Socien's Blog

There is tension and intense fighting, and you only wish there was a way to turn it off.  But you can not.  Or there is the worst of it:  Silence.  Silence burns. It hurts and it is difficult to settle than a fight. The more you try to solve it the more it worsens. Especially when you try to be silent hoping that you will get from your partner more attention than more silence,  then you get more silence instead.  This is a point of no return and the question is, when it crawls into a relationship,  how can you possibly end it?

The situation

A man,  single at 28, is dating a lady three years younger.  Both are super educated on psychology garbage,  have done dissertation research on it; and they just have a day in the whole week to see each other.  The man does some manual work for a living and is hoping that he will learn something from his work and build something with it,  distinct from what his College degree is capable of. Like the lady he is dating,  he is a man of his goals who lives a fast life where only a single male friend has managed to be welcomed. His Saturdays are rarely free of work. He is free for just a day after finishing any rapairs and fixings contract and before getting to his next. He is free on Sundays,  too.

Related:

• Is it okay to kiss (or not) before marriage?
• Marriage of two opposites: Compatibility and love
• Why do people cheat in relationships? The defence
• What advice would I give my teenage self

The lady goes to work and she is busy all week around.  On a Saturday she can get to see her man during any time of the sun-lit day.  She can’t do this on a Sunday because she must go to church. She stays at her sister’s home and her sister being a pastor’s wife is busy on Sundays directing the church’s affairs.  This lady in our example must be a little bit of a nanny on Sundays besides going to church.  She must monitor her sister’s kids all day while in the church or at home on any Sunday. (Least we forget: There is a maid who takes care of these kids but must get a break on a Sunday as per a verbal contract governing her work in the house where this twenty-five-year-old lady stays).

Without these two communicating about this to each other entirely a terrible relationship evolves.  It is a relationship to go past a point of no return as painful as never before. The lady says she is free on Saturdays and not on Sundays.  She leaves the “pastor’s wife” and the “maid’s tale” out of the exhibition. The man thinks he is being avoided. He thinks after a few months together the lady has found out about his Sunday-off weakness,  and she is using it to entirely keep him off. So the man stages a coup and walks out of the relationship.  “I cannot live a life pretending no love is true love.  You don’t love me.”

Once you accuse a person for not doing the things she thinks she is doing you lose the influence you have over her to get her to do those things more.  Love is just like that.  Don’t say to your partner that she is giving you no love.  Influence her to give you more. Surely,  you shall get more love.

This is important to know:

• If I am to love you,  I can only do that through the means and devices at my exposition and I only can afford. When I can’t easily afford a plane ticket and I am on the other side of the border,  my means cannot easily include getting to love you tate-a-tate.
• More than anything, you must know my situation;  my financial situation and so forth. When you love me through my situation,  you are loving the actual not a pretended version of me.
• The bigger part of the situation is not communicated. For example,  the lady in this context is conservative in every way and she doesn’t know she is.  The way she will respond to “I miss your kiss” is different from what other girls would. If you are to love her love her as is. Do not compare her with your exes.

Complaining

Since the man is coming back in a week and a half with an apology and an apology gift, we can only say that a blame game had already started in the above paragraph. The man had more blames of this kind to line up: “You don’t love me.” After three weeks of re-acceptance the man reached to this conclusion just by reading through WhatsApp messages.  The young lady seemed to avoid “love” honey” “babe” when she typed “Good morning” or “How was your day”.

There was not a discussion whatsoever to solve this. When the man decided to give the lady an apology gift he met with this young lady in the streets on a Monday just to offer her the apology gift. He chose to line up issues instead.  The lady was still in pain,  having been told it was over once.  She needed some time to process this. It was going to take a few weeks before she could fill her WhatsApp chats with red emojis,  and answer or return calls in an instant. Complaining too early, especially on the corner of the street where the passing audience can have a chance to witness a failing relationship was the man’s fault. Sure it was. Oh,  there was an ultimatum,  too,  in this street hard-talk:  “If you don’t say you love me right now I will walk away entirely right now.”

