16th September 2024
My best friend moved back to Bangalore 7 years ago, after her marriage ended. For the first 4 years after her return to Bangalore she lived with her parents. For the past two years she has been living on her own.
Ending any relationship isn’t easy, more so a marriage. More often than not, no matter how practical you are, you end up blaming yourself for the failure of the marriage and wish that you done something differently or made more efforts to make it work. All relationships are complicated as it involves two people, their backgrounds, their baggage, their emotions, their expectations and a gamut of other things. Marriages are a little more complicated as they not only involve the two people involved but also their families and if there are children involved things are more complicated. Children often bear the brunt of the falling apart of a marriage. But children are more resilient than we give them credit, and hence do manage to navigate the complexities that arise from the separation.
Initially the shock, pain and heartbreak of something that she thought would last forever, overtook her. She had to work as she had to earn a living, besides she loved her job too. So she threw herself into work. She made friends with her colleagues and started to rebuild her life in Bangalore. Bangalore is a relatively safer city for women. So it wasn’t difficult to go around the city by herself. So she went out by herself. She did everything that was advocated. She went to the movies by herself, went out to lunch and dinner by herself. She could do it, but she said, it was no fun. She is a gregarious person who loves to share experiences, thoughts, ideas and feelings with other people. After watching a movie, she said, she had no one share her perspective on the movie or just gush about how wonderful and different the story was. Lingering over lunch or coffee made no sense because there was no one to have a conversation with.
She said she realized that what she missed most was having a conversation. She is a person who loves sharing everything that happened to her during the day with someone at the end of the day. She enjoys a good conversation about anything and everything under the sun. She is interested in the different perspectives people have about life and is interested how people think, their life experiences and what they have seen and been through in life. Like me, she too, truly believes in the saying “Everyone has a story. What’s yours?” We believe that we can learn from others experiences without having gone through the same, likewise we believe in sharing our experiences so that people may learn something from it and realize that they need not make the same mistakes that we made. For her the essence of any relationship is the conversations we have.
Over a period of time I realized that just because she was “single” and has time that doesn’t mean that friends and acquaintances have time to give her. I realized that female colleagues who were married did not have the time to go out on their own without their family. And just because she was single now one cannot expect your friends to be available as and when you require them. For a woman, once she is married, her family and her responsibility towards her family takes precedence. It is only bachelors/spinsters who have time at their disposal. Hence most of her friends are men, almost half my age. These are the people she would spend time with.
I have also learnt that having a long lasting and enduring relationship with a friend also no easy task. Any relationship, no matter what type or kind it is, requires effort and commitment by all the parties involved. Relationships aren’t meaningful, enduring and long lasting just like that, there is time and effort that needs to be invested in them only then will they be meaningful. Most of my friends are my colleagues or erstwhile colleagues. But once you change your job maintaining the relationship is not easy. I have seen that a lot of my “friends” forget me within 6 months of changing my job and the ones that last take a lot of effort and coordination. As we no longer work in the same place finding the day and time to meet is not easy and requires a lot of planning and fore thought. Even those relationships which were very close, while working together, need a lot of effort to endure, once you change jobs. And over a period of time if there no commitment from all parties involved, it dies; which has always been painful for me.
Humans are social beings and hence must have social relationships to survive in society. We were not created to live alone or by ourselves. We were designed to live together and thrive. There is no doubt there is merit in being alone and learning to live by yourself and being comfortable in one’s own company etc. But… ultimately it gets very lonely. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely. All of us must learn to live alone but not live a lonely life. One realizes one’s potential when one lives and interacts with others. In every sphere that a human ventures into social relationships form the bedrock of that sphere. Throughout our lives we come to depend on these relationships for support, for help, for comfort and for sustenance itself.
It is especially important to have a partner or significant other. We all need that one person who will prioritize us and be there with us in all situations. The one person that we can be ourselves with and share all our joys and fears with. This is one thing that she misses sorely and I can relate to this. She doesn’t have anyone to share her small joys, little victories and silly fears. It is by sharing experiences and having conversations that we grow and evolve into better beings, learning from these shared experiences.
The reason that I am sharing this experience is that there are more and more young people who are making a conscious decision not to marry. There is no problem with that at all. Marriage must be a carefully thought out process. But what I would like them to remember is that it is important to have a partner, someone to share one’s life with and this is of paramount importance because in the long run life can become extremely lonely. So it is better to be aware that life can get lonely in the long run and then decide whether or not or not marry or have a partner. If one decides to stay single, then one must have a strong network of friends and family, who will be there to hold and be held when required!
- Your opinion about the role of a partner in one’s life.
- Why are more people lonely toddy when we technology actually helps bridge distances?
- Do you think that human beings are genetically meant to be social or is it a learnt trait?
