Love is indeed blind!

Vinita Dawra Nangia

Romantic love can happen only when you close your eyes to everything, including sometimes, the object of your affection!

Rose-tinted images of happily-ever-after in fairytales and romantic fiction spoil us for the real thing. Pre-conceived notions and expectations ensure disappointment even with the best. So sharply focused are we on expectations that we sometimes fail to objectively evaluate or appreciate reality. So, if you have been brought up on the raging passions and sky-rocketing Big Os of Mills & Boons, or on stories of a Prince Charming who carries girls away on white steeds, your real life romance has fizzled out even before it got a chance to sizzle! However don’t lose heart. This is not to say that love cannot happen. It can and does, but only to those of us who believe in it and make the effort to build it for ourselves. Note, not find love, but to build or create it for yourself! Most make the mistake of looking for that ‘one’ man, or that ‘one’ woman, who is perfect for them. There is no such concept of the one perfect soulmate – there could be any number and so long as they fulfill your basic criteria, all is good. The critical part is recognizing one of those who cross your path and then to fall, or rise, in love. Research has shown that it takes between 90 seconds to 4 minutes to decide if you are attracted to a person. 55 per cent of your decision is influenced by body language, 38 percent through tone and style of speaking, and just 7 per cent is dependent on what is said. Rest is all a matter of intent and application. The one thing to remember is that most of the time you need to close your eyes to build your world of romance. Romance is certainly not going to happen with eyes wide open! Romantic love can happen only when you close your eyes to everything, including sometimes, the object of your affection! For, love and romance is more about convincing yourself than anything else! You can fall in love with someone and choose to remain in love for as long as you like. And so long as the object of your affection doesn’t do something unpalatable to break the illusion, nothing would go wrong till you decide to get bored or move on! Start off with the belief that there can be no one person who is perfect in all respects. We all have our good and bad sides, and one person’s evaluation of you could differ dramatically from another’s, depending on body chemistry and shared experiences. We all know people who are fond of us and others who do not like us. If we choose to focus on the bad side of someone, we are bound to build up negative feelings against the person; however if we choose to ignore the negative for the positive, we will appreciate the same person. The power of imagination is helpful for lovers. Use your imagination to believe you are totally in love with your beloved or spouse. Whip up the passion, feel it, let the rose-tinted glasses fall in place and then turn the love-laden gaze towards your partner. Even if it doesn’t always kick start your hearts into overdrive, it will definitely keep the love going strong! A friend who is a mother of two has this habit of looking adoringly at her husband, giving indulgent smiles and stroking his cheek often. Believe it or not, the man is in a state of constant adoration for his wife! I refuse to believe that in their decade of marriage, they haven’t had problems, or haven’t seen the worst of each other. But they have chosen to focus on what they love and expressing it openly, rather than trying to improve what they don’t like! And it works fabulously for them! Most marriages that last are those where couples have chosen to reaffirm their love by giving positive strokes to each other and have built up spaces and activities where they can share togetherness. Leading researcher on love psychology, Ellen Berscheid, talks of how new lovers magnify each others’ virtues and explain away flaws. It doesn’t need rocket science to explain that continuing to do so would ensure lasting love; indeed, love needs to be blind! And to prove that falling in love is quite easy, New York psychologist Professor Arthur Arun asked subjects to find a complete stranger, share intimate details for half an hour and then stare deeply into each other’s eyes for four minutes. This resulted in most of his subjects feeling a deep attraction for each other. Reportedly two of the couples even got married later! Next Week – How To Fall in Love

WHEN ROMANCE ENDS...HOW TO PART ON GOOD TERMS

Vinita Dawra Nangia

When Priyanka Chopra and Harman Baweja split, she seemed to move out faster and more smoothly from the relationship than Harman did. In a recent interview he talks about his suffering during the shooting of What’sYour Rashi? “There was a lot of awkwardness. It was hard to see her talk on the phone and text. I knew what was happening…” he says, hinting that Priyanka was carrying on with Shahid right under his nose.
Priyanka, on the other hand, well into another relationship, was seemingly insensitive to Harman’s suffering. When Kareena and Shahid split, Kareena seemed to move on more smoothly into a new relationship with Saif, while Shahid seemed to linger on in the now defunct relationship for a while longer.
Almost always when a relationship ends, one person tends to shed it off faster, while the other wades through the pain and grief of parting. How you respond depends on your personality type and state of dependence on your partner, but mostly is dictated by the manner in which the parting happened. Did one unexpectedly walk out of the relationship while the other was unprepared? Or, was it a slow and helpless falling out of love on both sides? Did the relationship have a history of one martyr and one perpetrator of injustice? Did one cheat or hurt the other in any way? Was there respect in the relationship?
What helps the process is if the break is for the right reason. If two partners decide to break off to move on to more positive and fulfilling stuff, the parting is likely to be amicable. However if one partner walks out more as a statement, seeking to hurt or ‘punish’ the other, the parting and subsequent interaction is bound to be acrimonious and painful for both. In order to have a peaceful after, it’s important to weed out the negativity along with the end of the relationship.
The younger and inexperienced you are, the more likely are you to take the break-up hard. However youth also grants resilience and a younger person is likely to recover faster from a break than an older one. Longer the relationship, the harder the hit. The hurt is bound to affect both partners; there can be no break without some pain.
However, in deference to the relationship and earlier shared love, it is incumbent on the break-up pair to ensure the impact on the other is minimal. Some people find it helps to have a “Transition Relationship” around the time of a break up. Almost always in a breakup, one person has found someone other to love, while the other is smarting under disbelief and grief.
The hurt person may attract such a temporary relationship, which often breaks up after a while. It is commonly looked upon as a “relationship on the rebound” that was a miscalculation and so, bound to break. However, I prefer to agree with those who look upon such transition affairs as a helpful hand Destiny extended to help us across a difficult period of life. And since such help is needed for just a while, these relationships, by their very nature, are destined to be short lasting.
The most critical thing to remember in the midst of all this grief is that time heals all. There comes a time when the heartache stops, tears dry up and the only emotion that remains is maybe a soft regret for what could have been. Unless of course you have reason not to let go that last link with the relationship. As with actor Rekha, who often chooses to create embarrassing moments by keeping alive the memory of her decades-old affair with Amitabh Bachchan. The Big B though, seems to have moved on. Unless he is a better actor than her!
One moves on and stops grieving, no matter how sharp and unnerving the parting. Knowing this as a reality in the middle of your tragedy helps. And what helps more than anything else is the knowledge that your partner, even though estranged, is still according you due respect and making an effort to help make the parting easier for you. And so, it becomes important that you return the favour.
You cannot predict or help how a relationship ends. But you can certainly choose to let go of it with dignity. For this, it is important to first accept that yes, the relationship has actually ended. The support of friends and family is something that should be actively sought to help you tide over the worst of the crisis.
Remember that under the stress of a breaking relationship, tempers can be mercurial; try and avoid getting into fights, and make some allowances for the other partner’s irrational words and actions; it will help you retain your sanity.
Even if you have moved into a new relationship, do not flaunt it in front of your ex or mutual friends. Every relationship needs a closure. It is important to talk as well as to listen, to discuss and together try to understand rationally and without emotion what went wrong. Also, take think of all the things you can do now that you will be free. Plan your days in a manner that doesn’t allow you time for brooding.
Try staying away from reminders of happy times, at least for a while. Those memories will bring a smile later, now they will only make you miserable. Do not try to “remain friends” at least at this stage…that’s unnatural and can perhaps come later.
If handled carefully on both sides, parting though still painful, can cease to be a lifelong trauma.