Take note: You will have more to say when you pick up a conversation you could use to prove that you know better.  You have less to say when you pick up a conversation where you would want to listen more. The street kind of conversation subtracts, brings tension, robs your relationship and brings you closer both to the point of no return.

Both parties are feeling the same:  They both deserve more or less from their relationship.  Less,  because the street talk was entirely humiliating to the lady.  As per the man’s advice, she tries a bit more to include “love” and “honey” in her WhatsApp chats. Also, she does feel less respected (one of the reasons why people cheat in relationships).

Before we go any further with this story here is what I would want you to know:

• If you are afraid of losing someone who is at your heart you will lose that person often and even entirely. It is because you keep sending stupidity out there to do whatever it takes to keep the person on your side.  Never will you send love because fear invites stupidity.
• You don’t build a relationship by and through complaints.  Grumbling can weaken a relationship further. Successful relationships have substituted complaining with communication.
• A hard worker finds a peaceful means to be heard. Meeting the same lady on the same street he would have deposited a note extending his apology in the same apology gift box.  The note would have found peaceful means to beg for more on the two’s talking terms. Again, a written message is more rehearsed and refined than a spoken one.
• A lazy worker has no patience. He expects solvables to be solved in a flash. The best way to solve them is to trash-talk his way into the inner ears of his partner. Partner got hurt.
• Confidence is somehow at the centre of much of the things we do when in love point blank.  When we are scared we are far enough from confidence. Pilling in words scares your partner and s/he may end up doing less or more than necessary of the things you would want her/him to do for you.

Fault-seeking

These two would go for three more months without getting to see each other after the apology gifts.  They stay in the same town. Other than keeping these two connected,  digital means of communication have a daunting task the two are not well aware of:  They are to solve the pain of their interim breakup and to reinforce the apology.

The man thinks he is not being loved enough.  So he set up tests. He goes offline on WhatsApp during weekends knowing that on weekends the lady is online on Facebook. Before the end of the tenure of her online session, the lady was unfortunate enough not to reply to a series of “Hies” “Love” “Are you ok”. This she repeats in the following weekend. On the third weekend she replies following some complaining in an actual call:  “You are avoiding me on Facebook Messenger!” How are you/I am doing fine/ And you, are the then observed protocols.  Ten minutes after this conversation the man adds a missing staple just to show the lady that she easily forgets: “I love you (I have to do it and you can’t do it ahead of me) “.

The man sure would have taken time to ask politely what was going on. Only he didn’t. The pastor’s home where his girlfriend stays operates in a tightly knit brethren mode,  where everything can be easily shared.  Fay, the maid,  asked to use his girlfriend’s laptop just to search for some items on Facebook Marketplace in those two weekends of zero response.

Scared,  the lady now avoids being online at many of the times she should. She now has to turn her data off after responding to a single message.  When she typed “My day was good,  only I miss you, ” a lengthy joke follows seconds after:  “Report to the police.  I am a missing person” The man goes on to reinforce the joke: “Meanwhile I will solve this case.  Track every lead.  Un-miss myself. ” All the jokes are single-ticking and it frustrates the man. He deletes them instead.

The lady noticed that they had been deleted but since she was on a third-party WhatsApp mod which violates the rules she had the chance to read them anyway. The lady asks:  “Why deletion?”

“If there is no one to listen,” the man says in a following call, “you can take back what you say.” Again he took no time to ask politely why was she keeping her data off. There are levels to this.  If you don’t let a discussion stay a discussion the discussion turns into a quarrel.  A quarrel can not be easily reverted into a discussion unless you abandon it and forget it, leaving it behind.

As for the lady she still loves her man but she is constantly reminded of her previous relationship. Pain,  zero forward progress and complaints pointing to nothing but her incompetency. She would have wanted to but her ethics are against firing anyone out of her life for no reason.  Firing this man would have happened at the backdrop of the evidence that he was cheating on her. So she settles for more pain despite being given the floor to tell when she no longer loves him by the man.

