The business of love

“Life doesn’t give you the people you want; instead it gives you the ones you need: to teach you, to hurt you, to love you- to make you exactly the way you should be ”

When we find someone we feel we can connect to in some ways, we are filled with indefinable, rather vague expectations regarding that person. These expectations remain deep inside our sub consciousness, despite our apparent denial.

No matter how much we argue with ourselves that we are just testing waters, see where this new link takes us, and that we are not expecting anything at this point of time; expectations do creep surreptitiously during such exchanges.

The expectations that we involuntarily impose on another, due to our predetermined values. The expectation of what might follow, with a sense of eagerness and inscrutability, just the way we feel when we bring home a new book or watch a mystery film on the screen.

Secretly, we are also in a hurry to uncover the other person, like those times when one quickly reads the end of a book to know the conclusion. Perhaps there is no such harm when we do it with a book, but in the beginning of a relationship that is so detrimental. Unless we are one of those who read blurbs and the last chapter and tell the world that we have read the book;

The truth remains that we can never be the real reader unless we read it page by page. Writing a review of a book without actually reading it is considered unethical. In the same way the book of love must be read slowly and reflectively to understand its various meaning between the lines, before we gear towards writing reviews.

Sadly, most of us are in a rush. Not knowing that interpersonal relationships vary in their degree of self-disclosure, feedback, power and respect. They vary in the extent to which people can change, question or challenge each other. Relationships also vary in the degree to which both intimacy and sharing occur. Implying the discovery or establishment of common ground overtime, is a premature belief. A lapse that often causes damage to the budding ties.

The most common thing that happens in relationships is projection. We like to begin with the idea/ thought that our lover shares many common traits with us. We go overboard in imagining ourselves as ‘true soul mates’ and that we were ‘made for each other’. This belief is so strong that we begin to project into them ideals that are more positive than negative. We have been nurturing the dreams of similarity so much that when certain characteristics of the partner begin to challenge us, friction starts to develop because of perceived differences. The other person appears not to support our values and that creates disappointments and sometimes we even feel cheated in the relationship. We fail to realize that the partner was having these dissimilarities and similarities from the very beginning and in our infatuated state we were amplifying the similarities and their significance and overlooking the inevitable dissimilarities. When we pin someone down to a little idea, a small rule or a need, which we have, then we take away the real beauty of that person. The true beauty doesn’t arise from a rule or an idea; it arises when we just let the information stream in.

From infatuation to love, it is an arduous journey. Most relationships never cross the first stage and leave us with resentments about our partners and sometimes we are bitter with ourselves too, as we feel that we have been gullible so far. Sometimes we even feel that we have been deliberately misled by our partner and begin to punish them with anger, distance and blame.

We forget that relationships are not construed like business plans in which you have to measure it, to manage it. In business plans it becomes imperative to define expectations in terms of targets, standards and competitive requirements. But it is not viable in relationships. Close relationships lose their essence when we try to define it too rationally.

Unlike business plans we don’t have contingency plans for a love relationship. If it fails, it fails absolutely, because the terms and conditions of relationships are not so well defined. It is amorphous in nature and thus remains inexplicable most of the times. The ambiguities in a slowly forming relationship are also relative to individual dynamics of the persons involved.

Most of this ambiguousness is understood with heart and not cold reasoning.

The only assurance to save ourselves from such painful repetitions is the decision we make, to give each other chance, time, and benefit of doubts along with clear understandings of our own values and acceptance of the our partners values.

‘True love’ and ‘ideal relationships’ then become a reality and not unattainable dreams; as we often begin to feel after repetitive failures.

There is a Greek saying, which says: “ Infatuation is an exaggeration of similarities, Resentment is an exaggeration of differences. Love is equally embracing the both.”