Who Is The Dependent

https://www.womensweb.in/2021/08/who-is-the-real-dependant-most-men-dont-know-basic-survival-skills-like-cooking-yet-women-are-called-dependants/?utm_source=WWFB&utm_medium=WWFB&utm_campaign=WWFB

Husband And Sex And Lover And Affair And Breakup

• https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/dear-therapist-im-cheating-on-my-husband/614032/
• https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/01/im-having-affair-my-roommate/604747/
  
• https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jul/31/got-the-ick-when-a-pang-of-disgust-ruins-your-romance?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/we-expect-way-too-much-from-our-romantic-partners/541353/
  
• https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/opinion/sunday/the-all-or-nothing-marriage.html?mcubz=0: Very nice
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/harvey-weinstein-and-the-economics-of-consent/543618/
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/how-to-avoid-an-affair-admit-that-you-could-conceivably-have-an-affair/265082/: very nice
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/12/dear-therapist-i-had-affair-married-man/617361/
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/marriage-problems-fight-dishes/629526/: Very nice
• https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/10/gender-researchers-divide-chores-parenting-at-home/620319/
  

Being A Parent

• https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/07/family-other-oriented-perfectionism-parents-child/619461/
• https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/07/sharon-lambs-not-good-enough-mother/594502/
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/can-you-predict-your-kids-height/607018/
  

Men And Women, Relationship

• Men work more: Nearly Half of Men Say They Do Most of the Home Schooling. 3 Percent of Women Agree.
• On cheating: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/why-happy-people-cheat/537882/: "As I [therapist] listen to her, I start to suspect that her affair is about neither her husband nor their relationship. Her story echoes a theme that has come up repeatedly in my work: affairs as a form of self-discovery, a quest for a new (or lost) identity. For these seekers, infidelity is less likely to be a symptom of a problem, and more likely an expansive experience that involves growth, exploration, and transformation... By falling for someone from a very different class, culture, or generation, we play with possibilities that we would not entertain as actualities... Under the spell of passion, lovers speak longingly of all the things they will be able to do when they are finally together. Yet when the prohibition is lifted, when the divorce comes through, when the sublime mixes with the ordinary and the affair enters the real world, what then? Some settle into happy legitimacy, but many more do not. In my experience, most affairs end, even if the marriage ends as well. However authentic the feelings of love, the dalliance was only ever meant to be a beautiful fiction.
• How Long Does It Take to Fix a Marriage? Give the Gottmans 7 Days.
  

My Boyfriend Is Going Through A Divorce

 https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/04/my-boyfriend-going-through-divorce/586072/: Very nice

Brothers Are Awful

A friend of mine (she is in her 40s) had a huge argument today with her 50 year old brother. I don't know what led to the argument, what she said, what he said etc. Both siblings are separated from their respective spouses.

During the course of the argument, she opened all windows in the apartment and loudly expressed her opinion of her brother's various failures, including his multiple marriages. 

The brother is very sensitive to this issue and hates to cut a sorry figure in front of his friends, neighbours and relatives. The brother threw a footwear at his sister. The sister dialled 100, told the police there was a domestic violence issue.

The police came home, made enquiries. How does one address a domestic violence issue of this kind between siblings? 

They enquired of the elderly father. The father was mum and refused to say anything to the police.

The police counseled everyone and left. 

Now the questions:

• What kind of a man throws footwear at a lady, that too his own sister? 
• What recourse did the sister have when her own brother attacked her? Maybe her parents were of no use in restraining the sibling.
• How come the brother was so insensitive that he couldn't restrain his temper at his younger sister who was going through emotional trauma herself?

 

As a passing note, I want to mention that the act of throwing anything including footwear at someone is an issue legally. One has cause to complain. 

But can anyone go to the police and complain that someone opened the windows and talked loudly?

 

• 
  

Age Gap In Relationships

 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jun/14/he-was-40-and-i-was-23-but-we-had-something-real-the-couples-whose-love-bridges-the-age-gap?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Difference Between Care And Love

 http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-love-and-care/

Very nice article. Most people think of love and care to be synonymous.

