Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Relativity Of Relationships

I was talking this morning to a very close friend who was about to get married, delving somewhat into the terms of reference and the dynamics of the friendship past and present as well as what the future held.

This made me recall what a reporter in The New Paper once wrote about the relationship she had with her ex-boyfriend. She listed a couple of conclusions and/or inferences which she had drawn from her new interactions.

"He will still read my 40-page thesis and give me his opinion but he will not bother to go into detail with spelling or correct my grammar. If I can write a volume that long, then I can jolly well hammer out the details myself.

"He will still go trekking with me and occasionally help me with my rucksack over difficult terrain but no longer will he carry my 10kg cosmetic case. If I want to look pretty after scaling a small mountain, then I had jolly well lug my accessories myself.

"He will still run to me when I am in crisis but will not listen to me whine about the small injustices and travesties which I may enounter everyday.

"A broken finger, office politics or a bad hair day is not a crisis. Neither is a combination of the three".

She came to the conclusion that even for people who have been very much a part of each other's lives for a long time such that bonds of comfort and familiarity have been built, it is possible and, in fact, sometimes necessary that they be broken such that healing and or onward progress can take place.

She also came to the conclusion that then again, there are some bonds that people who mean something to each other do not break.

She didn't conclude this, but I think that perhaps, very often the challenge is in differentiating the two.

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