities go for a plastic marriage rather than wait for the real throbbing life of love, for they are scared to live alone. Osho calls marriage the ‘coffin of love'. He says: "They all say that love is eternal, never dies. Absolutely wrong. Real love dies sooner than unreal love. Unreal love can live long; it is unreal, how can it die? If you are pretending, you can pretend as long as you want to." Osho also tells us: "Love needs only one thing, and that is courage. Courage to die into the other, to drop your own identity, your ego. Millions have decided not to love, but then life is misery, life is hell." "If one really wants to live, one must be ready for insecurity, and love brings the greatest insecurity in the world because love cannot promise tomorrow. Love is of the moment, for the moment, in the moment. Love can only speak for this moment, not for the next; the next remains open, vulnerable, insecure." "Love may be, may not be. Love has no guarantee whatsoever. Which is why people choose marriage over love. Marriage is secure and safe, guaranteed by the law and the government and the society and the church-something they can depend upon. But in that very choice they commit suicide for they will never really live." "Life itself is insecure. Life knows nothing of security. Death is very secure, so those who are cowardly choose death instead of life. They choose the false and the plastic instead of the real. And those who are courageous, they choose the real. They go with it, wherever it may lead. They surrender to it. They are ready to go into the uncharted and the unknown and the unseen." And they truly live...