PILLARS OF A RELATIONSHIP – PART-III

     We all know the saying, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’. A friend who is there for you in your time of need is a true friend indeed. Another word we use in vain these days is ‘friend’. Someone worked with us, studied with us or we just say ‘Good Morning’ everyday in passing and we give them the mantle of a ‘Friend’. In that definition, every one of us have a lot of friends, however, how close are they to you? How close are you to them?

     In any corporate job, there comes a time when everyone must answer a question that never changes. ‘Where do you see yourself with us in the next 5 years?’ I think we can apply this to real life relationships too, not for family obviously, we’re stuck with them for life. For other relationships such as friends, lovers & partners though, this question can be a real eye opener if answered with brutal honesty (if that’s not possible try to be the least bit honest).

     The primary investment any relationship needs is neither money nor gifts but time. Your time is the single most precious investment that you can give to a loved one. Some may consider this exercise a logical and heartless one but just ride with me. Make a list of all your friends. If you don’t remember them enough to add to the list, they have zero importance to you. If you have to think for even a microsecond if you should add them to the list, do not add them. When something major happens in their life which requires you to travel a day and you think the ordeal is too much that you might skip it, do not add them. Now the list should be very compact. If your list has nobody on it now, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have true friends but that you’re lazy on your ass. Just deal with it.

     Friendship that overcomes all these and endures for a long time will be even more precious than Love. We all have our own good, bad and the ugly. If you don’t have one, you must be lying. A true friend is someone with whom you are comfortable sharing all three. A true friend is someone who listens to all your dumb shit and still sticks with you. A true friend is someone who doesn’t judge you for your mistakes but helps steer you on the right track. Sometimes with words and sometimes with smacks.

     Just like everyone, I have a lot of friends but only a handful of close friends with whom there is nothing I would not discuss. I have friends that I’ve known more than half my life who understand me and guide me in whatever path I choose. A true friend never holds back and never gives you false praise. They would not think for a second to put you back in your place. But they will do it with such grace, you will feel both insulted and insightful.

     Life might take you places and you may even fall apart on some friendships but there are some, where the years won’t matter. No matter how long you’ve been apart, you instantly connect and the years dissolve. Many a time in my life, my friends have been pillars of support to me and I could not thank them enough. In return, I do all I can to be there for them. And if you fall in love with that kind of a friend and that love leads to marriage, you are one of the luckiest to walk the face of the earth.

     That is the best lesson Chandler and Monica from ‘F.R.I.E.N.D.S’ can teach us. That even though you started on the wrong foot, a true friendship can do wonders to your life and the only condition needed is that you continue the friendship.

     Time is a costly gift. Invest it wisely and invest it in good relationships. A good friendship can make your life a whole lot better in this complicated, uncaring world. Make new friends but do not forget your old friends that came through in your time of need. Those are the only people worth keeping in your life. Those are the only people worthy of your time. Those are the only hearts that make the world a better place to live.

PILLARS OF A RELATIONSHIP – PART-II

     There is a conversation I deeply enjoyed from the movie ‘Predestination’ between the bartender and the writer.

B: ‘What do you want?’

W: ‘What does anyone want?’

B: ‘Love?’

     Anyone who has seen the movie and still has some semblance of coherence about it will know what comes next. For the sake of this post, I’m skipping the next part of the dialogue. Love is one of the basest needs for the human psyche. We need to love and be loved. Yeah, you guessed right. I’m going at the list in reverse. You will understand in my later posts why I’m choosing to go down the list in reverse.

     When we profess our interest in someone, ‘like’ & ‘love’ are the two go-by words that pop in our mind. However, subconsciously our mind puts a great difference to these words when one is special while we use the other in vain. The word ‘Love’ has a strong feeling associated with it. It goes something like, I love the color red but I like blue too (yeah, you can suck it blue). Love always supersedes like.

     I have a friend who is married happily with 2 lovely kids. Let’s call her ‘A’ and her husband ‘S’. Their marriage was arranged and before marriage, we met ‘S’ in a restaurant at a get together that was supposed to be only friends. ‘A’ had brought him along to introduce to us and we had lunch together. It was a little bit awkward since he was older than all of our friends but he was friendly.

