Good! I caught your attention.
After reading the banner above, you might be thinking that I
am a love guru or some Papa Jack or Papa Dudut that will rant and rant and most
probably, rant about what’s wrong in your relationship and how IT’S ALL YOUR
FAULT. But before getting there, what first came into your mind when you read
the banner?
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Was it her/him?
Do you miss her/him?
Have you told her/him what you really feel?
Ahhhh. It always feels good to talk about the relationship
because everyone can relate and everyone is interested to know more about it.
But what is a relationship? Is it just between you and your
baby/honey/dear/love/boyfie/babe/bebe ko/hon/beb/darling/syota/gelpren/sweetheart….
(the list goes on and on)?
As defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary,
re-la-tion-ship \-ship \ n
: the state of being related or
interrelated. So enough with the nerd talk, a relationship is a connection
between persons (or animals, plants and everything else, if you count them).
That means you have a relationship with everyone you know and not just with your boy
or girl. It can mean a relationship with
your family, with your friends, with God and even, with yourself. Now, let’s go to the real talkin’.
FAMILY: The people you are stuck with
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| Jeffrey's very crazy yet formal family <3 |
From the moment your Dad’s sperm met your Mom’s ovum, you
have already been blessed with a family. You have your Mommy, Daddy, bro’s and
sisses. You can also have an extended family wherein your aunts and uncles, your
cousins and your grandparents still live with you. As they said, the more, the merrier, right?
When you are with your family, your behavior can be under the effects of
conformity and can be doing compliance and obedience, concepts under Social
Psych. You and your family may not be
aware of it but sometimes, your behavior is affected by one another implicitly.
For example, you are all watching TV and the rest of the family has their feet
on the table. You, intentionally or unintentionally, are likely to raise your
feet on the table as well. Now that is conformity. Being born in a family of
doctors can also affect you to choose Medicine as your program. (Think about
it! :)) Compliance is the explicit version
of conformity where you are given direct orders to change your behavior. Picture
this. Your younger cousin is watching Fantastic Four on his iPad. (Spoiled.
Haha) You are singing out loud your fave tunes. Then he ordered you to stop
singing. You followed him. Now, that’s compliance since, as your younger
cousin, he doesn’t have real authority yet you still followed him. This is where your parents come in. When the
person directing you to change now has real authority over you, it is now
called obedience. As you are teasing your younger cousin and your Mom shouts
“Ivan, itigil mo na ‘yan! Huwag mo na inisin si Viggo!”, you suddenly stop and felt awkward for a while. Your family is indeed a special group of
people. So special, they affect you, indirectly or directly, and your behavior.
Most likely, what you become when you grow up is, somehow, because of your one
and only family. ( Awww. Hugs. >:-)< )
Relation-Cheat #1: Thou shall not take the relationship for granted.
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| Sums up my entire feeling... Joke. |
For a bit of nerdy background: According to Abraham Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs (A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review. 1943.), after Physiological Needs and Safety,
we have Love and Belongingness.
According to him, it is one of human’s needs to belong and to be accepted
in social groups. Our family is one and only one. I know, behind all the
joy and bonding you have together, there are still things you disagree on, something you
don’t accept about each other or the fact that your family is incomplete. Just
like us, no family is perfect. Since our family has always been with us, we
often take it for granted. Remember how you shouted at your Mom for asking you
to clean your room or how you ignored your little brother who was asking help
for his homework. Yeah, you may have taken them for granted just a little. A
little life lesson: Always love your family and always remind them of how you
love them ‘cause they are the only one you have.
FRIENDS: The people who just laugh when you trip.
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| Ivan's very crazy high school friends <3 |
After realizing that you have the best family and the world
and regretting everything you did to your family, you get out of the house and
experience the real world yourself. Then you realized the cruel world is just
too much for you to handle. Who are you going to call? Who else than your bhes/bestie/friendship/bffffff/pare/girl.
Friends are forever. It’s hard to believe this especially in a world where
backstabbers, “yung nang-iiwan sa ere” and frauds are very rampant. But your
friend from high school, college, elementary, your old workplace or even from
kindergarten are still your friends. Though you get to talk a lot nor receive
real-time updates from each other like you used to but friendship is much more
than being physically present. In the rules of attraction, proximity or having
someone physically close or always physically present is just one. There are
also physical attractiveness, similarity and complementarity. These are just
rules on attraction a.k.a. getting your attention and interest. It is intimacy
that makes this attention and interest grow fonder and ultimately becomes
friendship. Intimacy is one of the three components of love in Sternberg’s
Triangular Theory of Love. Yes, admit it, you do love your friends. You love
them because of the feeling of closeness and the sense of having close
emotional ties with them. That’s intimacy leading you to like a person who will become your buddy, your partner-in-crime,
your shoulder to cry on, your amigo, your friend forever.
