After a wonderful vacation, coming home and picking up
the reins of daily life can be quite unsettling. The mind, which had been
happily occupied with new sights, sounds, and experiences, suddenly finds
itself back in familiar surroundings. And mine, for one, seems to have
developed a mind of its own! It questions everyone, everything, and almost
every action.
I confess I am an escapist. Whenever life becomes overwhelming, I retreat into my little world of games and fiction. These offer me a parallel universe where nothing depends on me, where I am not answerable for anyone’s actions, and where the complications of real life can be safely kept at arm’s length. It is a comforting place to be, even if only for a while.
And then there is social media.
I find myself scrolling aimlessly through Instagram and
Facebook, where an endless stream of short stories competes for my attention.
Some are delightful little romances, full of tender moments and adorable
children. Others, however, leave me rather unsettled.
These stories usually revolve around women. Women with
cheating husbands. Women suddenly thrown out of the cocoon of security they had
taken for granted. Women trapped in relationships with controlling men from
whom they must eventually escape.
The plots may differ in their details, but the endings
are remarkably similar.
The woman suffers. She struggles to rebuild her life. She
discovers her inner strength, becomes astonishingly successful, and eventually
returns to confront the husband, boyfriend, fiancé, or mother-in-law who
wronged her. The wrongdoers are suitably humiliated, while the heroine emerges
triumphant, independent, and vindicated.
And just when the story appears to have ended, a series
of short, pithy sentences follows, dispensing wisdom about love, togetherness,
family values, mutual respect, and the importance of giving one another
freedom.
One almost feels that these little stories are less
interested in telling us what happened than in instructing us on how we ought
to live!
I often wonder why these stories keep appearing in my
feed.
Is it because of algorithms? Most probably. I may have
clicked on one such story out of curiosity, and the ever-watchful AI has
concluded that I am particularly partial to tales of betrayal, revenge, and
female triumph. Having made this discovery, it obligingly serves me more of the
same.
But here is what puzzles me.
If I have read so many tender love stories, why does my
feed not overflow with those instead? Why does a sweet story about two people
falling in love, or a heartwarming tale about a child, seem to have less
staying power than a story about a cheating husband and a woman who rises from
the ashes to show him what he has lost?
Perhaps these stories are simply more engaging. Perhaps
outrage, indignation, and the promise of revenge keep us hooked longer than
quiet happiness does. Or perhaps stories of betrayal and injustice are so
plentiful that the algorithm has an inexhaustible supply to draw upon.
Whatever the reason, I find myself wondering whether the
world really is as grim as my social media feed would have me believe.
After all, there is no smoke without fire—or so the
saying goes. If so many stories revolve around unhappy marriages, controlling
husbands, abandoned women, and broken families, does that mean these are the
realities of modern relationships? Are women perpetually the victims, forever
having to fight their way towards their rights, their happiness, and their
freedom?
Or am I simply being shown a distorted picture of the
world?
One question leads to another.
Women bear children, but does that make childcare their
sole responsibility? Many of these stories feature unwed mothers abandoned by
the men who fathered their children, left to manage the emotional, physical,
and financial burdens of parenthood alone.
Why should this be so?
We live in an age when women are increasingly educated,
economically independent, and capable of making their own choices. They can
earn a living, support families, build businesses, and carve out lives on their
own terms. Yet the stories suggest that many continue to endure harassment,
violence, and controlling behaviour, sometimes for years.
Why do they put up with it? Is it fear, financial
dependence, concern for their children, social conditioning, or the hope that
things will eventually improve? Perhaps it is a combination of several things.
It would be unfair to assume that leaving an unhappy or
abusive relationship is always as simple as packing a suitcase and walking
away. Real life is rarely as accommodating as fiction, and the road to
independence may be far more complicated than a few triumphant paragraphs
suggest.
Yet I cannot help wondering why the burden of keeping a
relationship together so often appears to fall on the woman, while the burden
of rebuilding a life after its breakdown also seems to be hers.
Is this genuinely how relationships work, or is it simply
the narrative these stories prefer to tell?
What intrigues me even more is the response these stories
receive.
I sometimes read the comments, and they are often filled
with women passionately condemning the male or occasionally female character
responsible for the protagonist’s misery. Many readers appear convinced that
the stories are true, or at least representative of what happens behind closed
doors.
The accompanying message is often that we never really
know what goes on inside a home. A smiling couple may be concealing a deeply
troubled relationship. A seemingly respectable man may be a tyrant in private.
Of course, this is possible. Appearances can deceive, and
suffering is not always visible to outsiders.
But does the possibility of hidden unhappiness mean that
we should begin to suspect every apparently happy relationship?
I find myself asking another question: Are most men
controlling, selfish, and wicked?
My own experience does not quite support this conclusion.
Among my friends and acquaintances, I have come across
many men who are caring, responsible, and considerate. Some enjoy making jokes
at their partners’ expense, but then, I have seen women do the same. A little
teasing, when it is affectionate and mutual, need not be a sign of disrespect.
