Live-in Relationship

On 1^st December 2013 as per the report of PTI in a landmark judgment with wide ramifications on marriage laws prevalent in India, the Supreme Court of India today said, live-in relationship was nor a crime, not a sin, and Parliament should enact law to regulate live-in relationship and amend Domestic Violence Act, though socially unacceptable in this country. The decision to marry or not to marry or to have a heterosexual relationship is intensely personal," the bench said. The  apex court formulated the guidelines relating to live-in relationship on following points viz Duration of the period of relationship, Shared Household, Pooling of resources and financial arrangement, Domestic arrangement, Sexual relationship, Children, Socialization in Public, Intention and conduct of parties adding that various countries have started recognizing such relationship.

In India marriage is one of the oldest institutions in the society. However, during the past few decades, major social changes in Western countries have led to changes in the demographics of marriage, with the age of first marriage increasing, less people marrying, and many couples choosing live in relationships rather than marry. More and more young people wish to experiment rather than get married, and as such live in relationships are becoming quite common.

Live in relationship is a living arrangement in which an unmarried couple lives together in an emotionally and/or sexually intimate relationship in a long-term relationship that resembles a marriage.

This form of relationship has become an alternate to marriage in metropolitan cities in which individual freedom is the top priority amongst the youth and nobody wants to get entangled into the typical responsibilities of a married life. The reasons of today’s youth going more into live in relationship are more freedom, less responsibility, financial freedom, testing partner’s compatibility, changing partners is easy without much legal hassles, no societal norms, respect, spending more time with each other.

Many cases of couple living together come to us for counseling. On analyzing we find that often one of the partners is very badly hurt as he/she becomes totally committed and when the relationship breaks the person who does not want it moves on freely but the other partner gets affected and goes into depression. The emotional trauma and the impact of breaking up becomes too much. Since this is a new concept in India do not know what will be the social, cultural, emotional, psychological ramifications of this new trend of relationship. 

I am not being judgmental but as a social scientist and psycologist just pondered over this..What are your opinion of this do stop by and let me know….