Why marriages fail? Osho questions your love

If there is anything that affects your life more than anything else, it is how a man relates with a woman in marriage life. When you are a child, the quality of your parents’ marriage life affects you (for better or for worse) and when you are mature enough, your own way of relating yourself with your spouse defines the way you live. Osho believes that the highest point of love is marriage but when he makes such a statement, he doesn’t refer to the legality of marriage. He just refers to the state where a man and a woman melt with each other (regardless of whether the society accepts it as marriage or not). What Osho refers to as marriage has nothing to do with the ceremony accompanied marriage of the society.

It is a merging of two hearts into totality. It is the functioning of two persons in synchronicity -- that is marriage. But quite ordinarily we find that most marriages fail. Either they end up with a life long committed love-fight relationship which none of the partners dare to break, or they split up so easily and find the love they had for each other turned into bitter hate. Osho reasons out that it’s our immaturity or false understanding of love that causes problems in marriage. Be it an arranged marriage or a love marriage, it is bound to have problems, unless love is understood on a new level.

`Love marriage' came into existence but is not going to survive, for the simple reason that love comes, happens, and one day suddenly goes. It was not in your hands to bring it; neither is it in your hands to keep it. The old marriage failed because the insistence was that you should love your wife, you should love your husband. It was a `should'. And you could not even conceive how you could love; at the most you could pretend, you could act.

But love is not a pretension, is not an acting. You cannot do anything. You are absolutely powerless as far as love is concerned. The old marriage failed. The new marriage is failing because the new marriage is simply a reaction to the old marriage. It is not out of understanding, but only out of reaction, revolt -- `love marriage.'

You don't know what love is. You simply see some beautiful face, you see some beautiful body and you think, "My God, I am in love!" This love is not going to last, because after two days, seeing the same face for twenty-four hours a day, you will get bored. The same body... you have explored the whole topography; now there is nothing to explore. Exploring the same geography again and again, you feel like an idiot. What is the point?

This love affair, this love marriage is failing, it has already failed. The reason is that you don't know how to wait so that love can happen.

Love and marriage is not a small thing in life that their whole dimension can be contained in a post. More on this will be dealt, in days to come. For now, it is good start to meditate upon the thoughts of Osho on marriage quoted above. Richard Bach says in one of his books, watch your thoughts often and you will notice that your thoughts change often. This is most applicable for Osho’s speeches. You will understand his speeches in different depths at different intervals.