Love, Marriage and Horcruxes
Published: 18th April 2025
Category:Relationships
“I know why Voldemort cannot be killed," said my daughter who is on a Harry Potter Marathon this
summer. "His soul has been split into many parts. He isn't human anymore. Even Dumbledore who is the
world's greatest magician cannot kill him."
Recently on Reddit, in a forum on relationships, I found a post of 33-year-old female stating as to how
she had gone
through a number of relationships (body count of 22!) over past 17 years and how she was finally getting
married. I was
surprised that she found it in her to settle down, even more so, that she had found a partner for the long
term. At the
cost of sounding condescending, she had taken the Airtel tag line "sab kuch try karke dekho, aur phir
chuno" quite
literally.
Breakups are hard. Unless one is in an abusive relationship, breakups are tough experiences to
go through. The
pain is not just emotional, it's deeply psychological. Every relationship is an investment. You lose a
piece of yourself
when you break up with someone.A breakup shapes the way in which you approach future relationships, the
way you place
trust among people around you. Self doubt is constant. You find yourself repeatedly questioning your
choices.
I remember
my first. It led to many months of depression, disturbed sleep, lack of focus and concentration, feeling
of
betrayal, irritable
nature and short temper, general distrust of people around. Most importantly there was this sense of
void
which I
desperately needed to fill with anything providing instant gratification – games, girls, alcohol, even
more
relationships.
Fortunately I had a good manager at work, who understood my state and ensured that I was
buried in work
with crazy deadlines. He made it impossible for me to think about anything else. A large part of my soul
had been "ripped
off", there was no innocence left. I was less sensitive to relationships later – in my daughter's words
“a lot less
human”.
So I wondered how much humanity was left in that reddit user. A high body count seems to be the
norm rather than
the exception these days. While there have been many discussions on the physical impact, emotional
turmoil, health risks
and concepts of virginity the psychological impact of this frequency on all subsequent relationships or
long term
commitments is mostly overlooked. Marriages are tough on life. It requires you to compromise, adjust,
adapt to varying
degrees to the significant other, or to the changed circumstances. Most importantly it requires you not
to quit.
I am
going to argue here that fear of loneliness, of the pain which follows a breakup, is a major motivator
in ensuring that
a person doesn’t quit on a relationship. So what happens to this fear when you have a high body count or
breakups? At
zero or one break up you are too scared to quit on someone because the impact is devastating. At 22, its
a sneeze. An
“Aaachoo” is all it takes to quit in a relationship. That’s about the impact it will make.
The reasons
needed to quit
become smaller and smaller. Slightest inconveniences lead to breakups or divorces. Somewhere we need to
acknowledge that,
fear, despite being a negative emotion, goes a long way in keeping us in line and therefore is important
in a
relationship.
As in the case of Harry Potter stories, the burden of a broken individual is borne by the
people immediately
surrounding him / her and in a marriage by the spouse. It requires superhuman efforts to keep
such people in a
relationship as they are more often than not, lost causes. One would best be wary of an individual with
a
"heart-worn"
past.
Coming back to myself, 11 years of marriage and a kid later, has my own sense of loss subsided? –
no. Has the
intensity changed? – yes. But you still have those occasional days, like today, when you are reminded of
a
“what if” and
your heart winces – much like - a blow to the bone suffered years ago, which after recovery remains
hidden in the
pressures of life and commitments, but aches on a cold winter morning and reminds you – “I am still
here”.
They asked "Do you love her to death". I said "Speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me
back to life".
---- Mahmoud Darwish