Be Safe

 I came this forward in social media today.

It is sensible though not completely correct.

It's like saying "if you want to be safe, dress conservatively or stay home." 

Men tend to think that the safety of women has to be addressed solely by women.

Women tend to think their own safety is the sole responsibility of men (that men have to be restrained). Neither belief is right in isolation.

Safety has to be ensured by both parties. One party by playing safe and the other party by ensuring safety. 

Here is another:

NDTV reporter's clever question to a Doctor at a Govt hospital:

"There are so many COVID patients and the government does not provide beds,ICUs and Oxygen for all? Do you think Modi Govt has failed?”

Answered the pragmatic and hardworking doctor:

"Suppose you people are 10 members in the house and what to do if all 10 out of 10 get diarrhea at the same time? Will it have arrangement of 10 toilets in your house ????? Will you say the architect is a lousy professional?”

The Reporter Disappeared......

😂😂😂😂

Staying safe is our duty too!!!

No country can handle a pandemic well does not imply that India and Western countries are equally good in providing healthcare.

Why Need A Reason To Be Good And Nice?

I was discussing the father / landlord character in the Hindi serial Mere Dad Ki Dulhan with a friend of mine. The dad, a widower with a daughter, is depicted as an egoistic, sarcastic, introverted person who can't stand social interactions. (The story in the serial seems just a bit like the movie You've Got Mail).

Of late, the dad has started getting close to a lady in a dating app, who incidentally is his own tenant, a lady who lives upstairs. Neither the lady nor the gentleman realizes who their dating app partner is in real life, that they are actually neighbors. As neighbors they detest each other.

The man recently had been behaving extremely crankily even by his own standards and has ended up messing up his own daughter's career.

The daughter who loves her father is pained by his behavior and tells him that she has lost respect for him and that she is sick and tired of the mess that he, her father, has been creating in her life. 

This is the background. And no, I haven't watched this serial. My friend told me that the father is so like me. And hence my interest in the serial. My friend updates me about the events after each episode. The daughter's anguish at her father was in yesterday's episode of the serial.

Now let's come to the crux of the matter.

Let's now assume that a doctor told the daughter TODAY that her father actually had Parkinson's or that his brain has tumor that caused his behavior to be weird. And that there is no cure.

What would the daughter think of her father TODAY (= meaning after hearing doctor's diagnosis)? How would her behavior or response towards her father be TODAY?

Most daughters (even sons!) would show a lot more compassion towards their father NOW after they understand their father's medical condition. 

Now here is my question: 

WHY should our (=daughter's) behavior depend on knowing the medical explanation? Why should we be nicer towards our father just because we have now learnt that he has an incurable disease that causes him to behave in a very unacceptable way? Why can't we, even when we don't know of any extenuating reason, accept someone's unacceptable behavior? Why do we need to know some good reason to be just human and nice? 

I explained to my friend - it took me an hour to explain this question in the previous para to my friend.

The human mind has a set quota for accepting unacceptable behavior. This quota is like management quota for college admission seats.

Very limited quota is available and the quota is released against (= in response to) a good reason such as mgmt quota or doctor's diagnosis of my father.

In such exceptional cases the daughter (or I) would make an exception and accept our father's unacceptable behavior and be more kind to him. 

It is not humanly possible to be kind to every dickhead. We need a reason to be kind to such a person. Sad, isn't it? And this is why we all give reasons. In the hope that MY reason will be good enough for you to be nice and tolerant towards MY unacceptable behavior. 

Social interactions expect us to accept such reasons and make exceptions and be kind while ALSO behave in an unacceptable manner ourselves and give reasons.


The winner is the person who comes up with such reasons more frequently and gets away with it.

Divorce, Yet No Separation

Why would a man want to divorce his wife of many years but still want to continue his life with her just as before - living in the same house. And that no one is to know of their divorce.

Everything will be the same except that they are now legally not married. 

Background:

The man has an estranged first wife with whom he had a son and with whom also he is estranged. The man's inlaws (from 2nd wife) never accepted him as their son in law in all these years.

