3 things your mom NEVER told you about love

by Mumbai Mirror

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Distractions come easy, so the fatigue of resolving problems seems so cumbersome that to exit and start something new and thrilling has its own sense of excitement, beautifully wrapped in fairy lights and heart-shaped bubbles.

There’s good reason you should be listening to former VJ-now actor Juhi Pande when she spouts wisdom on love. The Air Force brat spent the first 20 years of her life shuttling schools, cities and crushes. Which makes her an expert of ‘getting over love’. Her grandparents, both doctors, fell in love at medical school. “They got married, had three children, doctored around India while managing a large family and continued to love each other silently”, she writes in her just released book, Things Your Mother Never Told You About Love. Which makes romance a key component in her genes. Here’s the best of advice she shares on ‘boy-girl relationships’.

Tackling distraction 

I don’t want to trivialize or glorify distraction. I want to treat it as something that certain people have an affinity for. In fact, another way of looking at it would be to consider yourself a polymath or at least a person with the potential to be a polymath. (Sometimes there is too much forced focus in one concentrated area of study/work. This squashes the chances of having a wider variety of interests. The thirst for knowledge/expertise is more linear than broad, thereby leading to the death of the polymath.) And if you do happen to have that affinity, embrace it. Because when it is time to stop getting distracted, you will…

Of course, it doesn’t always retain such innocence. Sometimes things get messy. You could be in a relationship and fall for someone else. Would that be considered distraction? Sure. Would it be okay to leave who you’re with and chase after the shiny new object?

… Here is a set of questions, which you should ask yourself when you’re about to do said crime. (Observe how it’s moved from distraction to crime in a matter of four ntences.) Are you distracted because you have spent far too much time in your current relationship and things have become mundane? Are you distracted because you’ve fallen out of love? Are you distracted because your boyfriend wears crocs and you’re this close to setting his head on fire? Are you distracted because you didn’t consider all factors before getting into this relationship and were just happy that someone liked you? Is the object of your new affection Ryan Gosling from Place Behind the Pines? Is the object of your new affection an Abercrombie & Fitch model with an IQ level that is a single git number? Do you need constant excitement and is your current situation not giving you that? Are you a commitment-phobe? What’s the sound of one hand clapping? Are you and your boyfriend a complete mismatch and has it taken you some time to figure it out? Are you stupid? Once you tackle these questions and come to a decision that there’s a possibility that you might have fallen out of love and do not want to be in your current relationship, go ahead and take all measures to exit from it. There is nothing wrong in bowing out of a situation that doesn’t make you happy. Which is possibly the reason why you were getting attracted to the other person in the first place. But, if after giving it a lot of thought you realize that you are actually in love and can’t do without your partner, then work on the relationship.

A lot of times people get set in their ways and things get routine, and that has the ability to suck the joy out of anything. ‘If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.’ I wish I had come up with this quote, but then I’d have to change my name to Paulo Coelho. But that line sums it up. If it is because of routine that your life seems bleak, tackle that, forget the distraction, and do everything in your power to make yourself happy.

Facing deceit 

Access to people has become much easier, making social interactions, albeit mostly virtual, effortless. As a girl you no longer have to wait for a guy to ask you for your number. You can casually send him a message on Facebook telling him how bored you are on a lonely Friday night. Slam. Bam. Instead of resolving a problem with a relationship you wrap it up and walk away into the sunset, secretly hoping twitter handle @ImCool&SexyBoi will meet you half way. Distractions come easy, so the fatigue of resolving problems seems so cumbersome that to exit and start something new and thrilling has its own sense of excitement, beautifully wrapped in fairy lights and heart-shaped bubbles.

It doesn’t start out as deceit, but eventually, and if you allow it, it slowly and softly turns into chicanery. This gives rise to the ability to weasel out of a relationship, instead of giving it the grace that is required to end a relationship.

Having someone in hand before letting go of the first. No one says this is wrong, but if you walk around with a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach thinking you did something wrong, you probably did…

Pick a side. I’ve always believed in this little line. Pick a side, choose a path, and roll with it. Grey areas bore me. There’s too much noise and very little said, there’s a lot of assumptions and too little done…

The black and white bits are easy. If you want a steady relationship, then you have to steer as clear of deceit as it may be humanly possible. Because if you’re found guilty, you will have hell to pay, and then it won’t matter whether your partner is doing the same as you, it just becomes a game of who gets caught first.

Asking why get married 

Getting married is serious business. If you’re all for it, then you should do it once and for all the right reasons. A person can have several reasons or ideas about why he or she should get married. Now I know I am no messiah of marriage and have zero understanding of it and neither am I married, but after being around a family of successfully married and happy people I have been able to deduce a few things which make perfect sense to me. (You may or may not agree with all of them. Like I said, this is my take so far.)

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Read more in Times of India

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

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