When You are Trapped in a Failed Marriage

The Hindi movie "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" has these lines in the scene where the marriage between the two protagonists comes to an end, a very sad end.

Female protagonist:
Taaki usko wo saari khushiyaan de sakun, jo usko ek football coach nahin de sakta
Kaisa laga ye sunkar, Dev
Bahut dard hua naa, now you know how it feels
Kyunki tumne mujhe dard ke siwa, kuch nahin diya hai
Main hamesha sochti thi, dard pyar mein diya jaata hai, par yeh sach nahin
Tum to mujhse pyaar hi nahin karte, tum kisi se pyaar nahin karte
Nafrat hai tumhe, nafrat hai tumhe apne aap se, apni zindagi se, apni nakaamyaabi se
Aur main aaj tak nahin jaan paayi, tumhe kis baat pe zyada gussa aata hai, apni nakaamyabi se, ya meri kamyaabi par

Male protagonist:
Yes riya, mein nakaamyab hoon, ye sach hai
Par jaanti ho, is ghar mein, mujhse bhi nakaamyab kya hai?
Hamara rishta, aur ye shaadi
Thank you Riya
Thank  you for letting me stay in your house Riya

The above lines so very clearly show what it means to be trapped in a failed marriage.

You don't get to choose your parents.

They give you birth and you have absolutely no control over the kind of parents you are born to.

You don't get to choose your kids too.

You have some control over when to give them birth but once you give them birth you don't have any control over the kind of kids you gave birth to.

However, you get to choose whom you marry.

Your spouse is chosen by you.

Very often you choose to marry the wrong person

And your marriage slowly but eventually turns into a failed marriage.

You then end up getting trapped in a failed marriage.

You get this strong feeling that the color and juice from your life has simply disappeared.

The person who should have given you love and care is not there for you.

You come back to home from a business trip after a few days thinking your wife would have missed you.

What you see however is your wife's sullen and swollen face instead.

That makes you feel sad and irritated.

You may vent your anger on your kids.

You feel bad but that's what you do.

You have a female colleague join you on the business trip so that you get some company that takes care of fulfilling some of your emotional needs.

Emotional needs of being able to talk to a person of another sex without the fear of being turned away and made to feel unwanted.

You may develop a feeling of some sort of attraction towards and infatuation for her.

You may want to have physical intimacy and even sex with her.

The talk may be business talk but there is talk.

In your life there is no talk otherwise.

You and your wife don't talk.

You only fight.

You want to be physically intimate with your wife and have sex with her.

However, she not only refuses to have physical intimacy and sex with you but reacts in a way that makes you irritated, unwanted and disgusted.

You wife makes all kind of excuses to deny physical intimacy and sex to you.

And she does it purposefully and deliberately.

A wife who harms and hurts her husband looses the right to be called as wife.

Life is not sex.

But when you marry someone that someone is not your room-mate

There is difference between someone being your wife and someone being a room-mate.

You wife doesn't understand that simple thing.

You have failed in making her understand this thing.

Slowly sex goes away.

Then physical intimacy goes away.

Then emotional intimacy goes away.

Then you stop caring.

Then you stop talking.

And then you find yourself in a failed marriage.

You are now trapped in a failed marriage.

Did the marriage fail or did you fail?

That's a question you should ask yourself.

In the end, it is actually you who fail.

Fail  not just in marriage but in life too.

You may feel that your life has become purposeless.

You may feel that even if you were to die you would be okay with that.

You urge to live longer and live more may just disappear.

You may be perfectly fine if you were to die this very instant.

Failed marriage may end up making your life shorter.

However, in the end this doesn't make a difference to anyone and even to you.

And its okay if you have had a failed marriage.

The only thing is did you try to salvage it and did you try to reverse it.

If yes, no need to feel bad.

After all, in life you can only do so much.

What happens after you have done your bit is something that is beyond your control.

You should not feel bad.

Not at all.

Maybe its your bad luck.

Or your are a wretched, lowly creature who was supposed to go through such an experience in life.

If that be so, so be it.

Better to move on.

Better to wait it out.

The end of the journey is never very far.

And all of us will end this journey in the same way.

All of us.

Handling a Subordinate Who Doesn’t Understand the Sense of Priority

At times a manager may have to deal with certain team member who doesn’t understand the sense of priority.

As a manager you ask that team member to do something and she doesn’t do that.

She does her own stuff as per her own understanding of work priority or rather the complete lack of it!

As a manager you ask her to discuss something and she doesn’t come for a discussion, and when she comes she is not fully prepared.

Managers hire members in the team for only one reason - the hired person needs to take care of something that is otherwise a headache for the manager.

The KRA for any manager is very simple - get things done.

Managers don’t work and are not supposed to work.

They need to get things done.

Simple.

So if a team member doesn’t understand the sense of priority that is nothing but a big source of headache for the manager.

When a manager assigns a task to a team member he expects her to complete it as per the stated or understood priority and update him on the progress and discuss with him the challenges, if any, in finishing the assigned task on time.

In any case, the manager would expect the team member to complete the work.

However, when the team member not only fails to finish the task, but also provides no updates and not even bothers to let the manager know that the work is not done, that would be a clear source of concern for any manager.

And when confronted and given the feedback, she reacts in a aggressive and immature manner.

She defends her actions and the fact that she was right and the manager was not.

She also tells the manager that “since you know how to do it, you should do the work she has been assigned and has not been able to complete”

She also reacts violently when assigned any additional work and is reluctant to do that.

She may out rightly refuse to do a work by saying “I will not do that work”.

When asked firmly to do it and discuss if needed, she says “we can discuss but I would still not do it”.

It appears she thinks she is the manager of her manager.

This might appear quite funny if one were to take it lightly but is a serious affair, a very serious one.

She forgets to realize that if you are not willing to work, why would the manager want you in his team?

This is a sign of lack of maturity and lack of understanding of the sense of priority.

For any manager such a conversation is highly concerning.

This is a clear sign of trouble for the manager.

And if the manager needs to follow-up and remind for a task to be done nothing could be worse.

The team member loses her credibility.

The manager also doesn’t get a sense of comfort and confidence on such a team member.

The impression the manager gets is, “she is not reliable and if I assign her something critical she might give headache”.

And headache after a task is not done or the work not finished or something fails to happen is the last thing any manager wants.

So what happens with such team member?

She can’t be assigned time-critical and important and urgent tasks.

Any manager in such a situation will simply pull her out of critical tasks expected from his team.

The worst consequence of such an action would mean that in the long run:

• Such a team member will not grow too much in her career.
• She can’t be promoted beyond a certain level.

Such a team member may be technically competent but is running with a natural impediment.

This impediment has to do with her attitude and approach.

The priority of the organization should and would decide the priority of the head of the organization.

The priority of the head of the organization should and would decide the priority of the head of different teams and departments.

The priority of the head of the team or department should and would decide the priority of the members of the concerned team or department.

If a team member doesn’t understand that, she doesn’t really understand how to work.

Such a team member must work with a clear understanding of priority.

She needs to pull up her socks and get her act together.

This is a clear sign of not only trouble but big time danger.

And any smart manager will not let such a situation continue unaddressed for long!