A Guideline to Indian Couples

There is no such thing as basic incompatibility in a couple who are attracted enough to each other to consider matrimony.  Our survival instincts are very powerful unless we are carrying very deep seated unconscious conflicts, we rarely feel attracted to a person fundamentally incompatible with us.

If the partner is from a widely divergent social background, then a greater degree of adjustment is going to be called for on both parts.  The only true cause of incompatibility is the partner’s different level of commitment. Modern biologist believes that love is the consequence of the release of certain chemicals in the brain called endorphins.  I believe the decision to marry can never be made on rational considerations.  It is a purely emotional choice.

 Sensitivity is determined not by greater intellectual capability but by how well your emotions temper your intellect.

Acceptance Vs Rejections

Even if the previous relationships were not intense, their residue makes and impact on the present relationship.  One might assume that one is completely over the previous relationship, but just as one begins to get closer to one’s current partner, old fears are awakened and all of a sudden the partners becomes impracticable.  Actually the partner is just fine.  It is just that our own old fears starts resurfacing and the uncertainty that we had experienced around the time the earlier relationship ended, hits as afresh.  Of course, we don’t realize this and attribute our discomfiture to our increasingly bemused present partner.

Usually all conflicts manifest in the appearance of approach – avoidance behavior, the sensing out of mixed signals.  It is fine to keep your past from your partner, as long as the past is not interfering in your present.  If however; it is coming in the very of your present relationship, as it usually will since most of us have not dealt very well with past break ups, it is important we discuss the past with our partners.

Time only fades the memories; it does not touch the pain.  We have to heal ourselves. We are a responsible for the break ups as was the ex partner and that both were victims of inexperience and lack of maturity.

The intimacy you are sharing with your present partner is not much different from what you had with your ex.  If you feel this way you are absolutely right.  For the nature of intimacy is similar in any relationship.  Intimacy operates at different levels/depths, and as you get closer to your present partner, the depth of this experience, will soon overhaul whatever you had in the past.   

GENERAL PRINCIPALS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

The first and the most fundamental activity in conflict resolution is recognizing it, accepting it and taking responsibility for it. Owing our conflict means we can do with them what we wish, cling to them, throw them in others face or deal with them happily. Most couple chooses the last.

Conflict exists only because of some underlying disharmony in one’s mind. Disharmony at te level of two opposing thoughts. Intellectual conflicts are usually easily resolved by reasoning. Emotional conflicts are never resolved by reasoning. Instead there is usually a state of incongruence mind between thoughts and feelings.

Never get too sexually dependent on anybody unless that person reciprocated her emotional needs. Women are by and large far more sensitive than men are to their partners and their own conflicts, whether related to commitment or otherwise.

FOUR PILLARS OF MARRIAGE

Marriage is built around four pillars that act in concert to ensure a long and stable relationship: love, respect, trust and intimacy.  Each of these pillars needs to be built, reinforced and strengthened by both partners in the relationship.

LOVE, the First Pillar of Marriage-

Love is better felt than described, better enjoyed than structured.  Love that brings two people together is different that holds them in relationship for the rest of their lives.  For the later is most exalted order of love and needs some cleaning of cow webs to make its appearance.

We want to love and be loved, to share our joys and sorrows with our partners to make home and create a family and to grow old in companionship, togetherness.  We expect our spouses to be supportive nurturing and sensitive to our needs we expect they will love, respect and trust us and behave in a manner that will enable us to do likewise.  These are all reasonable and justifiable expectations.

Dynamics of Unconditional Love-

The truth is all relationships are conditional as soon as two people come together whether for a casual interactions or for a more meaningful intercourse, expectations and conditions are inevitable and indeed desirable.  Otherwise, why come together in the first place? It’s only when these conditions and expectations seem to be beyond one’s comprehension and, therefore one’s control that a problem arises.

Love & fear are two primary emotions felt by humans. All other emotions being derivatives of these.

Our parents are imperfect people because they are human being.  As a result, the conditions they impose on us are not always meaningful.  Moreover parents themselves are subject to a barrage of inputs for their social environment and so their expectations of their children are inconsistent and often bemusing.

More stringent the expectations on the child, the more repressed she/he grows up to be.  The more indulgent the parenting, more demanding the child.  Most of us grow up somewhere between these.

Most Indian men are direct descendents of Oedipus Rex, which nothing matters more to them than their mothers.  She also gets mad at her mother in law for bringing up such an impossible man.

Past Relationship Experience

In the manner you love and trust your partner’s past relationship experiences, influences how you respect her/him as well.  If you felt controlled in your earlier relationships chances are you will attempt to replay the situation in the preset one, even if it means going over the top a little.  Your present partner has to pay for her/his own infractions as well as for those committed by your ex partner.  You may find yourself either replaying the same control games that you experienced in the earlier relationship but this time just that little bit more aggressively.

Once bitten, doubly aggressive.  This way you feel you control your relationship better.  In reality you are still allowing your ex partner to control you and continue to dominate your life which ironically may be the precise reason you left her/him.

BOUNDARIES

Boundaries are layman rekhas we draw around ourselves to delimit ourselves from others in the environment. Boundaries are our way of telling ourselves how far we are prepared to extend ourselves in emotional relationships and how much we are going to allow other people to influence out emotional lives.

