How to save a bad relationsip



Amongst the thousands of posts flooding the social media, a very catchy GIF caught my eye. I shouldn’t have clicked on it but I did and then I got sucked into that black hole of the Internet, where time and you both disappear, only to emerge many hours later, to discover that absolutely no work has been done and your brain now filled with useless information like who vacationed where, and what the Biriyani tasted like at someone’s wedding, and the picture which someone’s child drew.
But, the saving grace was that this GIF that I clicked on was not entirely useless. It talked about saving a marriage.

It told us the story of a couple that had been married for long, who were now fighting, all the time. There was a lot of negativity between them. The wife criticized anything that the husband did or said. Anything that the wife said, the husband pounced on her. The relationship had soured to an extent where it   showed no signs of improving. After months of this domestic war, the man got tired of this and decided to do something about it.  In the depths of despair, inspiration came to him, when he realised that he couldn’t change his wife and that he could only change himself. When he woke up that morning, he asked her ‘What can I do to make your day better, today?’
She was suspicious and cynical, and asked him why would he want to do that. He repeated his question, saying that he wanted to make her day better, and then he asked again, till she exploded in rage, saying ‘If you really want to do something, clean the kitchen.’ Wordlessly the man did it.
Each morning the man asked the same question, and every time the wife came up with a new task that had to be done around the house. He did it cheerfully, without any complaints. Sometime during the second week, when the man asked the question, a miracle happened. The wife burst into tears and told him to stop asking her that. She admitted that he was not the problem, but it was her. She was difficult to live with, and she told him she did not know why he still stayed with her. He lifted her chin gently and told her it was because he loved her and he wanted to be the agent of change.  He then asked her what he could do to make her day better, and she told him that maybe they could spend time together. He told her he would love to.
From that day onwards, their relationship changed. His wife started asking what she could do for him. It wasn’t that they never ever had a fight again. They did. But when the disagreements cropped up, they were able to resolve it with love and understanding. The man says that decades later, they are still together, and every once in a way, one of them will roll over, and ask the other what they can do for the other person.
This story—I have no idea whether it is a fact or a product of a writer’s imagination--- sounds very nice, almost too good to be true. If it is true, the guy who saved his marriage, by doing this should be conferred sainthood!

One of the hardest things to do is to be deliberately nice to someone who is being unkind or unfair to you. But the key thing here, and in all relationships is that we are powerless to control the behaviour of others. We can only make changes within ourselves. We can tweak what we say and how we say it. We can adjust and fine-tune our body language and our tone. But this is possible only if there is deep love, and there is a genuine desire to improve things.
To make a change in a relationship, which is mired in sarcasm, angry, words and indifference would require super-human effort from the person wanting the change. The wounds of the past cannot easily be washed off . Building love and trust is a long process. Unless the couple has made huge investments in nurturing the emotional bonds in the relationship, which can happen only over time, small actions like mowing the lawn and cleaning the kitchen would remain just token gestures, confined to feel-good stories which go viral on the social media.

 No matter how bad a relationship is, there is always hope.

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Comments

  1. Beautiful post.... Its a reality too that whatever the situations in any relationship maybe, we have to adjust and have control over oneself as we can't control others and make the relationship strong and beautiful...

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  2. Great relationship advice

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  3. Dear Mam,

    I read your blog regularly . I admire the art work you do with so much passion. Just had one thought come to my mind after reading your blog today. You mentioned that internet is filled with useless information like some one child' s art work etc. But aren't you guilty of creating the same content.?I remember in one of your previous post you said that there is no reason to be shy from speaking about something they achieved and are very proud of. May be parents who posts such art are expecting some encouragement/affirmation in that line .
    Why this hypocrisy ?

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    1. Dear Jyoti,
      Welcome to my blog :)
      I am glad the post provoked you and made you angry enough to take the effort to leave a comment.
      Guessing perhaps you got offended, as you posted a child's art work?
      Please don't be! What is useless to one person would be great to another.
      Let me clarify-- On social media we have about far more 'friends' than we can possibly care about. They all share content--which is great. That's how social media works.
      If nobody shared any content, it wouldn't work at all.
      And if you are proud of something, by all means share it ! If others encourage you, and you find validation in the same, its all good.
      But among the 'thousands of friends' you have , if you scroll through all content, I do believe its a waste of your precious time. The content that appears on my feed (and this is true for many many people) ---It is of no use to me--whether it is an artwork, or a video or any such.
      What stood out to me, is that the article I wrote is about relationships. Your comment is about an example of 'time wasting' aspect of the social media. If I had said that nobody should share any content, then what you interpreted would be right. That's not what I have said at all!
      And I do stand by what I say---the taste of someone's wedding biriyani, or someone's child's art work is information that doesn't really do anything for me.
      If it works for whoever shares it and whoever comments on it--great!
      I am a member of an art group created specifically for sharing such stuff, and I love it.
      Hope this helps!
      <3
      Preeti

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