     ‘A’ was a stay-at-home mom while ‘S’ worked away from home. Most commonly, they would get to spend only the weekends together. Their marriage was not perfect, none is. They went through their own rough patch burying old skeletons that threatened their relationship at the very beginning of their marriage. But, they endured. We all have skeletons buried in our closets, some much more so. When their past threatened their present life, they didn’t run away. They didn’t turn to the big guns (read ‘parents’) or real guns to blow the other person’s head off. Instead they turned to love and love they did.

     The one thing that never lacked in their relationship was love. It was abundant and overflowing. Maybe working away from home for most days helped but they had great chemistry. From the day of their marriage to this day, the only profile picture ‘A’ has in her WhatsApp account is of her husband. After 2 kids and a lot of pounds (sorry, ‘A’), they are still going great at it. If you ask me to choose one constant factor that keeps them glued together, it’s love. They never turned away from it. Just like Marshall & Lily from 'How I met your mother'.

     Love is a no-brainer. Literally, you don’t need too much brains for it. All you need is care for the other person and the ability to put the other person ahead of your interests. As always, both wheels are necessary to keep the marriage afloat. In every relationship, one person loves more than the other. Yes, it’s true. That doesn’t mean whoever loves less doesn’t deserve their partner. All it means is that they need to put in one extra step at a time to keep moving towards their partner. Because when you start caring less & less, that you don’t put the same effort into it as you did the first time, it will definitely draw the line in the sand.

     No magic is permanent. Everything fades. If you want to keep enjoying it, you need to put effort into it. If there is no effort to show your love, is it really love?

PILLARS OF A RELATIONSHIP – PART-I

     It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to write something that is not work-related, filling out a form or the grocery list. Life sure loves 180s. But as any reasonable grown-up should do, instead of talking about my life, I’m going to talk about other people’s life.

     Now that I’ve got your attention, most of us believe in ‘The One’ or at the very least know the concept of it. As we grow up, life also teaches us abstract concepts such as ‘Fate’ or ‘Destiny’ or ‘Karma’. And no matter how much you want it, I’m not going to discuss about those. I’m not sure who coined the phrase ‘The One’ but whoever did it definitely had their heart stolen. Literally, if it was ‘The Crazy One’.

     We might not say it out loud but each and every one of us want a loving, lasting & cherishing relationship with our life partner. Each gender handles it differently. Men might actually talk tall about being open minded or being dominant but they rarely know what they exactly want from their woman. Women, on the other hand, know exactly what they want from their man but spend (read ‘waste’) a lot of time dropping hints that just go over their male counterparts’ head instead of directly talking about them. This may not apply to all men & women though.

     Born in a culturally rich country where arranged marriages still wipe the floor with love marriages, I know how difficult it can be to express yourself where expressing yourself freely means disrespect to your elders or something even worse. Being right and they know it. There is a lot of guilt trip that controls the majority of the decisions.

     I know that we all want that perfect person in our life. With a bit of a luck, you actually meet them or get married off by your parents. Sometimes arranged marriages can be wonderful when that life partner gives you what you need instead of what you thought you wanted. In love marriages that translates to, ‘I will not give you what you need even though you want it’.

     I’m not going to tell you how to get into a relationship because I truly don’t know. I never learned that game very well. However, I can tell you how to make a relationship work like a well-oiled machine. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any kinks to work out in the future (not the dirty kind of kink).

     To make any relationship work, especially marriages, there are certain rules or game plans that will help. As long as you don’t know them or you’re not ready to abide by them, you are not ready for the relationship. As countless relationship quotes and therapists have said before, relationships need both wheels to work and I am not talking about a unicycle.

     There are five absolutes that every relationship must have to succeed in the long run. It’s difficult for all of these to bloom instantly into the relationship but if you do not have at least three of them at the end of the first year of your relationship, it’s going to be a rocky ride. Below are the five major parameters that control any relationship.

1. Honesty

2. Trust

3. Respect

4. Friendship

5. Love

     Before you start calling me names and dish out other parameters, let me stop you. I can hear the other parameters too. But I’m going in deep on each of these over the next few posts. At the end, I hope I can convince you.