To the exclusion of all else

Friendships and relationships


Why is it that many people simply drop their friendships or ‘push them to the back of the cupboard’ once they get married or enter a man-woman relationship? It often happens, that when a boyfriend comes into the picture, young women quite routinely neglect or even dump their girl friends. And worse, they may dig out these friends suddenly, only when the boyfriend is unavailable for any reason, or if the relationship breaks up.
This narrow vision of things is not restricted to only the young. Mature, grown men and women too tend to let many special friendships and affections simply lapse and fall by the wayside, once they have a partner. And only when the spouse is out of town or busy, are the friends remembered.
To some extent this is natural – your time with your friends is reduced, as you choose to spend more time exclusively with your partner. However, it seems to be such a pity that many of us assume that the two are almost mutually exclusive: either you can have a relationship, or you can have friends! This need not be so at all, and in fact is a rather restricted way of relating to the world around you.
In fact, concentrating wholly and over-focusing on a relationship, to the exclusion of all other relationships, can be emotionally unhealthy for both people concerned. When a woman cuts out the casual ease and special charm of spending time with her girl/woman friends and family, she tends to want far too much to come out of the one relationship that she concentrates on: that with her boyfriend or spouse. Obviously, this puts a great strain on the relationship, since now the expectations become unrealistic – she wants to shop, dine, chat, plan, study, travel, watch films…and take part in a host of activities only with one person, for which he has to be available to her. Moreover, she expects him, and now only him, to understand her every mood, her anxieties, her hopes. She also expects him to be, at all times, the happy ‘recipient’ of all her love and affection, and for him to ‘be there’ for her in the same single-minded fashion.
Surely this is an unrealistic expectation, and one that is bound to not be met fully. He may be busy at times, or interested in other activities, or may simply not want to be in this constantly one-on-one mode with the girlfriend/spouse. When that happens, she wrongly identifies it as: “he doesn’t love me” or “he’s not giving enough”. Many men too take this stance, expecting the woman in their lives to simply drop all other friendships and family ties or to give them minimal attention.
While this may seem very cozy and loving in the beginning of a relationship, it is far healthier to have a broad band of relationships, which touch upon different aspect of your personality and your social and emotional needs. This way, you can be sure that you don’t put an unnecessary and unrealistic burden on your spouse or partner and also continue to cherish and nurture your relationships with other loved ones.
Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut's words sum it up perfectly:
“Let us talk about divorce …when we do it we will very likely wrangle and wail and weep formlessly about money and sex, about treachery, about outgrowing one another, about how close love is to hate, and so on. Nobody ever gets anywhere near close to the truth: the nuclear family doesn’t provide nearly enough companionship. …
“….I am going to write a play about the breakup of a marriage. And at the end of the play I am going to have a character say what people should say to each other in real life at the end of a marriage: Im sorry, you being human, need a hundred affectionate and like-minded companions. Im only one person. I tried, but I could never be a hundred people to you. You’ve tried but you could never be a hundered people to me. Too bad. Good bye.
“….Marriage is collapsing because our families are too small. A man cannot be a whole society to a woman, and a woman cannot be a whole society to a man. We try, but it is scarcely surprising that so many of us go to pieces. So I recommend that everybody join all sorts of organisations, no matter how ridiculous, simply to get more people in his or her life.

GOURI DANGE
THE WRITER IS A PRACTISING FAMILY COUNSELLOR and author of 3 Zakia Mansion and ABCs of Parenting and The Counsel of Strangers