Of course, my circle of acquaintances is hardly a
representative sample of society. I cannot claim that my experience tells the
whole story, any more than a collection of social media posts can.
But surely there is room for a more balanced view.
There are men who hurt women, just as there are women who
hurt men. There are people who manipulate, dominate, and exploit others, and
there are people who devote themselves to making their partners feel safe,
valued, and loved.
Why must we allow the worst examples of human behaviour
to define an entire gender?
And while we are at it, why do we so readily assume that
women are always the emotionally stronger sex? Physical strength may differ on
average between men and women, but emotional resilience, courage, kindness, and
the ability to endure hardship are not the exclusive possessions of either.
Human beings are considerably more complicated than the
labels we attach to them.
There is, however, something about the changing attitudes
of younger women that I find both interesting and encouraging.
The women of the new generation seem far more willing to
express their opinions; question established conventions and pursue their
ambitions. They are creative, outspoken, and increasingly unwilling to accept
the idea that marriage or motherhood must define their entire existence.
They want choices. They want respect. They want the
freedom to decide what sort of life they wish to lead.
And why shouldn't they?
For generations, women have been expected to compromise,
adjust, accommodate, and preserve relationships, sometimes at considerable
personal cost. The desire to break free from these expectations is hardly
surprising.
But I sometimes wonder whether, in rejecting the old
rules, we are in danger of creating an entirely new set of assumptions.
Does being independent mean that a woman must prove she
can do without a man? Must every story of female empowerment end with the
heroine triumphantly demonstrating that she never needed her partner in the
first place?
Surely, independence should mean having the freedom to
choose, not being obliged to choose a particular way of life. A woman should be
able to live happily on her own if that is what she wants. Equally, she should
be able to enjoy a loving relationship without being regarded as any less
independent. There is no shame in wanting companionship, just as there is no
shame in choosing solitude.
The real achievement lies in having the freedom to make
that choice without fear, coercion, or social pressure. And surely, a world in
which women are empowered need not be one in which men are diminished.
And here is where my already restless mind begins to
wander into rather more fanciful territory.
If women continue to become more independent, more
assertive, and less willing to tolerate behaviour they find unacceptable, what
will the future look like?
Will men eventually find themselves relegated to the
sidelines? Will women decide that they are better off without them? Will the
Amazons return to rule the world?
And, in a rather more absurd leap of imagination, will we
one day have to worry about male infanticide?
The questions sound ridiculous when put together like
this, and perhaps they are. But they arise from a genuine curiosity about the
direction in which our ideas about relationships, gender, and family life are
moving.
For centuries, women have had to fight for rights and
freedoms that men often took for granted. Correcting that imbalance is both
necessary and desirable. But equality is not a seesaw on which one gender must
rise only for the other to fall.
A world in which women have greater freedom need not be a
world in which men have less dignity. A society that values women's voices need
not silence men's. And a future in which women are no longer compelled to
depend on men need not be one in which companionship between them becomes
obsolete.
Surely, the ideal is not a world ruled by women or one
dominated by men, but a world in which neither needs to rule the other.
Perhaps I am taking these little stories far too
seriously.
They are, after all, stories, written to entertain,
provoke, and keep us scrolling. Some may be inspired by real experiences,
others may be entirely fictional. Their popularity cannot tell us how common
such situations are, and their neatly packaged endings cannot capture the
messy, complicated reality of human relationships.
Yet, when we encounter the same themes repeatedly, it is
difficult not to wonder whether they reflect something larger about the society
we live in.
Social media offers us a peculiar window into the world.
It allows us to witness experiences beyond our own, but it also presents us
with a carefully selected stream of material designed to hold our attention.
The more we see of something, the more familiar it becomes. And the more
familiar it becomes, the easier it is to mistake it for the norm.
Perhaps the danger lies not in reading these stories, but
in forgetting that they are only a small, selected part of a much larger
picture.
There are unhappy marriages, certainly. There is cruelty,
betrayal, and injustice. There are women who struggle alone and men who fail
those they love. But there are also happy marriages, enduring friendships,
responsible fathers, devoted husbands, loving mothers, and couples who navigate
life's difficulties together without needing an audience or a dramatic final
confrontation.
Their stories may not go viral. They may not generate
thousands of indignant comments. They may not end with a triumphant heroine
delivering a devastating speech to a remorseful ex-husband.
But they exist all the same, perhaps they deserve a
little more space in our imagination.
As for me, I think I shall return to my fictional worlds
for a while. At least there, I can choose my adventures, close the book when
things become too distressing, and retreat into a game when the going gets
tough.
Real life, unfortunately, does not come with a pause
button.
Still, I shall probably return to Instagram and Facebook
tomorrow, where another tale of betrayal, revenge, and triumphant female
emancipation will doubtless be waiting for me.
And my mind will, no doubt, start questioning everything
all over again.
For now, all I can do is laugh at myself, and at my
wonderfully addlepated mind, where questions jump about and frolic, and where
even a harmless scroll through social media can turn into an existential
inquiry into the future of humankind!