These two have so much in common.  They don’t go out and they don’t drink. They are both quiet.  Having so much in common,  including qualities exactly the opposite of theirs, would have helped them to mould a better relationship. But the worst relationship emerged. The myth of so much in common? People think that to have a working relationship you have to have fewer differences between the both of you. But to have a working tension-free relationship you have to fail to give differences any say in your relationship or (in other words) tolerate them.

How best to bring an end to this point of no return?

When you create time to talk about something not in place.  You are subtracting it from the time you should have had for talking about something in place. You take everything out of place instead. Have you ever wondered why positive compliments are encouraged when you are dating when you are in love and when you are in a marriage?

You are trying to squeeze out a certain behaviour and you forget that it should be better allowed to flow out naturally.  Where that behaviour is not part and parcel of your partner’s natural qualities learn to go without it or propagate it through a soft stance free of fault-seeking words. Turning off your fault-seeking behaviour will bring an end to the point of no return in relationships.

Make discussions private,  and prioritise listening over speaking.  Keep returning to peace rather than proceeding into accusations. Ask how best you can improve instead of telling your partner how best s/he can improve. You will miss out on love if you specialise in receiving it than in both giving it and receiving it.

Give instead of demanding what to take.  Love your partner instead of specialising in being loved or demanding to be loved. Keep your eyes off the rearview mirror.  Take the lead and never look back. Do not be distracted by the lack of progress on your partner’s side.  If s/he truly loves you,  s/he will follow suit. S/he will be able to see and reason through the effort you are putting in and will not have any other choice but to catch up. If s/he is no longer liking you, you will know. Walk away once you know it.

The belief that I am not the one who started it.

Yeah,  deal with it, tough guy.  You started it after all. This mindset is as bad as curing a disease with a toxin.  You want improvement but you are sidelining yourself from those who can bring improvements in a relationship ̶ a relationship that is yours in the first place. Unintentionally you are prolonging the tension and you cannot benefit from this prolonging. Once there is something wrong in a relationship, you are both wrong. Fix it by first fixing yourself.

Where do you belong?  How and who to make it a better home? If you refuse to be wrong in a relationship, the relationship (all of it) becomes wrong. Worse if you decide to be wrong because your partner is the relatioship becomes lost. Your partner can’t call you when you cannot call first. If you are not going to be put in prison for staying the one who calls first just call first.

The refusal to back down is at the core of this point of no return. When both of you cannot pause and do the correct thing, both of you keep on doing what causes more pain and attracts revenge. Love is lost through the process.

Differences.

In some cases relationships face incompatibility, and incompatibility becomes an issue. A certain guy dates a girl, only later to realise that she is more religious than he can handle once married. Naturally, there is nothing like an incompatibility issue,  it is a man-made thing.  A relationship thrives where the two have forgotten not to tolerate all the differences between them, not where there are no differences at all. 

Naturally, when people fall in love they are bound to be different.  Each of the partners is in constant change,  too.  Individual preferences,  mindsets and values change. A relationship can only grow from strength to strength when this reality is realised.

It is important as well to welcome your partner as s/he is as a procedure of cutting the gangrene of no return off. The lady in the example given above was not going to respond to “I miss your kiss” in a naughty way,  and that was not going to change. The man sure should have learned to love this kind of a lady at stake as is.  If not tolerated differences between partners create differences in ways of communicating and distort communication.

“I miss your kiss!” That’s not much but to the lady it was a naughty question which should have been better serviced with a naughty answer. The lady,  sticking to her values,  gave an answer that was faraway from naughty; “okay”. This is a dead-end in itself that kills the conversation and is quite different from the mild,  “I can’t wait for our next kiss.”

Distorted communication does not speak against what has been said but it speaks against what has been intended. Expose the differences between you and your partner,  tolerate them and learn to communicate thoroughly through them. Effective communication is in knowing what to say and do,  and what not to say and not to do. It is a cheaper way of avoiding tensions. Through it you get your chance to know not only what your partner have said but what is the intention in what’s said.