Mahatma Gandhi said this to people to self – empower themselves rather than cribbing about things being bad or not how they should be. Everyone, yes, everyone around wants things to move in the way they desire. They want other people to adjust to their whims and fancies, buses/train/traffic to move according to how they want, work to be over as they wish, want their favourite sports person/ team to perform as per their standard…etc. etc. Does that happen? The chances of all this happening is next to never…Still, people would proclaim…’my way or highway’… Till now, I thought this statement is useful in evaluating any system (political/social/education etc.)…However, when I twisted the cube, I found it is a very potent statement when applied to relationships.
The-way-I-want-to-see-you-behave-and-react forms the biggest form of expectation and cause for relationships to survive or succumb. It all starts with finding common behaviour in early stages of the relationship. After the relationship is stable, the commonness remains, and you are single-handedly after the uniqueness of the other person… You want your partner to speak, behave, react, laugh, cry, expect, imagine, dream, spend, save, invest, interact and conduct exactly the way you deem appropriate….quite a recipe for disaster I must say…
Why do we do so? Why we become less tolerant of other’s unique abilities and their method of reacting in a situation? Why cant we simply accept that two people will never react in a same manner to all the situations. We are just too engrossed to change the person’s behaviour and identity in the name of love…Here’s what I think why we do it,
Comfort Zone/Status Quo: People just don’t seem to bother to come out of their comfort zones and would like to have everything on a platter… They don’t make an effort to understand their partner’s personality, Instead they want their behaviour superimposed on them, so that they can live an easy life…
Additionally, most of us love uniformity and symmetry….everyone who does not behave/react in same manner as us/maintain certain acceptable norms, is labelled as too random and unstable…Its difficult for us to change rather than asking someone else to change…and we always try to go for easy path..:)
Ego & Conflicts: If two people are put into a situation, they will react in their own manner resulting in conflicts. Many amongst us are not game for a healthy argument… We avoid getting into confrontations with our partners. Even if we get into one, we want to force what we want on them, so as to justify to their egos…”Why do I bend and forego my habits…Why should I change if he/she are not willing to change?”…
Dominate and Dictate: People wish to dominate and dictate how their relationship should move ahead… They derive a certain kind of power kick out of this…They set the relationship rules for the other partner as their personality is overpowering enough… They become the ‘Atlas’ carrying the mantle of the relationship on their shoulders…soon, the dominant partner decides everything in the relationship…. Actually, if you look deeply, you will have a dominant partner in each relationship… I feel sex and age have nothing to do on who will dominate….
Prince Charming/Dream Girl: We all nurture dreams of landing that dream girl (DG) or being rescued by the prince charming (PC)…some people go a little beyond and also decide how they should behave….:) But, life is not utopia, where we get ideal matches…imperfection is reality… To give shape to what we think, we start our quest to improve our partner’s imperfections…and try to decide the right/correct way to behave…
Case of boosting self esteem….may be…
Comparison (True for People with or without PC/DG): Just because your friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend act in certain manner, you expect your partner to behave like them…’Look at them, so lovely they are….’ you say…underneath, You think…Wish I had a boyfriend/girlfriend like that…You know that can’t happen (or can it!!!)…so, you issue diktats for your partner….and start chasing an Image and forget to appreciate the qualities your partner has…
Previous Relationship Experience: Relationships end, expectations remains…We often carry the experience of previous relationships (Not only love relationships, but other relationships like with parents, friends etc.)…and expect an encore….We expect the same or more respect, attention, right etc. in the new relationship as we used to enjoy in previous one…so, when we don’t see that happening, we try to bring the same magic in our existing relationship…
Well, tolerance is what is eluding us…We have our opinion on everything but if some one has different opinion, we find it difficult to take it in right spirit…If all of the above is done to save the relationship, why not try to change your self to accept the person the way he/she is..Why take the easy way out to see what you wish to see…
A little more tolerance please…
My Turf... 
Good to see you twisting cubes and churning posts …. can you spot cause and effect relationship in your post? Everything has that relationship …however we dont have to dig and find cause and effect for all the things that happen around us … Generally when things are going good and the way we want them we generally dont try to find cause and effect, however for a smallest of bad thing we try to find what cause for it and try to find reason why this happned to me …
ever wondered why is it that we have posts on complications, complexities, expectation mismatch, conundrums, dilemmas and not why we chose to give penny to a begger some day and not the other? what is it that is driving me to blog now? any wow moment we had and why we had that moment? Isn’t it that if we have deeper insighits (did i say cause effect) of “wow” moments …and consciously try to repeate those “wows” when things are not so rosy … and slowly those conscious attempts will become part of our unconscious system ….
Great !! Well I think I need to save this post of yours and read it when I fight with my fiance !
Award for you on my blog 🙂
I am trying to change and be more me then I was befor.. hope it works.. nice advice ty