Relation-Cheat #2: Thou shall be true and thou shall find true relationships.
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| Ah, true friends! |
Who you are affects the kinds of friends you have. Using the
Five-factor Model or the Big Five of McCrae & Costa, we can use one of the
big traits, which is Agreeableness. Of course, the other four are also
important but we will just focus on this one. Agreeableness means that you
value social harmony and getting along with others than your personal
interests. One of its facets is honesty, being true to yourself and to others.
Today’s biggest problem when it comes to friends is the search for true ones. I
know, most of us have experienced the emotional pain it causes when you found
out your friend isn’t really your friend. My tip is, not to exact your revenge
on the backstabber, but rather move on and be true to yourself. You might be
wondering how being true to yourself is connected to having true friends. Well,
if your are true to yourself, the more likely that you will attract people that
match your true personality. You would get along just fine. If you show them
your true self, some may not like it and leave. At least you will know who
really are your true friends since they are the ones willing to stay. This is
better than pretending to be somebody you’re not to gain numerous friends. You don’t know if the friends you gain are
true since you are always to please them with your pretentious personality. You
are not even comfortable with yourself since you are just pretending. A little
life lesson: Everybody can be your friend, but not everybody can be true. It all depends on you.
LOVERS: the people you go gaga for
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| Josef and his crazy collection of "Beb" mementos <3 |
Now, the most juiciest part of relationships, the most
intimate of all is the relationship between you and your lover. Not all of us
may be in a relationship today, like Ivan, but I know most of us, if not all of
us, have experienced to fall in love. Do you remember it felt? Yeah, it felt
good. Falling in love is always a good feeling, whether she/he likes you , too,
or not. Getting hurt only comes in when you know that he/she doesn’t feel the
same way. But let’s get back to that later. Let’s first see how you “choose”
who you fall in love with. In Freud’s Psychosexual Theory, in the Phallic
Stage, you begin to develop desires to possess the opposite-sex parent and
replace the same-sex parent. Some psychologists believe that fixations in this
stage will lead to the tendency of choosing the one you love based on the
characteristics of your opposite-sex parent. It may sound gross but just like
how Lily and Marshall saw it, it can happen and it is not far from reality.
But, of course, that is not the ultimate basis of choosing the one we love. We
often create a list in our heads of different criteria and standards in looking
for our special someone. But even if you ask your parents or someone who is
happily married, when you truly fall in love, the list just doesn’t matter
anymore. He/She may no longer satisfy your criteria but who cares? YOU’RE IN
LOVE! That, for me, is the best feeling in the world. Go for it! Fight for what
you love! <3
Relation-Cheat #3: Thou shall love unconditionally.
*Will just use her for him/her and she for he/she.
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| #hugot |
Now, for the most emo part of this entry. WHAT IF SHE
DOESN’T LOVE YOU BACK? Will you still love her? Is it still worth the pain of
having to look at her and not having her? Ideally and romantically speaking,
the problem with you is that you expect too much from her. You expect that when
you loved her, she would love you back. Now, that you realized that she doesn’t
love you back. What are going to do? Give up or keep fighting? There is really
no right or wrong answer but what makes it wrong is the reason behind it.
Giving up would be right if you just no longer love her, you don’t feel
anything for her anymore and that you are no longer happy with her. It becomes
wrong when you give up just because you’re tired of not getting in return for
your love and that your efforts are just wasted and that it is hopeless. That’s
expecting. Fighting for your love one becomes wrong when your sole reason is to
win her love. Love is not your salary that you have to work hard for to get it.
Working hard is just for maintaining the love. Fighting now for love is now
good when you just do it in the name of love. You don’t care if she loves you
or not. (Well, maybe just a little bit) You fight for her because you love her,
loving her makes you happy and everything you do for her, whether she
appreciates it or not, is worth it for you. That is Unconditional Positive
Regard, no condition, no criteria for her to meet before loving her. You just
love her for who she is and even if she doesn’t love you back. Now, you might
be saying that this is too idealistic but even if it is, we have to strive hard
to achieve this. As you might have heard, expecting is the root of all
disappointments. Well, come to think of it. Expecting is somehow a part of
human nature. We naturally expect things from other people. A little life
lesson: Try to control yourself from expecting. If you do this, you life will
be filled with hope and loving unconditionally would just be a piece of cake.
That’s it for now! Note that every relation-cheat is
applicable to every relationship. I just chose which ones fit best with each
other. I hope you didn’t have to bring out your handkerchief or something.
Always remember to give effort to every relationship you have so that it will
always stay strong as ever. Keep the fire burning and don’t stop believin’!
References:
Ciccarelli, S. K., & White,
J. N. (2012). Psychology. Third Edition. Jurong, Singapore: Pearson Education,
Inc.
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