Should relationships start with love and then desire allowed its space, or do they start with desire and mature into love, and can both stay through the relationship? Ideally, in a relationship, one hopes that there are both. There is a healthy amount of desire, physical attraction and sexual chemistry, and there are strong bonds of love and emotional intimacy. Often times though, they seem to go their separate ways even if at the start of a relationship there are tons of both love and desire, or it starts with a huge amount of desire and love catches up, takes a big lead and soon desire falls behind – way behind at times. Why is that? Are we biologically coded to fall into love and lose desire along the way? Is the function of desire and sexual attraction really to get people to fall in love and once that job is done, desire withers away or gets directed elsewhere? Are different people coded differently – some built more for desire, and others more with a tendency to build intimacy and safety? Can people continue to have desire for the person they love? Often times, how we experience desire is so different from how we experience the need for love, comfort, affection and intimacy. Our mind thinks of these quite differently. It is almost as if wholly different sections of our brain are working when it comes to these emotions – just like there is a section for music and a whole different section for movement in our brains, or for any other function for that matter. If you are sceptical about it, try this exercise, loosely adapted from Esther Perel’s work: Take a sheet of paper and write down answers for the following questions: What makes me feel loved and cherished? What do I feel like doing when I love someone? What kind of activities do I feel like doing with someone I love? What kind of person do I generally find myself loving? What ten words do I most associate with the word ‘love’? Once you have written your answers, go away for a while. Watch a movie or have some dinner, or take a walk, and later when you feel different, turn the page around, and write down answers for the following questions: What makes me feel desired? What do I feel like doing when I desire someone? What kind of activities do I feel like doing with someone I desire? What kind of person do I generally find myself attracted to? What ten words do I most associate with the word ‘sexy’? When you look at your answers to both sets of questions, chances are that you have very different responses to both – a kind of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde situation at the extreme, but even if not as drastic, there are bound to be strong differences. Don’t worry though - you are not a two-faced character just because of how different these responses might be. In fact, it is quite normal. The challenge then is to recognize and make space for both in your life – knowing that both are valid, both need expression and both need acceptance As written for and published in The New Indian Express A game that has lasted for decades, if not centuries, is the good old ‘Flames’ game. In many schools, when the teachers are droning on about trigonometry, the various wars of the nineteenth century, dissecting poor old Wordsworth or any subject to their wards in the eighth, ninth grades, and finding their students busily making notes, in reality they might have been busy playing ‘Flames.’
If you never played the game, the rules are quite simple. You simply write your names down one on top of the other, and then scratch out letters that are common to both till there are no matching letters left, and then count the number of letters left. If you had four left, then you count four into ‘Flames,’ reaching ‘m’ which then means ‘marriage’ is on the cards. If you more than six, you just count another cycle till you get one of the letters. Flames stand for Friendship, Love, Affection, Marriage, Enemies and Siblings. If you think about it a little differently about what each of the letters of ‘Flames’ stand for, an interesting thing stands out - there is this gradation of so many positive feelings. There is friendship, affection, sibling, love, and let’s count marriage as positive as well, and only one negative feeling – enemy. Nobody plays to find if between them and this person there might be, for example, jealousy, envy, disgust, irritation, worry, anger, regret, sorrow – say Jedi Wars for short. (Hey, did I just invent a game?) In fact, even when Flames is played, the interest is really at what level the positive feelings are towards each other. Are they merely fond of each other, is there a friendship, has it matured into some kind of love or might it get into sibling territory or might it really go all the way and become a marriage and stay presumably forever? That is the real curiosity. If you don’t like each other and are ‘enemy’, nobody particularly bothers to see what kind of negativity is supposedly there. In all likelihood, since you play the game pairing one name with some person of interest, if ‘e’ does come up, or if you didn’t like the result the first time around, you might try with your full name, initialled name or other spellings till you get the result you wanted. That’s half the fun of it as the reaction to what the Flames reveal, intuitively reveal to the people that are playing the game what they really feel about the person they are being paired with in the game It is quite a confusing set of emotions between friendship, affection, lust, love and the lot, and with all the rules we have about what’s OK in one and what’s not OK, it can be so scary to see ‘s’ when you know you are having very different feelings. Just getting to acknowledge what you really feel, that’s what games like ‘Flames’ is about. What after you get to know what you feel? Well, you are really in the fire then As written for and published at http://www.newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/health/2018/feb/02/games-like-flames-get-us-to-admit-what-we-really-feel-1767370.html Have you read the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fairy tale, or seen any of the half a dozen movies Disney has made on it, both animated and live action? You probably have. The story itself is pretty classic fairy-tale material: A princess is cursed and is awakened by true love’s kiss. In the movie ‘Maleficent’ the true love’s kiss is that of the supposedly evil fairy queen played by Angelina Jolie – a love that is quite maternal. Most stories though have the kiss from a handsome prince who gets besotted by the sleeping beauty’s irresistible looks and just has to kiss her.
