Your partner is not your back-up plan: why marriage must be a merger of equals

WHO'LL hire a 37-year-old housewife? Make roti. That's your job.

- SANJITH HANNUMAN

THE most successful marriages -- the ones that survive job losses, health crises and economic upheaval -- understand one non-negotiable truth: you must enter as equals. Not equal-ish, says the writer.

(Gemini Google)

One sentence. Seven words that have trapped generations of women in gilded cages of dependency. This isn’t just cruel —it's catastrophically stupid because the woman who heard these words saved coins in her sari pallu, endured violence in silence, and eventually became the sole provider when her husband’s business collapsed.

Her small tuition classes - once mocked as rebellion — became the family’s lifeline. Her story isn’t just inspiring. It’s a warning shot across the bow of every marriage built on the archaic model of provider and dependent.

Are you building a life together, or is one person merely existing in the other’s shadow, their potential rotting in the kitchen while the world moves on without them?

The most successful marriages — the ones that survive job losses, health crises, and economic upheaval - understand one nonnegotiable truth: You must enter as equals. Not equal-ish. Not equal in our own ways. Equal. Period.

This isn’t some Western import. It’s sahadharmini - the ancient ideal of a wife as a partner in all duties, not a subordinate. It’s the understanding that 1 + 1 doesn’t make 2. It creates a single, unified force that can weather any storm.

For generations, we worshipped at the altar of the male breadwinner. One person works. One person manages the home. Roles clearly defined. Everyone knows their place. And it’s a house of cards waiting for the slightest breeze to destroy it.