Introduction
Does ‘Marriage’ in your mind's eye appear like a beautiful dream where your soul attains that state of perfect happiness, bliss and peace in the loving arms of your jeevan saathi?

Wake up! Marriage involves hard work! Not just a little bit of cosmetic pruning and weeding. You really need to walk around with a small shovel, can of fresh water, some nourishing enrichment and a little trashcan. Why? you may ask! Why such a mechanical approach to an institution that has been ordained by the gods, sanctified and certified by the priests and granted legal and social acceptance by society?

There may be some preconceived ideas or notions in your head that you need to trash or stash away in a 'recycle bin' which you must try and permanently delete from your memory and way of life in order to lead a happy, comfortable and mutually satisfying married life.

Check out the influential factors around you, in your life, in your neighbourhood, that could have played a role in making marriage appear as a dark, threatening and ominous cloud. We often forget the enormous amount of emotional baggage that we carry from childhood onwards. We forget the times when subtle impressions of what people spoke, how people behaved and how they reacted have stayed on to occupy larger than life spaces in key corners of our brain. These are some of the things that we need to watch out for - getting over preconceived ideas, notions and prejudices about marriage.

If you could take a torchlight and flash through the grey matter in your brain, you may be amazed to see the amount of emotional garbage you have accumulated over the years. You could call it conditioned responses or maybe even preferred pathways of thinking, but if many of these are negative, obsolete or totally drain your emotional energy leaving you mentally exhausted, then maybe you need to check out again and sweep out those dark, meandering thoughts that can simply cloud the way you feel about life and marriage.

Try to remember your childhood
Go back to your childhood. Childhood! The time when so many of your attitudes, preferences, likes and dislikes were moulded, formed and stayed. A simple exercise that you could carry out to get closer to understanding yourself would be to carry out these sitting sessions with yourself. Don't worry if you feel a little awkward in the beginning, you will get used to it.

You need to find a place where you can sit quietly and ponder upon your happiest childhood memories. Do this for an hour or so every week. At the end of your session, you should be able to record in detail some of the things that fascinated you. Try and recollect what were the things you really enjoyed doing.