That pretty much is what this article is focusing on. Is t really OK to go and kiss a sleeping beauty? Let’s re-imagine this story in our everyday context. We will call our central character “Joy” for the heck of it. So, Joy got all decked up and happily went to a party. It is a great party. Let’s imagine that this is Joy’s best friend’s birthday party. Everyone Joy knows and loves is there. And some guests. Everyone is having a great time. There are glances exchanged, and little gestures of attraction and interest between different parties – not necessarily the same people one came into the party, to be sure. It is all well and good. No harm. No foul. So, the party goes on into the wee hours, and most people have left. Joy is sleeping over. It is, after all, Joy’s best friend’s house and why not party till really late, get up the next morning, talk the party over as you clean up the mess, get some breakfast and have a chilled day? A few other are sleeping over as well. Now, and here’s the crux of it: Our sleeping beauty, Joy, who zoned off and is lost to the world, wakes up in the dark hours before dawn, to the sensation of being kissed – and sees that it is some stranger, supposedly besotted with how beautiful Joy looks when sleeping. What do you think Joy might feel? Would Joy really feel the tingles of true love, or would Joy feel bugged and irritated, or more intensely, outraged and violated? One would think that Joy is certainly likely to be really, really angry. And rightly so. If the argument is that the ‘kind of kiss’ matters, and that the fairy tale just refers to a light brushing of lips, and it is not really so bad, and in fact, actually sweet, or that it is a cultural thing – that in ‘western countries’ it is quite normal to do that, one would still say – not amongst strangers. Perhaps with old friends, or family where this is custom. Not among strangers. The point of talking about this is simply that these stories do more harm than good. We need better reference points for stories of love, coupling and relationships. Sleeping beauties might be a classic fairy tale – but kissing any random sleeping beauty? That is surely a no-no. As written for and published at :http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2018/jan/19/love-o-logy-fairytales-are-wrong-dont-kiss-sleeping-strangers-1759071.html Here is an exercise: Tell your beloved that you need their help. Tell them to get a paper and a pen. This is a writing exercise. Ask them then to think about you, and more specifically, your body and how you look and that includes how you express yourself – your sense of style, your clothes, how you carry and present yourself. Ask them to write ten things that the simply adore about you – no copping out and writing about your intellect, humour and all the other things that make you. Those can be a different list, a different exercise for another day. This is just about how you look. Let them take their time. Don’t peek and let them keep that list with themselves till you do your part. You too need to think about yourself, your body, your clothes, hair, appearance, makeup and everything else about how you look. You don’t have to look at yourself in the mirror, or record yourself and play it back – this is not about looking at you in a completely factual manner. This is just a simple exercise. Now, you too write down ten things. The catch is, make your list about ten things that you DON’T like about yourself. Things that you wish you could change or are already working on changing. Perhaps it is that nose, or those extra-huge earlobes that dance with their own momentum. Maybe it is your dorky glasses which you wish to lose and get lenses instead. Maybe it is your hair. Or lack of it. Whatever it might be. Just let it flow. We want ten, and if you find you are writing a lot, allow it to be maybe twenty, but stop at that. Now, here comes the fun part: Take your beloved’s list about things they adore about you, and take your own list about what you don’t particularly care about yourself. Look through it, item by item, and see what’s the overlap. Chances are that there are at least a few items common to both your lists though you both wrote it from wholly different perspectives. Think