Archive for January, 2008

Extremes

{ January 31, 2008 @ 4:31 pm } · { Fake, Marriage }
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Every day, different people we meet can give you so much information, more importantly so much thoughts to wonder about. Same with two people I meet almost everyday, they are my coworkers, and both married, and both with  one kid too. As we share the same mode of transport to get to work, I get to see them very closely and observe.

Let me start with one of them, he is late into 30’s, must have got married at a late age, and he does care a lot about his wife. I have seen him get a call everyday as soon as he reaches half way to office, thats when his wife would have reached her workplace, its her “got there safely” call, every single day he tells her that, we are on our way, and promises her he will call back once he reaches office. Its the same story in the evening as well, he will call her to let her know that he has left the office, and would be at home at such and such a time. He also admits that he calls once in the afternoon after his lunch to update he has finished his lunch, and also ensure if she has done with hers. The interesting thing, is to hear his tone when he speaks to her, I don’t think I have seen a person more polite  and respectful then him when on phone with his wife.

The second of them must be in early thirties, who must have got married in his late 20’s. He is generally a little mean and rude when he speaks normally, and he almost never gets call from his wife, but when he does get it, we can easily make it is from his house because, he becomes extra rude and extra mean. We all have, jokingly how he can speak to them in such a tone, but he continues to speak that way. He speaks to the point, and makes sure they would think thrice before calling him up again. In a way totally opposite to the first person.

First person sounds all so romantic, but the truth is when he speaks normally otherwise he is not that polite, nor so respectful either, and somehow I have a doubt he fakes the politeness a little too much, so when we tease him about this, he always says I don’t know about all this as I am not marries, and he claims that it requires to be like this, in a relationship, to keep the other one happy.

Speaking of the second person, he says openly that the only way to dominate a relation is to claim the dominance before the other person has chance to think about it. He says the right way to speak to one’s wife is to make sure, they do not get the idea of possible weakness, and try to be as unapproachable as possible. He is not all that mean to others, and not that rude to others on phone, still he kind of fakes dominance over phone.

When I get to see extreme actions such as this, what makes me wonder is that, is this faking really required?, how stupid the respective wives must be to not recognize that their partners are faking?, I am sure they would have known, but they must be behaving as they haven’t found out. In a way faking, that they do not know their husbands are faking.

How difficult is it to remain honest in marriages?, do one need to resort to these tactics?, I know the obvious answer is no, but then still why does it happen in so many cases, why do one go out of their way to please others? or in some cases please themselves.
Simple things like these can say a lot about one’s marriage, I get a feeling that most people tend to live a pseudo relationship, where each one knows the truth, but never want to show the fact that they know. When did we become this, when?

Friendship Talkies

{ January 10, 2008 @ 4:32 pm } · { Friendship, Gender talk }
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Anna Garlin Spencer who was an American feminist, speaking about man/women friendship, once quoted saying “The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed“. What I recently discovered not only rare men and women are needed for that kind of a friendship, but even rare people needed to understand one such friendship.

I generally don’t believe in keeping contact with people, whose views I cannot appreciate, or rather cannot stand. Unfortunately when they become a business liability, you end up keeping interface with them, even though you hate their presence. “Falling in my eyes” was an instance of such horrible person, with whom I still have to interact.

When you meet a person, you really can’t know his/her real attitude, and thus may sometimes end up being friends with people whom you later discover, to be really bad, or incompatible with your ideologies. I generally distance from them slowly, just hoping that they don’t feel totally left out suddenly. Still over the years I have maintained contacts with all such one time good friends. Recently, on the occasion of the new years, I pinged a one old friend on gtalk, mainly to wish him a happy new year. Its been almost more than 6/7 months since I had talked with him, or emailed. After the pleasantry exchanges, the usual hows work stuff, he started to loosen up, and things which I hated started to come up. Its surprising how people keep track of what you are upto, even without talking to you directly, he seem to know whom I am spending time what, whats happening at my workplace, and with whom I was generally in good terms with.

When you are not aware of a relationship, I guess the best thing you can do is not to talk about it, because you never know how you are affecting the other person. He started commenting about a nice friendship I have developed over the recent times. I could not stand it. He had absolutely no right to talk about a friendship, in such a bad taste. Firstly I doubt if he has ever understood how a friendship can exist between opposite sex. More importantly I don’t think he understood what friendship means in general. I gave an excuse and logged off the gtak, but I was pretty pissed the whole day.

The next day my reader showed up this post from a friend No place for friendship.
Its strange how often the friendship gets misunderstood, sometimes from the people involved and many times from people outside. When there are sentiments involved, it makes it all the more sensitive topic to be dealt with.

As I do not have much insight about how women misunderstand the friendship, I will chose to write my views from the male perspective. People always accuse of the men to misinterpret friendship to a relation of romantic interest. I think I agree to this partially. I do not know if it only happens wrt males, but in some cases, I have seen myself, and felt in a odd occasion, that I misinterpreted the intention in a friendship. I guess this is inevitable in a non established relationship, when each have their own agenda, or probably they haven’t even set up their minds as to what to expect in the friendship. Do you think the one who misunderstood is guilty?, I am not so sure on that one. One thing is for sure, when the misunderstanding comes out, in most of the cases, thats the end of the friendship.

Talking about the more damaging part, people not knowing anything about the relation, people who see that from a distance, many times have something nasty to say, hurting the sentiments of the people involved, especially if it is about a person whose friendship you really care about. As it happened in my case, my respect for the person further deteriorated, more importantly put in a doubt in my mind, what if all people are looking at the friendship with a bad perspective?, more importantly what if the other person has other ideas more than friendship. Basically ruined something which was doubtless.

I agree this does indicate a weak friendship, what some one says or does should not have any effect on your strong friendship, thats ideal situation we are talking about, and it takes time for all friendship to reach that stage, and in the mean while, someone makes such a comment, and it really effects you.

For a long long time, I did not believe in pure friendship, not with the same sex, specially not with the opposite sex, but perceptions do change, for some sooner and for less fortunate ones like me later. Why is it that common a notion that “Man and a woman cannot be just friends”.