The Story of happily every after ...

Today's question: What is it to relate emotionally ? If there is no emotion attached are we still
feeling ? If we do not feel then does the aspect exist or does it cease to ? Is death a lack of feeling ? What do we mean when we say relate? What triggers relating ? What causes it to disappear ?

The Story of happily every after ...

When we relate to someone, we relate to an interesting, real and aspirational us that we become with relation to them. When we feel good with someone, it is not only because we like what they are when we are with them, we like what we become in their presence. It is the latter that motivates us to meet them, talk to them, desire to spend time with them and stay in love with them. A drop in their excitement, enthusiasm in being with us is handled by us either as a personal failure of our own attractiveness or as a drop in theirs. We desire people who make us continue to feel desirable.

When the perceived importance of the feeling within one that made one relate to something or someone reduces or disappears then the relating reduces or disappears. If what you felt or perceived as a new exciting you when you encountered a new idea or person is not lasting and your regular old personality comes back, you lose faith in the excitement or the fresh feeling and revert to the old you. After a while, even the memory of the excitement seems fainter and fainter until you are not sure it even existed.

When we fight with someone especially in a relationship, it is either a fight about recapturing that emotion or a denial that the emotion even existed in the first place. Most women since they have long term memories believe and can remember the emotion and excitement and hence put their faith and hope on recapturing it with the man. For the man, the memory is so faint that he does not recollect it or does not believe that it can happen again. The man fights to establish the fact that excitement and euphoria is short lived. He either continuously seeks it again and again through various means or various people. The woman tries to recapture it with the same person again and again. And, that is why when she takes a step forward or tries to remind him of who he was when they met or who they were at the start the man seriously does not relate to the person he was then nor the emotion that held him in thrall. The woman wants a replay of what was strong and beautiful and binding between them a million times over. When a woman asks a man if he still loves her, she means do you still love me the way i thought you did when we first met. Do you mean it with the same intensity and am i still the most important thing to you still in the same way?

The man is forced to go through the motions pretending the memory and emotion or he rejects it outright. He has no recollection of having been captivated by this woman and instead grows stubborn in his refusal of the memory. He grows colder and colder while she tries to come closer and closer. He cannot for the life of him figure out why he was chasing her in the first place or what he found attractive. She was attractive when they met because she was not committed to him in particular and was hence a conquest to be won. He becomes interesting to his own mind as a conqueror and a talker and is a new person within himself and unfamiliar at that and hence a man in love becomes confident, vulnerable, real and exciting in his own eyes. The woman enjoys becoming a target of this excitement and in turn becomes sexy, desired, pampered, adored and interesting.

Post the chase, the man loses memory of the game and gets busy with practical aspects and the woman is left with an empty promise of a lifetime game of adoration and excitement that she fails to get. The more it is denied to her, the more empty she gets and more clingy and emotional. The more emotional, clingy and demanding she gets the more he grows distant and impatient and uncaring. She wants to get to a point where they were wonderful together. She is keen to start from there again. During an argument she would keep coming back to that. The man is rooted in the present. He sees a clingy, emotional, crying woman and he for the life of him cannot relate to her. All he wants is to run. The man gets impatient, angry and pinned down when accused of having changed in his affection or expression. He will fight tooth and nail to deny it but the excitement she craves and the importance in his eyes that she desires will be denied to her. And, this is the eternal battle of the sexes. Beneath this battles lies all the innumerable accusations that each gender throws at the other. 

So, how does that explain the happy, devoted couples that seem so much in love for long ? If you look around the percentage of genuinely happy couples are relatively lesser. They are the ones who connected through a real not necessarily ideal connect - the image that the man put out was closer to his real nature and the connect he felt with the woman was closer to the real woman. Also, subconsciously they get into the rhythm of feeding each other the image that initially excited them. It is a life long feeding of the same and becomes a habit and a way of life and at some point their joint personality. It is nurturing of a  self image and nurturing of a reflection of the self with relation to the other. Additionally, society views them as an ideal couple and this positive image feeds them into greater success as a couple So, they tend to grow together as a couple. 

So can any man and woman become a couple ? Yes. And, it lies with the man.If he could relate to the fact that for her the relating means starting from the point when they met and nurturing that connect. When we mean starting, we mean an emotional starting. And, it lies with the woman, in trying to work out newer connects and points to relate from so the man is not left challenged with trying to continuously live up to the initial promise . As a couple, both have to create fresh situations of I love you. It should not be a case of when we met and then ever after...

- An excerpt from 'the book  THE SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATING ' - By Srividya Srinivasan