Boundaries determine the way we permit ourselves to conduct our relationship whether intense ones like our marital relationships or more superficial ones like with a store clerk. Our boundaries exist in a variety of domains. At the core is our personal space, which represents the invisible part of our minds that we do not allow anybody to invade. Tighter the boundary, lesser the space.

 INTIMACY

Intimacy in the context of a relationship reflects an individual’s capacity to be completely honest, open and expressive; without fear or favor. By doing so one experiences the completeness of the unconditional love that one feels for oneself. Before one does this; one has to be absolutely sure of one’s partner. One has to love the partner enough to want to share oneself. One has to trust the partner enough to feel free about this sharing and one has to respect one’s partner enough to believe that she/he knows how to handle this unconditional sharing.

For intimacy to develop in the relationship, be a child when you need to, an adult when you want to and a parent when you have to. Intimacy represents the pinnacle of closeness between two human beings. It is harmony with oneself and comfort with one’s vulnerability.   

SENSITIVITY

Sensitivity refers to a harmony between intellect and emotions. Without intellect, emotions don’t have a context. Without emotions, intellect does not have a purpose.

SEX&INTIMACY

The act of making love is an intimate one you can have sex with anybody, but you can make love only to someone you care for. The comfort with each other’s nudity, the reassuring feeling of your partner’s body on yours, the need to be touched and so to touch, the knowledge that whatever you share in the privacy of your bedroom is exclusive to two of you, the afterglow of sex can all convert a procreation act into a sublimely intimate experience.

The expectation that sexual passion is an inevitable requirement of a man-woman relationship is one more unfortunate misconception. Sexual passions do not last far more than a few months, or at the most beyond a couple of years.

ADVERSE EXPERIENCE IN EARLIER RELATIONSHIPS

From our earlier relationships we notice similar pattern of expressing intimacy in relationships. Whether with your present or Ex-partners you are doing pretty much the same thing to your present partner and this seems disloyal to your present partner.  You must remember that with whomever you choose to get intimate, the way you respond will be identical you can’t change responses just for this reason. If you do, you lose spontaneity and do a disservice to your present partner who married you because she/he loves you the way you are.

Now is the best time to make a clean break with your past relationships. The break you need to make is only from the past relationship not from the kind of person you were then. If you have not yet told your partner about your past relationships consider doing so now. If both of you, trust and respect each other enough to have come this far, why should being honest with each other detract from your relationship? Love your partner until it hurts and he/she will love you back the same way. Nothing makes for greater intimacy that’s this.

BUILDING ON COMPANIONSHIP BY MAKING TIME FOR INTIMACY

Intimacy requires time. Harmonious intimacy release endorphins in your brains that give you a feeling of well-being. Intimacy is absolutely harmless and revitalizes you. To get there all you need to do is following:

Make more time for your relationships.

Spend at least one evening a week in each other’s exclusive company.  

Just be together.

Stay tune into each other lives.

Look for your partner’s emotional signals.

Keep an eye on your responses.

Take annual vacations, just the two of you. Not expensive vacation, just quite restorative gateways.

Do not keep secrets from each other.

THE GREAT DRIFT & THE GREAT ESCAPE

When the pillars of marriage are wobbly, the couple is often hard pressed to handle the consequences. Before they realize this they began to drift apart and slowly but surely the gap widens. One or both partner indulges in a great escape by going down one or more of three roads:

Escape into work. Addition to keep away from the partner and from the relationship.

Allow the marriage to resolves around the children, the only bond between them.

They have an affair.

Eventually leading a parallel lives.  

PARALLEL LIVES: WORK OTHER ADDICTIONS:

Escape into work domain.

Escape into chemicals.

Escape into socialization.

Escape into spiritual pursuits.

Escape into other activities & pursuits like pursuing educational qualifications, surfing internet.

The minute you realize that the activity gives you a sense of relief from your marriage you should start talking fresh stock of your relationships. Parallel lives, like all other maladaptive relationship patterns will not resolve themselves. We have to take active steps to change our little worlds.

PARENTS MANIPULATED BY THE CHILDREN

Children are insecure and look to their parents to make their lives predictable. When the parents are having a hard time doing this, then each parent attempt to control the child in his/her own way without the others knowledge. Children will have to deal with contradictory inputs. That can be at best confusing and at worst impossible to deal with.

IMPACT OF UNRESOLVED MARRIAGE ON CHILDREN:

No child should ever be compelled to make a choice between parents, even if they are separated. Sadly both parents start actively lobbing to be chosen as the primary parent when children need both at different stage. Mother when young, and father in pre-adolescent or early adolescent.

The parental conflict gets expressed non verbally. Children being extra ordinary sensitive pick up the cues and are very hard pressed to make a choice. It can be extremely disorienting to the child.

CHILDREN TURN TO PARENT FIGURE IN THEIR ENVIRONMENT

When children feel the burden of there parents, they turn to other authority figures in the environment. In such situations children are at high risk for abuse. This is not to suggest that above takes place only when children turn to older persons as surrogate’s parent figures. There are other causes of sexual abuse in childhood.  

THE EMPTY NEST SYNDROME

When two children reach adulthood they will no longer be needed. The nest is empty and the parents haven’t the first idea about what to do with each other. The empty nest syndrome characterized by depression, loneliness, helpless, hopeless and anger with the spouse. The empty nest syndrome is easier to prevent than treat. Cure is possible provided the parents use the opportunity to make a secondary commitment to their marriage.