Ego and Relationships: Imbalance works!

Past couple of months ive been thinking of relationship dynamics. Especially blood versus spousal relationship. Why is that we have more unconditional love and tolerance for our parents and children than for our husband/wife?

My mother gave me an interesting perspective on the same: all relationships with an ego imbalance work well.

Parents go out of their way to nurture and protect their children. They take all sorts of nonsense from them, which they wouldn't from anyone. Ditto with kids: as we grow older we realise the importance of our parents and what they have done for us, and we leave no stone unturned to make them happy. No matter how old fashioned they may be, we love them all the same. Also we cant choose family nor divorce them so somehow we manage to be with them despite all ups and downs.

What happens with spouses is that typically in today's world, they are equals. Equal in education, ambition, salaries and ego. Neither party is ready to let go of this equal status and thus during conflict, neither concede defeat so they keep struggling. the same people who would let go of their opinions with their parents and kids, become stubborn and defensive with their spouses. Which means two superior people cant make a peaceful marriage.

I guess thats why marriages, where women consider men superior, work well, like those where husbands are 'henpecked'.

Of course there are exceptions as always: there are parents who dont care for their kids and vice versa. Or two strong personalities make a perfect couple. But they are exceptions. In general, the rule applies.

Does it? What do you think? Would love to hear some thoughts on this.

Gender Discrimination and Women

For all the male chauvinism in India, I think to some if not great extent, women themselves are responsible.

If only we did not treat them like gods who need to be served, and kept them on a pedestal all the time, they wouldnt think so highly of themselves.

Maybe you dont realise it but it is a part of your life in subtle ways. Letting men drive or sit in front. Serving food to men first, serving them more and better portions. Cleaning up after men day and night naturally, autoomatically... the list goes on.

You wanna treat your son and daughter equally? Don't just give opportunities to the girl: that's a job only half done. Also stop treating your husband and son like gods. That equalisation is equally important to set the right standards!

Help Footprint

Help footprint is the amount of help one takes from others, or others offer one.

The more independent people, those with no close family/friends, those with superiority complex, ego or difficulties in delegation have a low help footprint. Its kinda like having an internal locus of control.

The physically, mentally, emotionally dependent people; spoilt people, lazy people have a higher help footprint.

While its a personal choice and relative, extreme of either case isnt desirable. Certain situations or incidents may change a person's footprint, willingly or forcibly, temporarily or permanently.

I think I have a low help footprint usually. What about you

Leave me alone!

Lately I have realised that sometimes when you are going through something,  you don't want people to give you gyaan about not being tensed, being positive etc. 

Sometimes people should just let you be, and allow you to naturally feel your emotions instead of forcing sunshine down your throat. 

Sometimes you need to acknowledge and deal with what you are facing, rather than pretend everything is happy go lucky. 

Sometimes acceptance of the fear, sorrow, hurt related to a situation is important to go through to be able to gather the strength to deal with it.

So for all those people who have my best interests in their mind: know when to just leave me be, and Ill be happier :)

Old is Gold!

As I step into the world of parenting, I'm faced with various realizations.

For instance, I only recently noticed how as we grow up, we become impatient with the way our parents do things and keep giving them gyaan on how to do it better. Of course we have only good intentions in mind, and feel it's our responsibility to enable our parents to live better, more efficiently.

However in the process we forget that our parents, with their old school beliefs, attitudes, habits, wisdom and common sense only brought us up well enough, for us to be in a position to give gyaan back to them today. Back then when we were kids we used to be in awe of them: how they could do everything and knew all the answers. And today we treat them as kids who don't know their way around modern world.

Sure times have changed. Sure the way we live has to evolve with today's needs. Sure our parents don't know as much about latest trends or technology etc as we do. But I think still, they deserve respect for how far they have come in life on their own, without Google or Wikipedia.

And I truly believe no matter how much more educated or independent we have become compared to them, they will ALWAYS know better. So to my parents: sorry for all the times I've assumed I know better. I don't. Never will. Thanks for always looking out for me, and patiently accepting my gyaan. Wouldn't know what to do in life if it weren't for you guys!