One of the prophecies for Kali-Yuga is that life will become so difficult that a man will be considered a great hero if he is able to successfully maintain a family. It doesn’t directly speak about the ladies, but I guess it’s not easy for them either.
When we hear that, the first idea that comes into mind is the financial aspect: things will become so expensive that it will become practically impossible to maintain a family. This is of course something we can already notice to a certain extent even at present time, but there is also another aspect to it, that is the simple difficulty in maintaining a relationship, regardless of the financial situation.
Although most people, including devotees, desire to find happiness in family life, we can practically see that not many are successful in that. Divorces are incredibly common and even more common are failed relationships that don’t even progress into marriage. Most devotees, both men and ladies, have to pass through a long succession of failed relationships during their lives and many can’t find a permanent partner even after all of it.
We live in the age of quarrel, and in no place it is more noticeable than inside our own families. Peaceful and harmonious family life has become so rare that one who can do it can easily become world famous. Unfortunately, devotees are not immune to it. We also have divorces and tons of failed relationships.
Some think that family life is automatic, but it is not. Sex life may develop more or less automatically, but family life requires lots of knowledge and skills to work. In the past, people used to learn these skills from their parents during childhood, and thus often couples would get married at relatively young ages and still be able to successfully build a harmonious relationship. Nowadays, most of us come from problematic families and we don’t get such training. Quite the opposite, we often have a crash course on building dysfunctional relationships with our parents, and it may take a long time until we can get a grasp of how a proper relationship works. Even children born in devotee families are not necessarily much better in this regard, since we also have a lot of dysfunctional families inside our movement.
A possible solution for this is training and counseling. Although nothing can replace a good example from the parents, training and counseling can at least help one get some theoretical knowledge of how things are supposed to work and how to avoid common mistakes.
The difficulty is that another symptom of Kali-Yuga makes this system very difficult to implement: nowadays everyone knows everything, and nobody is ready to hear. When someone already knows it’s impossible to learn anything. Devotees who get involved in counseling often feel discouraged, seeing that their efforts rarely bring any results. Even when receiving good counseling, most people continue to commit mistakes, simply because they don’t understand, or choose to not follow the advice.
When training and counseling are also not possible, another possible path is for one to go the hard way, going through a sequence of failed relationships until he or she can start learning from past mistakes. This can be, however, a very painful path.
Unfortunately, this is the path most of us are going. We can see that most people nowadays (including devotees) can’t really get into a successful relationship until they are in their later thirties. Work and devotional practices may play a role, but the main factor is that before this age most people just didn’t have the skills necessary to maintain a workable relationship, skills which they need to learn by trial and error.
Some believe that astrology is the key to finding one’s better half, but we can see that its practical usefulness is limited. If astrology was infalible, there would not be any unhappy couples in India and this could be easily replicated inside our movement. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It can surely help to identify combinations that don’t have any real possibility of working, as well as to help identify difficulties that have to be navigated, but one who expects to find someone who is entirely compatible through astrology will die single. According to astrological calculation, not even Lord Shiva and Parvati are 100% compatible, and we can observe that sometimes there is some misunderstanding between them, like when Parvati cursed Citraketu.
Astrology can help to identify points of conflict and differences in interest (just like one can identify in an honest conversation) but is still up to the couple to navigate these differences and find harmony. Some combinations are better than others, but there is always a gap that needs to be bridged. One who doesn’t understand this and keeps looking for magical solutions will remain frustrated.
Is there any other solution? Prabhupada believed that by practicing Krsna Consciousness people can change, and that’s the thing that can make a difference.
People don’t quarrel out an ardent desire to serve Krsna, they quarrel out of immaturity and lack of advancement in Krsna Consciousness. As we progress in our spiritual life, our egos become smaller and it becomes easier to go along with people, both inside and outside family life.
We can practically see that sometimes immature male devotees who have a wrong idea about marriage look for “submissive wives” who will do everything they want. After some frustrating experiences, they sometimes grow up and come to understand that it is not so much about finding a submissive wife, but about being a proper husband. Then magic then happens and they are able to enter into a successful relationship.
The chanting of the holy names has the power to change our hearts, rounding up imperfections, softening the false ego, and providing us with qualities that we would not have otherwise.
The most solid marriages I see among devotees are exactly combinations of two advanced devotees who have genuine Vaishnava qualities and similar goals in spiritual life. Apart from that, family life in Kali-yuga is usually a zoo, or a madhouse.
I believe the best advice that can be given is to not pay so much attention to astrology but instead focus on becoming a proper Vaishnava and finding another pure, simple, and humble Vaishnava to share your life with. Apart from developing good qualities, another advantage of being a proper Vaishnava is that one can get counseling and learn from the experience of others, without having to commit every single possible mistake in life. My experience is that is exactly this combination of real spiritual qualities and good counseling is the secret for good marriages in our movement.
Immature devotees trying to find perfect matches in the form of submissive wives or husbands that they can easily exploit are a kind of catacombs of Iskcon. You may not want to go there.