R,
I’m constantly amazed – and more than a little jealous – at how quickly you & your friends plan trips together. Each of you will be in a different city, or even country, and yet, you decide on a destination and a time frame, and it all comes together!
I’m not suggesting that it happens magically. I see the effort you put into phone calls every weekend – and that’s when you’re not even planning a trip. When you are, it’s daily phone calls, flurries of emails, endless Whatsapp threads… I get that the trip doesn't materialize out of thin air.
If I were to plan a trip with my friends, it’d be impossible. They’d have to check with husbands, in-laws. They just had babies, or joined new jobs, or are pleasing demanding bosses and are unsure if they can take the time off. Their parents aren’t sure if it’s safe. They’re still paying off loans, and/or studying. They’re saving up vacation days for a wedding.
All of those are legitimate reasons of course, and there are plenty of Indian husbands who’d cite wives or babies or jobs as good reasons not to go on trips either. For some reason, you have the friends who don’t have those reasons in their lives. More likely, you consistently invest enough in the relationship for those reasons to be overcome.
I don’t think it’s realistic to hope for anything to change with my friends. Those living with parents or studying will go on to get married. They’ll have family obligations. It isn’t easy to ask for, or even necessarily want, ‘me time’ in an Indian marriage. The fact that I can want it, or that you willingly give it, doesn't mean that’s the case across the board. Objectively, I get it. Subjectively, it’s a whole other story.
-A.
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