Possible Reasons:

1. Maybe because the man was touchy about his inlaws never accepting him but his wife continued to maintain good relations with her own family. And the divorce is a way of punishing the wife.
2. Maybe he can tell his son that he is no more married and hence request the son to accept him and come back to his life.
3. Maybe there is some property that would come to him or some business / legal deal that would come through only if he wasn't married (at all or atleast to his current wife). 
4. Maybe someone challenged the man that he was not man enough and could not divorce his wife. Just a "fun" thing to prove that he could do anything if he set out to.
5. Maybe the man is in love with another married woman and that woman insisted that he get divorced first and only then would she file a case against her husband.
6. The wife has committed some crime or misdemeanor (which the husband knows about) and which may impact his business / social / legal standing if he is married to her. (For example, if there is an application form that he has to fill which has the question "Are you or any family member ever...?") Another variety of this is if he had got his wife to committ a crime and he wants now to distance himself from the crime. "It was she who did it. And she isn't related to me."
7. She doesn't give me BJ's. (Men being men even this could trigger huge anger.)

My Husband - Answer To The Puzzle

I had earlier written about something that puzzled me https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/01/my-husband.html

Why do wives and daughters think so differently about their husbands and fathers respectively, as human beings, so differently?

I finally figured out the answer.
Daughters love their fathers because they take care of their daughters, protect them and love them.
BUT because they love their fathers they ALSO think their fathers are great human beings (when they are not really great human beings). This is a mistake daughters make.

Wives dislike their husbands because they are too silly, insensitive, inattentive, unreliable etc BUT because they hate their husbands they ALSO think their husbands are awful human beings (when they are not really awful human beings). This is a mistake wives make.

Both daughters and wives exaggerate the nature of their fathers / husbands as human beings. This is a human tendency. When we like someone, we attend to think they are good at everything. And VICE VERSA.

Most sons think that their mothers are nice while most husbands think that their wives could do with some improvement. The difference in perception is not as much as in the case of daughters and wives, I think.

Men tend not to think too much about relationships while women focus primarily on them and exaggerate (in a benign way or malignant way depending on the object being evaluated) and hence create a whole lot of confusion in people like me. 

It took me almost a year to figure this one out.

Bhutan And Sasural

A woman I know lost her husband some time back. Her euphoria knew no bounds and she is now vacationing in Bhutan with her kids.

Another friend I know discarded her husband and she is now in Bhutan.

Why do they all go to Bhutan?

Now Bhutan is the land of happiness and it's no wonder women gravitate there when they lose or discard their husbands.

What then is the land of unhappiness? Sasural?

Belar Sheshe - The Growth Of A Plant

A friend of mine, passionate about art, told me a story of a man she came to know some time back.

The man had been born of a wealthy family, successful academically and professionally. Then his life took a turn. He lost many things including his job, his family, his status and wealth. He turned into a shell of his prior self and locked everyone and everything out of his life. 

The man then found that he possessed one thing that was priceless - that was his ability to see and understand life with brilliant clarity. 

When my friend first met the man it s during the course of her work. She had gone through some hard years in her life and was just recovering from her own personal trauma. 

She happened to mention this the man. She was surprised to find that the man, who lived in a world of darkness himself, was able to understand her experience. Not only that, he was able to provide a meaningful expression to her experience and helped her understand herself better as a person. 

The man was able to cut and dissect her experiences, and explain to her that the aversion she was feeling towards herself was not called for. That the trauma, traumas actually, were accidents in her life which she went through for no fault of hers. Sure, she could have and ought to have made better decisions for herself. 

How does it feel when the worst things we feel towards ourselves are removed when we get to see the past in a different light?

And that's what the man did.

While living in his own darkness, he still retained the ability to see light, if not provide light to someone else. 

My friend said of the man, I quote verbatim - "he had weaved a tapestry of beautiful bright colors over his soul while parts of it were still dark as hell". 

And after having spent a few days in his company she realized she wanted to paint again. Painting was her passion. She was a professional artist in her earlier life.

