Relationships- The Differences essentially

[These are my own thoughts]

This is just an assortment of a winter afternoon baked thoughts from me who has nothing to do in his life. The subject of relationship has been my favourite one for a long time, and different experiences in my life set my thought chain clanking. I have these views of mine, some of which are same as yours but some are not perhaps. I will keep them bulleted to help you speed through these stupid thoughts.

'Relationships’ could be ‘Husband-wife’, “parent-children” and it could also be ‘friends’. It does not include “colleagues” as this type follow different rules and is easier to maintain as mostly it can be done through pampering, flattery, bootlicking, ordering, fawning, buttering or plain inciting the conduct and discipline Guidelines depending on the relative positions of the two colleagues, vertically or laterally. As for the other main three types of relationships the following hold true except for ‘parent-children relationship’. There is a subtle difference about this relationship, which I will talk about at the end. So here goes my bullets:-

• Relationships are hard to build. It takes a lot of pain and tenderness and care to build and it can happen if only both care for each other. Care is the catalyst;
• It can be built easily only if both keep an open mind and do not stamp each other with archetypal ideas of the other person in the relationship, the greatest mistake, which most of us, however intelligent we are, fall prey to. Times have changed and are changing constantly. So too the role models have changed and gone are the days, for eg., Earlier men were from MARS and women were from VENUS. Now even men are from Venus and Women are from MARS and just because a husband drinks cannot mean he is going to neglect the wife which has been society’s age old idea of an archetypal husband, or just because a schooldboy smokes does not mean he is going to neglect his studies or go into bad company (if we keep aside the health side away for the moment this has been one very typical idea of some old timer parents once); Our ideas of archetypal people do prevent us from seeing things as they are really, it is a pity but true. It is not good to be proud thinking that one can handle ‘people’ as one’s idea of such ‘people’ may be totally wrong. This has been and is still being a major cause of break-ups of relationships or relationships dying before they are born.
• Once built they are even harder to keep. Familiarity may breed contempt or closeness may reveal warts, which were not visible from afar. So lot more care about the other person is required now. The catalyst here is not just care but selfless care.
• The responsibility does lie on both persons- heavily. One cannot remain a spectator if one is also interested in building and maintaining the relationship;
• But the responsibility lies most when the relationships are built as if the initial choice is wrong then the tremors will be felt sooner or later. Here too the responsibility lies on both. Both must help each other understand each other so that they can decide to go for it or not go for it as once they have gone for it should be a one way path and no coming back AND if they decide not to go for it they should part without MALICE. All the problems happen when one person is either overzealous and so kills the hen that lays the golden egg or promises to lay ones OR reticent to share the mind / has a wrongly placed idea of politeness and so keeps quiet & thus causes the other person to kill the hen under the false impression that all the golden eggs are now ready. The key word here is COMMUNICATION.
• As people grow older in a relationship they may come closer or fall apart, irrespective of how hard they try, if there are some basic differences in their characters. This may work both ways. They can either try harder to look at the good points in each other or say Goodbye if they feel that such differences are untenable. The latter will in that case keep them mentally healthy rather than letting them go through the mental agony of remaining together.
• However the worse situation is forming a wrong idea and then going for it and the relationship not working out eventually rather than forming a wrong idea and not going for it as in the latter case there is still hope as long as Bullet-5 is true- that they part without malice. When malice comes into the game then things will never be the same again. And malice may come if one kills the hen that laid golden eggs by mistake.
• Thus the ideal way to build a relationship as per me (here is where different people will have different views- as so far mostly I have said what all say) is to start with whether you like a person or do not like a person who is offering a hand for a relationship or to whom you are thinking of offering a hand. You either like him/ her or do not like him/ her,
• If you do not like him/her tell him/ her without letting him make a fool of himself/ herself or tell him you are not sure so to give you some time to think. Whatever, but do not waste time in doing this. “Politenes” has nothing to do with wasting time; “uncaring” has everything to do with wasting time. They key word as I said is COMMUNICATION.
• If you like him/ her then tell him so and go for it or tell him your feelings and take time to rethink in this case too.
• If you have gone for it and are tied together in a relationship then either you like each other more as days go by or you do not;
• If you like each other then it is fine.
• If you do not like less of each other as days pass by then you either decide to make it work or you decide not to make it work.
• If you decide to let go, then do it; do not waste time as time wasted means malice generated;
• If you decide to make it work, then you either be patient, communicative, innovative, understanding, caring and selfless or you do not.
• If you do not then better break off.
• If you do then you will survive. For here then you will try to see the other person as not what you think he or she should be for you but what he or she is and how you yourself can change for him or her. This is the final truth of any relationship. Unfortunately for most of us, in our self centred ways, caused by our nuclear families, living away from people, being more career oriented and hence less caring about human relationships, this is the last thing we try to do or are able to do.

The last word in life is that everybody is born alone and dies alone (even if death comes to both at the same time). Everybody is lonely even when together with someone and everybody can stay alone and does stay alone when old age strikes finally and death takes away one at the end even if they have remained together for a lifetime. So it does not matter at the end whether you have friends or family or none; whether you spend your old age with loved ones caring for you or reading a book alone by a window in an aristocratic club. BUT between life and death, between being born and dying we all like company, we all like people around us, do we not? If we say we do not then we are lying. So we do need to build relationships, whatever they may be for us. We do build too. The person who says he or she does not, is either lying (to himself/ herself/ others) or is not normal. YES the relationship can be husband-wife, parent-child or friends as defined in the beginning. But the more you have stayed alone the more difficult it is to build again as the fear of uncertainty and fear of interruptions in an accepted pattern come into play- it is called fear of change.

The difference with parent-child relationship is that we do not have to build it; it is already built. We cannot break it, it is unbreakable, even when it is broken, so our quarrels with our parents and yet maintaining our relationships with them is not the same as maintaining relationships with a spouse or a friend. Rest of the above is applicable otherwise.

Ok Bye Now. Hope this has not disturbed your work, [if you have come this far i.e.]

Sorry for the readers who were reading my post when I was changing the formats. Maybe if you read now you will get the heads and tails of what I said.