about that. How is it that our loved ones adore things about ourselves that we may not even like? Who is weird in this perspective then? Should you recast your own assessment, or do you feel like dismissing your lover’s perspective as coloured with their love for you? And if indeed it is coloured with their love for you, what does that tell you? Of course, you might be among the small set that has no overlap whatsoever. You could take that as a sign of a really true self-image, or just that it has no importance. That said, for far too many of us, our loved ones see us so much better than we see ourselves. What if you could really see yourself the same way your loved one sees you? Would you adore more of you? Would you be less self-critical? That would be nice, wouldn’t it. As written for and published in the New Indian Express The question of ‘type’ comes up every now and then. Mostly on lazy Sunday brunches with friends or late night after-parties. Some people are very clear about their type, and others claim they have no type at all and that they are quite versatile when it comes to their choices of who they might be with.
When there is a lot of time to kill and enough goodwill, the latter usually finds themselves the target of a whole lot of ‘What about X person’ questions, starting with celebrities and public figures, and narrowing slowly to inner circles, waiting for tell-tale blushes, stutters, throat clearings and other giveaways which can then lead to some proper ribbing of the ‘ A and B, sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G’ types, till finally some sort of confessional emerges or people just get bored and move on to the next entertainment. Thing is: Do people really have a certain ‘type’? What is this ‘type’ anyway? It is about looks? Age? Social life? Culture? Fitness? All of these? What one is attracted to is often so unpredictable till it happen, and when it happens over and over or you find that attraction sticky and it refuses to go away, there you go – you have a type. It would be simple enough if we could just have that ‘A Ha’ moment and go on merrily with our lives, meeting our types and just having a good old time. It is never that simple, is it. Somehow, social norms develop around what ‘types’ go with what. In sitcom language, the jocks go with the cheerleaders, the nerds stick together, the brainiacs do their thing. There are laws in the jungle, so to say. It is all nice and easy when the types all fall right in line, but that is so often not the case. The exceptions to the norm are so many that one questions if there is even any real ‘normal.’ If you find yourself different from your general peer group in the ‘types’ that you are into, it can lead to some serious heartache. You might hesitate to introduce one to the other, keep things secretive and private as much as possible till inevitably the worlds collide and you have no option but to be out with it, or suffer for eternity. Negotiating your social circles when you have an unexpectedly different love interest can get tricky. It can be met with curiosity, humour to downright discrimination and hostility. It can really test you – are you really committed to this person and the lifestyle it means? Can you bear with social differences and awkwardness till people get used to it? Can you help those around you understand and accept your particular choice, and treat you and your love with respect? It does take some effort, and the only thing that makes it easier is the ability to first be quite comfortable with your own type. If you aren’t, well, you got some work to do on yourself. As written for: http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2017/sep/16/do-sitcoms-have-a-say-in-what-your-type-in-relationships-is-1657966.html In one of my favourite movies, at the start of the movie, our hero is with his lover, who after a whole day’s romancing and after the inevitable outcome of all that, as they hang around in bed together, asks, “Do you know what you could do to improve?” Our hero, still flush from his exertions, smiles indulgently and asks, “What do you think I should improve?” expecting some sweet romantic nothing. “Your obliques. Right now, you are flabby. You really should work on it.”
