As social animals, we humans tend to make bonds!

Bonds in forms of friendships and relationships. Where most important are the ones that are with friends and that one special one whom we share a larger part of our life with, the romantic relationship.

At times, given the scarcity of time and running schedules, we tend to lose on the bonds. It becomes difficult to prioritise among friendships and close relationships. People who invest time in friendships are said to be happier people, and people who enjoy healthy and fulfilling romantic relationships are also the ones who gain perspectives in life and success thereof.

Now, the question remains, where do we need to concentrate more?

Which is more important? What do we need more in life? Friendships or a romantic relationship?

To attain clarity, let’s try and take a closer look at what these two different kinds of bonds render to our lives.

Friendships:

“A true friend is the best possession.” – Said Benjamin Franklin

What friendships provide to make life better far outweigh anything that can be found in material possessions. As a result, they ought to be pursued with far greater fervour than most of us commit to them.

Let’s consider the ways friends make life better. Authentic friends I am talking about here (my personal experiences have a lot to do with this)…

1) Friends encourage us. Friends believe in us. As a result, they offer both the words and the support we need to become better people in all aspects of life.

2) Friends challenge us. Friends recognize deficiencies in our life. They challenge us to embrace and succeed in making these healthy, life-giving changes.

3) Friends motivate us. In every regard, it is highly motivating to know that someone loves you, believes in you, and is cheering for you.

4) Friends listen to us. Friends open their ears and hearts to our words. A listening ear communicates value, trust, and openness. A listening ear and provides the opportunity for our thoughts to disentangle themselves.

5) Friends celebrate with us. Absolute joy is never realized until it has been shared with friends and family, that’s why we immediately call our friends when something good happens. Friends celebrate with us in victory and make our joys complete.

6) Friends grieve with us. Life is full of ups and downs. Friends make the high points higher and the low points bearable. I have done it so many times- calling a friend when I felt distressed and cried in front of them. It helped, and how!

7) Friends support our contributions. Friends recognize the value we contribute to the world and the beauty we offer to it. They look forward to our contributions and promote them to others too. They hold our hands in it.

8) Friends help us to remain honest. Friends know us best. They know our strengths… and they recognize our weaknesses. Because of their intimate knowledge of who we are, they keep us honest with each other and with our own selves.

9) Friends add joy to our lives. According to a study from the Harvard Medical School, the more friends a person had, the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. There is likely some correlation between being joyful and having friends… but clearly the inverse is also true.

10) Friends improve our mental and physical health. Studies also indicate that authentic friendships actually result in better health. These relationships make healthy habits easier to adopt and the body and mind are more likely to heal themselves.

11) Friendships teach us how to trust. Trust always precedes influence. Sometimes trust can be earned quickly, but other times it can take years of living life together. Friendships lived with utmost integrity bring the trust to our lives and help us to believe in them.

Of course, those of you who already have good friends understand these realities.

On this note, I urge you to take some time today to be reminded of their importance in your life. Adjust your life accordingly. Extend gratitude where needed or change your priorities as necessary to further invest yourself into them.

Now coming to romantic relationships:

Usually, romantic relationships are said to gratify three major needs of human existence.

1. Firstly, the need for being loved, touched, cuddled, and approved
2. Second, the need for sharing, for absolute companionship
3. And third and sometimes the most important one, the fulfilment of sexual desires

These are all universal needs; everybody shares them, even the animals.

One thing I must talk about here is, getting into a romantic relationship owing to societal pressures, or just to fit into the norms, should never be the criteria to define your need or priorities of having a romantic relationship. Get into one, or invest your emotions into one, only when YOU feel the NEED. Do not just shift your focus towards romance and intimacy just because the entire world is doing that and all the people around you are getting married!

Romantic relationships do bring a lot of fulfilment and happiness to us, and they bring us closer to the completeness of being a human. Hence are very much needed.

Anyway, I’d say that a need for a romantic relationship is a totally human and individual thing.

Now, there are a number of people who will read this post and desperately desire the level of intimacy and longing mentioned above. You may have sought these friendships and relationships for years and yet, for one reason or another, they have eluded you. Or you had them at one time, but they have since disappeared from your life. Be there, and never lose hope.

To conclude, as you can derive from the merriments they bring, FRIENDSHIPS and ROAMTIC RELATIONSHIPS are equally needed for a wholesome life, and to strike a balance between both is the key!

Compartmentalizing your time and efforts sensibly, is the secret to everything you need for life.

The path to discovering  authentic friendships and relationships is always the same. It will require risk, trust, ingenuity and honesty. It will require sacrifice and intentional investment. It will require you to give and give and give some more and it will require you to become the very friend you desperately desire for self and to be the genuine lover that you seek.

But in the end, it will be worth every ounce of energy you commit to your FRIENDSHIPS and ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS.

