Tag: communication

Is It Really Just “Teasing”?

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I watched a couple interact a few days ago. There was a lot of “teasing” or as I’d like to call it “putting each other down”. Whenever they spoke to each other or about each other, it had to do with correcting each other or mentioning what they other person didn’t know. They seemed comfortable doing that as well. It made me wonder if that’s just how they communicated. It also made me wonder if that’s how they spoke to each other in private or if this was the case all the time.

I feel like I used to be like that at least in public. I didn’t know how to interact with someone I was in a relationship with. It was like, if I was nice to the person in public, I put myself in a vulnerable position. If I put my significant other down, it made me the stronger, more dominant person. Honestly, I don’t know exactly why I did it. But I do remember doing it.

After enough failed relationships, I learned that being vulnerable isn’t the worst thing in the world. People are built a lot stronger than we think. It’s hard if the relationship doesn’t make it but with the right help and work and time, we will get past it.

It taught me that I’d rather be vulnerable but be nice to my significant other. Putting them down doesn’t make me a better person. Teasing them doesn’t make me a stronger person. If anything, the opposite is true. Being good to them makes me a better person. And if I treat them with respect, then I’m treated with respect as well.

So what is it about these types of relationships and communication? I’ve seen it enough. Is it a form of affection? I don’t feel like I’d be very happy if someone I trusted with everything constantly made fun of me.

If you’re in this type of relationship, could you let me know what the deal is?

Couples and Communication

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So I’m going to tell you the truth about my new year’s eve. My husband and I had a fight. It sucked. We were both tired and we had been dealing with illnesses traveling around our family for a few weeks. There came a point where stuff we had been thinking about and not saying just all came out. It wasn’t the greatest way to start off a new year but we figured it out.

We try to both be understanding of each other but sometimes, that leads to resentment. Holding stuff in doesn’t really help resolve anything and then, one of us ends up really angry at the other.

The problem with this situation is that constructive communication is something we both had to learn. Putting our ego aside for the benefit of our relationship is something we both had to learn. Talking to each other with the common end goal of moving forward is something we had to learn.

Unfortunately, these aren’t lessons that are readily available in the Indian culture. We don’t know that we need to continuously evolve in ourselves and in our relationships. The end goal is usually to get married. No one explains that you have to keep working on your relationship after the wedding. It’s just assumed that you will stay together regardless of anything else. We are taught that we just need do what we need to do and that’s it.

But that isn’t it. Awareness and improvement are a relatively new concept in the Indian community. Happiness and emotional needs are also new concepts as well. So we have to realize ourselves that we need to be able to look at our lives and analyze it so we can make it better. As a couple, we need to be able to talk to each other and figure out a way to move forward that is beneficial to both people.

Marriage is something that should be fun. Sometimes, there are occasions where it isn’t so much. But as long as we talk and try to understand each other, it should be a short-lived situation. Then, we go back to having fun.

My husband and I sure did.

Babies: Serious Relationship-Testers

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One thing I learned pretty quickly once I had kids is that I was lucky I married my best friend. I was lucky our relationship was strong. I’ve heard stories where people thought that a child would save their already rocky relationship. Maybe that did happen for some but honestly, I don’t think that would have ever worked for me.

There is nothing like having children to really challenge every aspect of your relationship. The pure exhaustion of having to keep up with your kids  plus keep up with your life and your job every day can cause resentment very easily. When our first kid was born, I remember being jealous of my husband because he was able to go to work and converse with adults for a part of the day. I would forget that then he would have to come home and take care of his child (and me, to some degree) as well.

In order to be able to see the other person’s point of view, you have to be able to love them, to be in love with them. You have to want them to be happy. And you have to be able to remember that when one of your kids is crying at 2 am for 3 hours straight because being tired makes you think crazy thoughts (thoughts such as you just want to sleep and if you can’t sleep, neither can your husband).

No matter how much you guys love each other, this phase is going to be challenging.

So make sure that you marry the person that can go through this with you. Make sure that you have open communication. Make sure that both of you can recognize what the other one needs and what is best for each other.

Like I said, I’m lucky I married my best friend because when I need him, he is there.