They split up soon enough, and as movies go, our hero meets another person and again a whole lot of romance later, the scene repeats itself. This time when the question comes, our hero warily asks, “What?” to hear this time, “Nothing at all. You are perfect as you are!” At the movie hall, a collective “Aww” went up, leaving everyone feeling warm and mushy. That’s the movies for us. In real life, often it can be quite another story. When someone tells us we are perfect as we are, we often think they don’t know what they are talking about. They are blinded in love, or are saying sweet lies just to get you hooked. Or worse, that they are really undermining you - this person actually wants you to be unattractive to others and therefore is saying you are already perfect, so that you don’t work on yourself, don’t get better and they get to keep you forever. We are often unable to take a real loving compliment because we just don’t love ourselves enough. We see our imperfections a lot more and so we can’t accept it when someone loves us enough as we are and are brave enough to say that we are actually quite ok. It isn’t our fault, really. For the most part of our lives we are told to aspire to higher and higher standards of looks, fitness, academics, employment, art and every other aspect of human life. We are not just told that, we are actively told that we will be lovable only when we attain and maintain those standards. Like in the movie I am talking about - if the first lover’s words hit our hero hard, he might not be able to take the second lover’s overtures, and instead of pulling into a grateful, loving embrace, he might quickly say bye and hit the gym, wondering if those obliques he had built up had thawed back into gentle love handles. We want our lover to be a source of motivation, of strength and support in “becoming the best version of me,” and yet, we also hold the entirely opposite of “I want to be loved as I am.” Which is it? On the face of it, they seem such opposite things.What if the answer is something different: Can we love ourselves as imperfect, striving people? Can we then allow ourselves to be loved by imperfect people as imperfect people, all striving together? Perhaps, that is what is really love. ( As written for The New Indian Express) now that the academic year has restarted in right earnest, as classmates get back into their groups, many are discovering that in the few weeks that people have been away, somehow, quite magically, so many have coupled up. People suddenly have boyfriends and girlfriends, or are seeing someone though they haven’t labelled anything yet or are just chatting.
If you are one of those that didn’t get coupled up, and haven’t yet for a few years though everyone is coupled up around you, h probably have mixed-up feelings about it. Your best friend barely has time for you, and when you do meet up, all you get to hear is about the lover and no real interest in your part of the story. Even if you say you got into your dream college, you might get a “That’s so great! I am so happy for you!” before segueing back into talking about the special someone. You look around and you notice everyone around seems to be interested only in hanging out with their sweethearts, and when you get invited or tag along anyway, you get quite conscious of being the third-wheel that it gets tiresome. Sometimes, you even have fights with your BFF over how little your friendship seems to means now, and you say hurtful things like ‘Did you ever even like me? Was I just a stopgap till you found someone?’ There are cycles of feeling upset, fighting, crying, making up, and again feeling distant. You are good for about two days before it is back to the same old pattern. It is a mess. Being single never feels as much of an issue as it is when surrounded by coupled up people. While for most, it is a mere annoyance and a change in social circumstances that need some adjusting to, for some, it can become really, really painful as they tell themselves that they have somehow got left behind, that they ought to have been coupled up as well and that they now are not good enough. Meeting someone and becoming a couple gets treated as if it is a race, or a competitive exam and not being paired up becomes a social nightmare. There is an urgency to then meet someone, and more often than not, the urgency leads to less than great choices, and that leads to cycles of its own misery, including breakups and patchups, neither because you really want the person, but because “something is better than nothing.” If you really question that idea, you’d probably hear a more rational voice saying something is definitely not better than nothing when it comes to these matters. Being by yourself is not nothing, and just being coupled up is not something special and can even be something horrible. What we need is to respect that if people are coupling up, that’s fine – we each have our own life paths. It is not a race. As published in: http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2017/sep/02/when-everyone-else-has-found-love-but-you-havent-1651285--2.html Choosing whether and when to say 'I love you' or waiting to say 'I love you too' can be such a frustrating problem for any of us. How do you decide?
Here's what we have to say on the subject: PS: If you are a grammar nazi and correct the 'I love you too' to 'I too love you,' be warned. The love may no longer be reciprocated. |
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