I take the liberty of adding a line here, that if at all you get to experience the supreme friendship and fulfilling romance in one single person, you are the luckiest indeed.

I wish you all rewarding friendships and relationships in life, in all their entirety.

Keep living 🙂

The post What Is More Important In Life? Friendships or A Romantic Relationship? appeared first on Youngisthan.in.

When you’re 80 years old and facing the end of your long life, a life, hopefully well-lived, what can be the biggest factor that would decide whether you had a flourishing life or not?

Is it money?

Is it a good body?

Is it your corporate status?

Is it a big house?

Not really, right?

The probability of a happy life can be boiled down to this: the quality of your relationships!

With so much at stake regarding relationships, it’s worth considering a few common ways we ourselves hijack the very thing we need the most.  This is more important for people who identify themselves as relationship failures, but fail to identify the reasons. Be it the relationship with a spouse, a lover, with friends, with coworkers or with their domestic help for that matter! When you start to fail as a person involved in those associations, you need to know and acknowledge the reasons those are working behind it.

Here are the major factors that work behind the scenes and push us towards disaster while we are in different relationships. They all lie with us only. No outer force is working to bring failure to us. And the bright side is, we can work on them and correct them, if at all we need to flip the sides.

You Think Your Happiness Is Dependent on Someone Else (Wrong Expectations)

We often think that if we can change another person’s response to us or how they relate to us, then we will be happier or more fulfilled. We say, “If you will change your behaviour or condition, then as I observe it, I will feel better.” In other words, we give others the responsibility for how we feel. You are only responsible for you. The road to better relationships always starts with you. Rather than attempt to control another person, work on becoming a better version of yourself. Healthier relationships will then come to you as a result.  You either don’t know or don’t accept who you really are and look for external validation.

When We Are Unhappy With Ourselves, We Look To Others To Fill In The Gaps Of Insecurities (Low Self Esteem)

When I was 20, I craved people telling me how smart I was. I needed people to respect me and find me interesting. Popularity was a measure of worth, even if fabricated, that I could use to validate what I needed to believe about myself. With a very shaky sense of who I really was, I would grab on to any low-hanging fruit that would give me a semblance of an identity. For a 20-year-old launching out of adolescence, this is completely normal. But unfortunately, some of us never outgrow this need for validation. We spend decades looking for others to tell us who we are or what we’re good at. We did it at 13. We still do it at 30 and continue the same at 40. With social media norms flooding our senses, VALIDATION is the call of the day!

Instead of spending time figuring out who we are, our preferences, interests and hard-wired personality, we mould ourselves into a distorted version of who we truly are. We change ourselves because we think that our chances for love and acceptance will be greater, if we become what people want us to become.

We Judge: Ourselves and Others  (Conflicts of Personalities)

Be you. Be powerful and opinionated about the ideas you’re passionate about. Be vulnerable with people you trust. Express emotions. Be lighthearted and naive, ask questions about topics you don’t understand. And don’t apologize for your values. They are your guides.

But, don’t judge self and others!

You judge yourself, which leads to hyper-judgment toward others. What you judge most harshly in others is what you judge most harshly in yourself.

Who do you criticize? Your husband? Boss? Mother?

What behaviour do you criticise them for or what you judge in others? Vanity? Short-sightedness? Lack of self-respect?

How you answer these questions reveals a lot about how you regard yourself. It’s important to know that criticism and judgment come from the same source: shame.

Shame turned inward is self-criticism; turned outward it sits as a self-righteous judge of others. Judging others puts you in a one-up position with the illusory promise of power.

We say, “Look at what an impatient mother you are as you yell at your kids,” when we’re really saying to ourselves, “I find my own impatience intolerable. I’m such a terrible mother if I feel or act that way.” Judgment keeps us in a place of disconnection. We cannot be authentically connected to others when we hold them at arm’s length with our daggers of judgment.

Do you get the point here?

You Allow Others To Treat You With Disrespect (Lack of Self-respect) 

One of my favourite sayings is, “We teach others how to treat us.”

You are in control of how others treat you. You decide what you will and won’t allow into your life. You are not a victim, but a co-creator with others in how your story plays out. When you allow others to abuse, demean or disrespect you, you become partners with them in your own destruction.

And the best antidote to dealing with disrespect is to create and maintain boundaries. Boundaries serve as the force field of self-respect that buffers you from the people that don’t have your best interests in mind. Boundaries nudge you toward walking away when someone’s being an ass. They embolden you to firmly stand up for your values. They protect you when your personal worth is being challenged.

Want a path to a life well-lived? Take time to nurture and savour your closest relationships. The relationships that make you a better version of yourself each day.

Famously said by a pioneer in positive psychology, “Happiness is love and respect. Full stop.” 

Give and receive! 

And that’s what it is!

Happy relationships to you!

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