Tag: love

Are They Really Happy?

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So I was watching this wedding video the other day and as I watched, I noticed that not at any point did the bride and groom look at each other and smile or interact. The first time they even looked like they were married to each other was during their slow dance at the reception. And then it ended. 

What’s the deal, man? Is it possible that a couple is so shy that they just don’t interact at all? Is it just me or does it seem somewhat off to you that the couple doesn’t even acknowledge each other’s presence on what is considered to be one of the more important days of their lives? Where do you even see that there is love present in this relationship? 

When I say this, I honestly mean the little moments. The one where the first time the bride comes into the room, the groom smiles or his eyes light up. The one where you can see one of them talking to the other about whatever is going on in their day. The one where you can see some inside joke or thought pass between them. 

Are we supposed to act distant and proper when we’re getting married? Because if that’s the case, I totally messed it up. 

It always makes me wonder if the couple was more interested in becoming an official couple rather than spending their lives with someone they really love. I don’t want to judge a couple that I don’t really know. I know it’s possible that this is their dynamic. Maybe it’s what makes them happy. I see couples that don’t spend that much time together in general. I wouldn’t think that was a happy relationship on both ends but then again, I want more than to just be a wife in name and in duty. 

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. 

If anyone can explain this situation to me, I’d like to learn and understand why certain couples look like they’d rather be anywhere but with each other. Or that they are indifferent to being next to their significant other. Because I still don’t understand it. 

Looking forward to your thoughts. 

Expectations vs. Reality

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We grow up watching fairy tales and Hindi movies. Is there anything more that could make us think that once we fall in love, everything will be magical? It’ll be flowers and surprises and pure romance.

And while this is a great thing to hope for, it’s probably not what reality is.

Let’s put it this way. Is it possible for anyone to keep up the romance every single day over the course of a relationship? I couldn’t do it. I’m pretty sure most people can’t.

The best thing you can do for yourself when you start a relationship is be realistic. And when I say realistic, I don’t mean pessimistic. I mean realistic.

Expectations are one of the things that gets us into a lot of trouble when we start dating someone. I expect everything from the person that I am with. How fair is that?

I’ve learned the hard way that it’s not my significant other’s job to make me happy. It’s my job to make myself happy. Our relationship is meant to provide each other with love and mutual support. And I’m grateful for everything he does for me because I know he doesn’t have to.

The second we stop expecting everything from our significant others, the more we’ll appreciate the things they do for us because we know then it’s out of their love and not because they have to.

I Have Insecurities…Do You?

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I know this is something none of us want to admit in public but most of us have insecurities. We put up this front, this cover so that no one will ever see the madness or the struggles that happen inside of our heads. 

I know I definitely do this. It’s surprising to me when I hear that people tell me that I seem so strong and confident because I know that on the inside, I feel anything but. 

Everyone goes through this. Again, I think it’s something we don’t talk about. There are very few people who don’t feel insecurity at some point. If you don’t, I’d love to know your secret so I can be in the same place. 

A lot of us feel it with regards to our significant other. How can we guarantee that that person will always love us unconditionally? A lot of us feel it about our careers, our friends, our place in the world. There are so many aspects and to always be sure of yourself in this ever-changing world is difficult. 

I think a sign of security is when you know and understand that things will change and are able to accept it. We can’t control much in the world but we can control our reactions and our strength to deal with it. I have to remind myself all of the time that I have been through a lot of hard times and somehow, I keep going. And even though it doesn’t always feel like it, things have come out for the better. 

At this moment, I am going through a lot of insecurity due to a lot of transitional phases in my life happening all at once. But I just keep thinking that eventually, it will all make sense and I will feel that I am right where I am supposed to be. That’s where I always was. 

“Stuff”

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Yesterday, we talked about the way Indian women can be treated by men. Actually, this probably ranges past just Indian women to all women in general. The question that was brought up in the discussion after that post was what about the women that stay in a relationship even though they are strong and independent and have a good support system through their friends and family. Why do these women stay in these relationships where they have to deal with their significant other not treating them in the best way possible? Is it just love?

