Marriage frustration

I am Ami Kameshwari, a 23 year old from Jaipur. I got married to Neil Goel, a 28 year old businessman before 4 months. I feel that our married life is a failure. Within such a short period, Neil feels that he has lost interest in and has little attraction left for me. He feels that I am of very little use and that I just laze around. He has a debt of about 40 lakhs at the moment. I have recently come to know from friends that before Neil married me, he had quite a colourful life and that I was not the first girl in his life by a far margin. Often the discussion is that I am not attractive sexually and I suspect that he is saying it as a comparative measure. He also makes sarcastic remarks about the dowry that I have not brought in the form of cash money but in the form of jewellery. He shys away from taking me to parties and meeting his friends. Henceforth we have no social life and I am confined to looking after his parents and sister. He also complains that I am not educated enough to earn money and laments marrying from another city which is not very advanced in educational development. I do not understand all this. Please advise.

It appears that Neil is one of those people who have only one or two dominant thought patterns. Their lives are a story of vertical development and not horizontal development. This makes them very vulnerable to situations which requires variety and in-depth knowledge of many areas of life. Neil may be dominated by the themes of money and sex. Having had a colourful life earlier, he may find settling down in marriage to be dull. Once that need for a twisted love life is not met, he would become disinterested in normal marital life. His perceptions are coloured by the fact that he needs a lot of flavour and spice in his love life all the time. You may find that he would change girl-friends very fast because of boredom – either he finds them boring or they see through him and find him to be superficial and monotonous. Consequently his fantasies may be of being a sexual and attractive god which of course is very difficult to simulate in real life and finding a matching partner even more difficult. Another issue which compounds your life is that the other dominant theme in his life may of earning money. Because of the debt, a part of his mind would be constantly occupied with ways and means of earning money. This would prevent him from enjoying all the moments in the present. He is complaining about the dowry because it is an easy way of getting rid of the debt. It may also have been a primary motive for marriage. He may also wish that you work so that you can earn money as well as it can enhance his ego that he has a wife who is a professional. Well, Ami, you may need to look into the matter that you have married a man who has no importance for what you are but only what you can do to make his troubles in life less. He will never be able to look into what your traits are, support your development (yes, you are still 23 and young enough to pay attention to your development instead of just serving others). You may need to accept that unless your husband is brought out of his dominant themes, your marriage may become a burden. As regards how you can help him, you may need to start addressing this perceptions that he has of only love and money and his refusal to sublimate them to various issues of life like watching movies, reading books, meeting friends, watching television and talking about the philosophy of life. You may need to get him interested in all these issues of life. It can be done through a persistent endevour of organizing these things and enjoying it yourself so that you can model it for him. You may need to help him understand that you can give him what you have and not what he wants from you, in that process he may change you so much that he may lose even what you have as your best. At the same time, draw a line of about 6-7 months and then reconsider.