 

 

The Guilt Trip

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Do you know that woman that finds a way to passively aggressively guilt trip you when something doesn’t go her way? She can turn anything around so that even if the whole thing wasn’t about her, it becomes about her. Instead of just addressing an issue at face value, she keeps pushing and twisting so that she can become the victim.

I know her. I used to be her.

In my last few relationships before my marriage, if my significant other didn’t do something the way I wanted, I found a way to fight and make it about me. I used to be act like things were okay but then freeze him out. I used to guilt trip and guilt trip and guilt trip. I did it to my friends too. But I finally realized though that a good relationship is based on direct communication rather than trying to force someone to understand you without talking to them.

Recently, I’ve made some mistakes. Honest mistakes that I didn’t mean to make but since I’m human, they happened. I also owned up to them and apologized for them. Now the people on the receiving end decided that instead of just accepting my apology and understanding that it happens, that they needed to make subtle comments on the fact that I screwed up.

I know when I’m being guilt tripped because I start having these arguments with the people guilt tripping me in my head. I think about what I want to say to them, explain to them so they understand why my mistakes happened. I want to yell and scream at them until they understand why it’s not my fault and that obviously there is something wrong with them if they had to guilt trip me. And this conversation goes around in circles in my head.

I don’t want that to be the case. I don’t want to have these conversations in my head and I really don’t want to have them in real life. Is it really worth arguing with someone who guilt trips? They obviously think they are the victims of whatever happened.

I like what The Four Agreements says. “Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you.” It’s true. My mistakes weren’t meant to cause anyone harm. They were true mistakes on my part. So I will go ahead and believe that these people need to guilt trip me because of something that they are going through. Maybe it’s insecurity, maybe it’s something in their past, or maybe it’s just the way they think.

All I know for sure is that I don’t want to go through life feeling like I have to guilt trip people to make myself feel better. I don’t want to be passive aggressive in my communication methods. I would rather resolve a problem directly and move on. As my husband once told me, “You can be lame or you can have fun.” I choose to have fun every time.

Raising A Child Is Hard. Figuring Yourself Out Is Even Harder.

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For some people, being a mom, especially one that doesn’t have to go to work everyday, has got to be the greatest job ever. Even though it’s hard at times, the good parts make everything else worth it. Especially after you pass the first month or two of having a new baby and get used to everything.

The mom part is definitely a challenge but the thing I’ve found even harder is becoming someone new. I’m no longer just a friend, girlfriend, wife. I’m a mom. That means that even though I had to learn compromise as a wife, I’ve had to learn compromise even more so as a mom. I no longer get to put myself first. My whole life is planned around my child. What she needs, when she needs it.

This means that I will never again be who I was. My whole definition of self has changed. And I don’t know about anything else but I’m not very good at changing. I’m struggling to reconcile the person I was before child to the person I am after child. So far, I’m not doing a very good job of it. I am trying to figure out how to evaluate my self-worth in a way that I can believe. It’s like I have to become this new person that I don’t recognize at all. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to become who I was prior to having a child.

A realization I finally came to (even though I’ve had a few friends tell me this several times) is that you don’t return to who you were prior to having a child. You have to become someone new. I don’t know if others have had a different experience but so far, I haven’t found another option.

And maybe I’m not supposed to. Maybe I am supposed to become this person I don’t know and don’t recognize. And like getting to know any new person, it’s going to take a while. Eventually, I hope I know this person well. I hope I know what her strengths and weaknesses are. I hope I feel comfortable enough with her that I can take her out and show her off proudly.

This new person has to learn to relate with everyone as well. I have a new relationship with my husband, my siblings, my friends, my parents. We all have to figure out what the dynamic is all over again. That has also been a struggle because this new person still has to learn how to communicate when everything has changed. This isn’t even accounting for the changes that those other people have gone through as well.

There have been a few times in my life that have really caused me to reevaluate myself and grow as a result. Here is one more time I have to do this. I just hope I can figure out who I am supposed to be and learn how to really be happy with that new person because that new person is the one who will be having relationships and really raising the child.

That new person is the one who will be teaching her children about life and showing them how to live it.