And that is the change the man brought to her life. She wanted to live again and grow, just because she understood his tapestry. 

My Husband - II

What does it mean when someone thinks you as her husband?

A friend of mine (not remotely my wife) recently referred to me as her husband - when she wasn't very conscious, when she wasn't in control of her senses. I wondered what it meant.

Is it the disgust that women have for their spouses that made my friend unknowingly refer me to as her husband?

Later she was contrite and kinda apologized to me. 

But I still can't help but think. Why this disgust?

1. Additional reading
2. https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/01/my-husband.html
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parineeta_(2005_film)

Resourceful And Dutiful

When you have two resources, one of which which is resourceful and the other dutiful it's natural and perhaps essential that you delegate the duties to the dutiful and give our resources to the resourceful. That makes the best use of our resources within the constraints of the duties that need to be executed.

The opposite option of delegating our duties to the resourceful and giving our resources to the dutiful will likely result in suboptimal use of our resources. While delegating our duties to the resourceful will likely result in the duties not getting executed as expected. 

I define a resourceful person as a survivor and a dutiful as one who isn't. 

It's extremely interesting to note that the optical allocation of resources and duties come instinctively to most of us. When we have resources to give we tend to choose the resourceful while the duties are instinctively delegated to the dutiful. It's almost like when we have a toy car and a barbie doll, we know which one to present to a little girl and which to a little boy unerringly.

In essence, the dutiful becomes the chocolate, the resourceful becomes the child (read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/02/understanding-love.html).

WYSIWYG

What I like in a person

Being authentic meaning nothing shallow - what some people loosely call "genuine".

What I mean is WYSIWYG. 

WYSIWYG translates in turn to a few characteristics:

• Honesty, integrity
• Innocence with a lack of maturity
• In addition to WYSIWYG, intelligence and depth and passion and an ability to take stress
• And a nature that tends to give more than to take.
• And someone who is committed, not wont to keeping multiple options open

Man And Animals - Accepting As They Are

Sometimes we wonder why someone behaves so differently, absurd it might seem to us.

Of course we realize later that to the other person their behavior was perfectly justified. 

It's just that we are unable at times to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. Now why is this so difficult? Do the shoes bite? Is the size not same as ours? This is a question that's been on my mind for a long time   Why do we, each one of us, think and feel so differently from others?

To address this question we have to look at cats, dogs, birds, fish etc. Why do dogs behave differently from cats? Or birds from fish? It's because each is a different species. Cats won't behave like dogs nor like fish or birds. Each of these has evolved differently and each has its own nature. Two different species aren't similar.

When it comes to people, we can take this analogy even farther. Each person is like a different species even if all people have 2 legs, 2 hands,2 eyes, 1 mouth etc. Each person is born with a unique set of genes and has had a unique set of experiences in their life.

The genes that you were born with and the experiences that you faced in your life hitherto are different from those that I was born with and faces. You are logically expected to be different, hence, from me in your values, your thoughts, your conditioning, your responses to a situation.

This is so logical, yet so difficult for my heart to accept. It's kind boggling.

We don't say a crocodile or a lion or a shark is cruel. We use different words to describe them. We may say they are carnivores or that they eat so many kilos of meat a day or that they are cannibals and eat their own siblings. But we do not use the word sweet, cruel etc to describe them.

Words like sweet (as in nature) or cruel are used to describe only those whose nature is quite different from the average of their species.

You don't have a vegetarian shark, nor a lion that is a sanyasi etc. Sharks are alike, at least to us they seem that way. 

Maybe, if a shark were to write a blog such as this it may understand that each shark is different from another and hence it may also use differentiating words such as cruel, brave, sweet etc to describe other sharks. 

But to us human beings, all sharks are similar, all lions are similar and so on. Here we use neutral or objective words to describe them - "eat meat", "have large teeth" etc.

But to describe each of us, human beings, we frequently use subjective words. Words that help describe how different each of us is.

But imagine if, as I wrote earlier, each of us is a different species. We would then describe others around us the same way we describe other species. 