I think I need to explain my definition of love before I talk about if it’s love or not. I think love is a mutual respect for each other. It’s a friendship. It’s putting someone before yourself and understanding when they need to put themselves before you. It’s being there in the good times and bad. It’s really understanding them.

So, I think that a woman putting up with “stuff” from her significant other is not love. I think there’s something else wrong with that statement too. I think if you are in a really loving mature relationship, you are not “putting up” with your significant other. You are there because you want to be there. You have fun with that person and the relationship affects you in a positive way.

My primary concern would be the dealbreakers. If there are certain things that you cannot accept in a relationship, then that is a dealbreaker. You should not be in a relationship with that person. There are universal dealbreakers such as physical and emotional abuse. Then, there are personal ones that have more to do with your experiences and what you want. Everyone’s personal dealbreakers are different. And we can’t judge someone else based on that. What bothers me might not bother you.

So part of the question was if the man isn’t making an effort to be with the woman in the way she wants, why does she still hang around him? Why hasn’t she moved on? They aren’t together, they aren’t apart.

It’s complicated. We all have our weaknesses. And a lot of times, someone we have loved at one point or another is a weakness. It’s hard to get over them. It’s hard to just move on. We know the relationship is not good for us but we really want that person in our life.

It takes strength. It takes a lot of willpower. It really is about recognizing what is good for you as the woman personally and trying to make it a reality. You can’t look backwards and forwards at the same time. And only by closing that door can we open the opportunity for someone who is a positive influence for us and truly can make us happy.

Love Who We Want

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Yesterday, I wrote about a teacher who was fired from my Catholic high school for marrying his partner of 10 years. 

Today, I want to hit a little bit closer to home with my culture regarding a similar issue. How free are we, as Indians, to love who we want? Is it possible to be with or even marry the person we want if they don’t fit into what our culture dictates is right for us? How much pressure do we even put on ourselves to fit into what we think is right? 

I’ve learned the hard way that what is right on paper isn’t what is right for me. But I had to go through a pretty big self-inflicted struggle to understand this. 

Even if we never hear anything from our parents or family about who we should end up marrying, there is this idea that we should end up with someone who is the same ethnicity and religion as we are. They should be equally matched in every way: looks, education, financially. And even if the pressure isn’t directly put onto us by someone else, we put that same pressure on ourselves. We want the approval of our community. And to get that approval, we have to fit into the mold that was shaped out for us and has been shaped out for us for decades or maybe even centuries. 

So what happens when we fall in love with someone outside of this mold? What happens when we realize that a relationship goes past the education and the looks and the families getting along? What happens when we realize that there is so many other aspects to consider that have nothing to do with what we have been taught? 

I have seen it go both ways. I have seen couples split up because one or the other isn’t approved by their family. Instead of fighting for their love, they choose their family and sacrifice their relationship. I have seen couples stay together and try to make their families understand their relationship.

So it’s a choice. It’s always a choice. Unfortunately, we can’t control the idea of what the perfect relationship looks like. But we can control how we react to the opinions of our relationship. There are still going to be times when the world won’t agree with a relationship. Is it worth it to fight for it? Or is it something that should be given up because it’s not “right”?

Should we love who we want? Or should we love who the world says we should? 

The Need to be Needed

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It must be a human thing. To feel needed or wanted. When we stop feeling like that and stop feeling appreciated, we lose our motivation to really achieve something. We lose our motivation to love and to care and to really put ourselves out there. 

What is it about being needed to makes us feel worthy? Ideally, we ourselves should feel worthy because of what we accomplished, not because someone praises us or shows us how much they need us. That idea of “you can’t function without me” is something that really is detrimental to our self-worth. We want to feel wanted and needed. Which ends up being that we need or want someone to want or need us. Vicious cycle, right?

