Relating to relationships

Amongst the many experiences we have in life, our interpersonal relationships are the most involved and intricate interactions we ever have to endure. Relationships invoke and involve all the five senses along with the mind and heart. They relieve or result in pain. They grow and sometimes grow out. They demand as much as they command. They involve tears of joy and fears of loss and loathing. Let us look a little closer.

The ‘relationship web’ that we weave around ourselves is predicated on five “T” triggers: tribe, talk, time, trust and taste.

The first set of relationships that we inherit at birth is our immediate family and relatives. Let us name them TRIBE relationships. “Family comes first” is an old adage that is still followed by many Indians. However in this fast-paced digital era, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep this ‘tribal web’ intact. There are too many troubled father-son, brother-brother/sister, father-mother, uncle-nephew, cousin-cousin, father-son-in-law etc relationships that are either suffocating us or no longer useful or healthy.

Some relationships are maintained because they are necessary for us to hold on to other more important relationships, while others are maintained for mutually selfish and ulterior motives. And there are still others that exist because tolerating them is little less harmful than leaving them. In these times when phone rates are almost equal to zero, the rate at which we call up family and say “kya haal hai” is also alarmingly close to zero.

I can also give you many examples of people in relationships who have not spoken a civil or sincere word to each other in years, even as they continue sharing their bathrooms, bedrooms and drawing rooms.

This brings me to the other trigger called TALK. Ideally speaking, your relationship with someone should reach such a stage where the communication happens without a word being spoken or there’s no need to overtalk as you develop a tacitly mutual understanding about each other’s habits and needs. Just look at a new born baby and the mother. To me that’s the ultimate relationship because the only communication that they have is the baby’s cry and they are both comfortable only when there’s absolute silence. If ever you want to test your relationship, test it on this parameter, I promise you will never be disappointed. But let me re-emphasize, talking has a role to play in any relationship, but your eventual aim should be develop a comfortable silence.

TIME and TRUST are the two axes of relationship graph. You might need time to develop trust, but once the trust is there, the relationship becomes timeless. There are people with whom you spent just a few moments (on a journey or at a function) and you trust them for a lifetime. And then there are people you have spent a life with but don’t trust them even for a moment. Who understands the dynamics that drive relationships – are they karmic or are they simply based on basic needs, hormones or shallow impulses?

And lastly, relationships are also made out of your personal choices, like personal interests say — TASTE. Most relationship problems occur because because partners are concentrating on what’s missing in the other person according to their taste. They fail to realize that however good or bad you feel about your relationship, the person you are with at this moment is the “right” person, because he or she is the mirror of who you are on the inside and the person you really need to look at is….yourself.