Words such as galling, obnoxious, saintly, liar (or sweet / cruel) etc would hardly be used to describe other people. We would describe others the same way we describe other species.

So what's the big deal?

We do not expect other species to change their nature, language, religion, character etc. We know it's not possible. If we understand and accept that each one of us is really a different species, we won't expect others to change. We wont have New Year resolutions.

Does this mean we would love everyone and accept everyone? Yes, the same way we love all peacocks, whales and snakes. Meaning we understand each species has certain characteristics which will not change any time soon. We decide which ones to be close to and which ones to avoid. And which ones to watch from a distance with a binocular. 

Can we digest this thought? So difficult. 

It's our social nature that makes it difficult to accept this. We WANT to love some people and hate some others. Maybe the human beings who are least social can understand the perspective of treating other human beings as just another species - just different from themselves, nothing inherently good or bad. 

Is this a good idea or bad - to treat other people as another species?
We have come across people who would suggest to us, when we are having relationship issues, to take people as they are. What does this mean essentially? Is it not the same as treating others as another species - in the sense that we ought not expect them to change?

Which of us treats other people as they are? Those of us who are open or those who are judgemental? Does treating another human as another species imply alienation or acceptance?

End note
Just imagine. The expression "we human beings" would mean nothing if we treat other people as other species.

Sache Dil Se

Sache man se kuchh chaaho toh .

This dialog from DDLJ used to pique me. To achieve or get

something, was a good intention all that was required?

And the road to hell is paved... We all know that. 

Then how come "sache man" is accepted as adequate or good currency for barter?

Some of us use our skills or what we produce as currency for barter. And we think THAT is necessary and sufficient for the barter.

Others think that intentions and feelings are essential for the barter. And that skills or production are secondary and consequent to the intention. 

If one person places his exceptional feelings and intentions while the other person expects something tangible and won't accept anything else, we have an issue. It's like bringing a football to a gunfight. 

Offerings without packaging (emotions and intentions) aren't accepted by feelers. Emotions and feelings without something tangible aren't accepted by thinkers. 

For one sided people, I mean those that can to one end of the spectrum or the other, it's essential to realize that without collateral, emotions (towards feelers) or something tangible (towards thinkers), the other party is going to place little value on the former's offering. 

Kunti And Karna

In Mahabharatha, the story of the relationship between Kunthi and her illegitimate son Karna is interesting. 

After he gets to know that Kunti is his mother they have a affectionate reunion. Soon Kunti asks Karan to leave the Kauravas and join her other 5 sons, the Pandavas. He explains why he is indebted to Duryodhan, the eldest of the Kaurava brothers.

His mother asks him two favors. 1. That he should not fight against or kill any Pandava other than Arjuna who is Karna's sworn enemy. 2. That Karna should not use the deadly Nagastra (a guided missile!) more than once against Arjuna.

Both these favors together more or less eliminate the possibility of Karna doing much harm to the Pandavas while the favors  he granted endanger Karna's own life. It's noteworthy that Kunti didn't grant Karna nor did Karna ask his "new mother" any favor to help protect his own life.

Of course Karna, being the person he was, unhesitatingly grants his mother the favors she asks of him. And in the war, he is killed by Arjuna. 

What I find interesting is that Kunti ensured that her 5 legitimate sons were protected , even if it meant the end of her illegitimate and eldest son. While she makes a show of all sons being equal in her eyes (that the new bride was to be shared by her 5 sons, read here) she makes a clean distinction between the eldest and the younger 5 sons. What is remarkable is her calculating mind at work when she asks Karna the two favors while at the same time having an emotional reunion with him. 

This story is as per the Tamil film Karnan. Quote from the movie's wiki "Karnan is based on the life of the character Karna from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. B. R. Panthulu, who directed and produced the film under the banner Padmini Pictures, had collected most of his information from scholars Kripananda Variar and Anantarama Dikshitar.

I am reminded of mother birds and mother crocodiles that sacrifice their own young runt in order to survive or to increase the survival probability of her stronger children.

It's sad and thought provoking that Kunti saw a runt in Karna.