What does being in a relationship mean to you?
It’s 2021 and what a relationship means has changed drastically and continues to change as I write this or as you’re reading it. When I say relationships, I mean heteronormative romantic relationships between a cis-man and a cis-woman. I can only speak about that from my experience. Romantic relationships came to be when monogamous relationships became the norm. Men and women both focused their devotion to one individual and then vowed to do that for the rest of their lives. One can’t be blind to the gender roles entrenched deep within these relationships. So, as gender roles continue to evolve, so does a relationship.
More and more people are dating in urban India. Women and men move away from their parents for college and jobs. This financial independence is helping them make their own life decisions and that applies to finding their life partners. But do we know what to look for in a relationship? Do we understand the concept of a healthy relationship? Or are we still looking at our parents to understand what a relationship should look like? It is also true that in India movies dictate most of our romantic notions. For example, many men think stalking and grand gestures will make a girl fall in love with them. This might work in a movie but in real life, it is plain creepy.
I dated through high school and college and was in two long-term relationships before I met my husband. My basic checklist of what I want in a partner evolved as I entered into my early 20s. And the most important part of that was space. I needed my own space in any relationship I would have. A space to be me.
“Be with someone who inspires you and makes you be the best version of yourself.”
― Roy T. Bennett
When relationships begin everything revolves around that relationship. Romantic movies and novels make us think that we ought to spend every waking hour with the person we fancy because that’s what being in a relationship means. You eat together, go on walks together, read together (how on earth do you read together), watch movies together, etc. And when that’s physically not possible you spend hours on the phone texting or on-call with each other.
I’ve seen couples talk for hours and 60% of their talks are “what else”, “aur batao“, “tell me something”. And when they can’t call, they text. This sounds really romantic at the beginning of a relationship but spells doom as the relationship moves on to the next stage. There are no more calls because you are staying with each other. It’s not the same as saying “what else” when the person is sitting right across you. You have to make conversations and no one can make conversations for hours as they did over phone calls.
I digress. We were talking about the importance of space in relationships. When you spend every waking minute with each other, you forget how to spend time with yourself. You forget to evaluate your life from just your perspective. You forgo your goals and focus on the collective which might work in the present but tomorrow if the relationship breaks you’ll be left with nothing but a gaping hole to fill. All because you forgot to work on yourself or spend time with yourself to understand yourself better.
All that is left now is a distant memory of what you were before this relationship, your real identity that somewhere merged into your significant others’, and a feeling of resentment towards yourself and the relationship.
“If you’re not comfortable enough with yourself or with your own truth when entering a relationship, then you’re not ready for that relationship.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Why do I always talk about space in a relationship? You might ask. Are other things not important in a relationship? Loyalty, honesty, love and, friendship all matter as much as space. The reason I focus more on the need for space is that we have grown up learning about relationships from our parents who played traditional gender roles.
Dating wasn’t a norm back then and it wasn’t acceptable in the Indian societal context to choose your own partner. So marriages were arranged. Women played the role of a caretaker while the husband was the main breadwinner. The goals of a couple became a collective one that focused on the family as a unit. To have individual goals was considered selfish. To exist in a space different from this unit was a rebellious act.
But the times have changed and so have our lives. We have understood the importance of individualism and are simply not interested in existing as part of a collective. So does that mean relationships have no meaning anymore? Remember, relationships are not about merging into a single personality. It is about being your own self while enjoying and cherishing the companionship of another.