I don’t know if it’s possible to be so self-sufficient that you don’t ever need someone to validate you and your effort. It would be an ideal place to be. I definitely wish I could assess my own actions and not depend on anyone else to let me know that I’m doing a good job or or if I’m a good person. I would expend so much less energy if I didn’t question my value. 

The other angle is that I know what I’m worth and I need others to know that well and when they don’t treat me how I would like to be treated, then that’s not a good place to be as well. 

Where does this need come from? So there are 2 aspects. One is that we need this validation to know we are worth something and the other is that we need this validation to know that we are being treated right. 

One day, I hope that I don’t have the insecurities to need validation to know my self-worth. I will always use it as a standard of measure to know that I’m being treated as I should be. 

Financial Stability or Passion? Can I Have Both?

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For most of us, our careers are based on what we might be good at and financial stability. We choose them when we are really young and just keep working away until we get to a point where it’s comfortable. We work, we work, we work, and all of a sudden, we’ve been doing this job for over 30 years. We achieved what we wanted. Financial stability. So my question is where do our passions fall into all of this?

I don’t know about you but mine are side projects.  I make time outside of my regular work to do things I enjoy like writing in this blog. I couldn’t do them full-time though. What if I can’t achieve financial stability? What if the whole thing is a struggle? There is a quote that says “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I’ve constantly been on the search for that my whole life. I don’t know if I’ll ever find it. 

I really admire those people who manage to turn their passion into a full-time business without letting it feel like a business. My other big fear with turning a passion into full-time work is that what if I start resenting it? What if the business aspect kills it for me? 

Passion. It’s part of what makes life worth living and helps you enjoy every day. It brings people together to achieve common goals. So how does a person take that step towards something that they are passionate about that won’t guarantee financial stability? The people that can do this are amazing. They don’t seem to have any fear. They make it work. And they have enough drive and ambition that leads them to success. 

Why is it so hard for some of us to take that step? We burn out so we can have both financial stability and passion instead of really finding something we want to do and figuring out how to achieve financial stability through that. We get to a point where we don’t want to do anything because we’ve worked so hard at everything. There has to be a balance. There has to be a way to achieve both at once. 

The question is how do we make it happen? 

I’m Over Being Called a Ball and Chain

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A couple of days ago, I walked into a golf shop with my husband. The salesperson he had previously consulted decided to tell me in the first few minutes that we met that my husband was really good at golf and I should let him get out to play more. 

Excuse me? I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that, as the wife, I was responsible for holding him back from doing something he loved. In our relationship, we support each other in our passions rather than hold the other person back. So where does this guy get off telling me to let him play golf more? Why would he make that assumption? And even if he doesn’t believe what he said and was just teasing, it’s still completely insulting. 

This has been going on for ages. You hear one spouse teasing or joking that they have to ask the other spouse for permission to go do something fun. When did relationships become about permission? I thought you entered a 50/50 partnership, not adopted a new parent.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be considerate of your significant other. Yes, there is more joint decision making as a couple. You have to respect each other’s time and plan things together. Fact of life. But blaming (even jokingly) the other person is seriously not cool. 

We’ve grown up with the term “ball and chain”, traditionally referring to the wife. Maybe at one point, it was accurate. But in this day and age, most of us do what we want and we are supported while doing it. So why does this phrase still come up? If someone (husband or wife) is holding you back, then it’s probably best you discuss it with that person. Teasing that person in public or behind their back is disrespectful and really just immature. 

Another idea in connection to this is when people tell you your life is going to end when you get married. If you really think that, don’t get married. And I know people say this as a joke and to be funny but it’s not. The last thing I want to hear is someone teasing my husband that his life ended because he married me. Am I really that bad? Or is marriage? 

I’m over hearing these “jokes”. They aren’t funny. They really are insulting to the idea of marriage. Marriage should be a thing of beauty and love and friendship. So for those of you still referring to your spouse as a ball and chain or marriage as a life-ending event, take it somewhere else because I don’t want to hear it anymore.