Yes, I Want To See You….Maybe

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Have you ever made plans with people and then, as soon as that day comes, you hear an excuse to cancel that plan? I once decided not to go to an event my friend was having just because it was really far and I didn’t want to drive all the way. But I didn’t want to tell her that I was just being lazy. So I tried to find an excuse that wouldn’t make her feel like she wasn’t worth me making the trip down there. It was really a lame thing to do. 

Why aren’t we just honest about how we feel about something? Or if you are the type of person that usually cancels, maybe it’s just better not to ever promise anything. I know we don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings but then again, are we sure that that person already doesn’t just know that we are making an excuse?

We all do it. I know there are things I need to get done by a certain deadline and there are times where I let that deadline slide a little. 

I wonder how we would all be if we stopped BSing about reasons to not do something. Are we really protecting someone else’s feelings or are we just trying to not feel guilty ourselves? I mean, I also wouldn’t want to hear from someone that they are more interested in doing something else other than hanging out with me. That wouldn’t help my self-confidence at all. 

Maybe we should just be friends with the people who do look at us as priority, that wouldn’t cancel on us without a good, honest reason to start with. I had this friend one time that would always just say that he would see about the plans that I was offering to him. It made me think that he was waiting to see if a better, more interesting offer was going to come. Otherwise, he would follow through on my plan. Why would I want to be friends with people like that? 

More importantly, why do people do that? I just don’t understand why you’d make plans with someone that you don’t consider high priority anyways. Is it just so that if nothing else happens, you’re not sitting alone at home? I would rather be home than out with people that I don’t consider my friends. 

The one last part of this I wanted to bring up are the group of people who tell you they will talk to you and even tell you when they will contact you. And then, that day comes and goes and you never hear from them. I know someone who keeps giving me future dates with promises of contact and yet, I haven’t heard from them at all yet. It’s gotten to a point where I don’t even bother clearing my day because I just assume that I won’t hear from them. 

All it takes is a little honesty and some effort to keep your word. If you can’t follow through on something, be straight about it. If you constantly can’t follow through with something, don’t say you will. Maybe it’s better to be the spontaneous person and just show up to places so no one is actually disappointed, only pleasantly surprised. 

Let’s stop the BS and maybe we can all trust each other a little bit more. 

The Past and Its Results: Our Present

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I started reading the autobiography that my grandfather has written about his life. I’ve barely gotten to the part where he is in medical school so I definitely have a lot more left to go considering that he is 92 years old. 

I’m so amazed at what his life so far has been like. To live through all sorts of history that I’ve only heard about. And even so, growing up here in America, not really heard about as well. He survived a bombing in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar) during World War II when the Japanese invaded and had to go back to India even though he had spent a lot of his childhood in Rangoon. His father actually had to walk back to India because there was no other modes of transportation that were working due to the air raids by Japan. 

I haven’t even gotten to the part where India becomes an independent country yet. I’m curious because I do know my grandparents did meet Mahatma Gandhi so I really wonder what their story is. I don’t know if they will be far-removed from everything or if they were right in the middle of what was going on. 

Last week, I wrote a post about how many parents left the country they grew up in and found themselves in a new country only for the opportunities available to them at the time. Today, I’m reading about this history that my grandfather has gone through. I’m now waiting to hopefully read about the history that my father-in-law has lived through being a member of the Indian army. 

This is what our ancestors have gone through to get to where we are today. Our problems don’t really seem as complex or terrifying as what our families have been through in the past. In fact, on the other hand, it seems like they have gone through their struggles without complaining or feeling sorry for themselves. 

It definitely puts into perspective what we go through on a daily basis. Most of us are extremely lucky wherever we are because we don’t have this struggle of survival. We have the right and the opportunity to choose what we want out of life. I’ve been reading a lot of history in general lately and it seems as though this right to make our own choices has been something most cultures have struggled with for centuries before it was given. I think some cultures are still going through this struggle now. 

Time changes things. It has happened before and it will continue to happen. Eventually, we will all have our effect on the world somehow. I think our generation will change the world in terms of social consciousness, communication, and technology. It will be a different type of change.

I look forward to contributing to it.