Dallying With Sacrifice

A friend of mine F,  commented to me that her sister S recently told her that she, S, had been in a relationship with a man M for about 30 years. The sister and and the man never got married, they live in different cities. And that M was from a different community which my friend's parents would not have liked at all.

My friend told me apologetically that she had often taken up her sister's time with some trifles not knowing that S belonged to someone else, that S had a significant other in her life all these decades.

I asked my friend whether her sister was a person who gave two hoots what their parents felt. My friend thought for a second and replied no. So the question of sister "sacrificing" for the sake of parents was obviously not the case.

I told my friend that there is likely a reason for S and M not to have gotten married for so long. And that is that they probably wanted nothing more than a good relationship - maybe something like FWB. Maybe neither wanted anything more from each other. 

And I added that my friend taking up her sister's time, though unknowingly, was perhaps a welcome diversion in her sister's life. The sister could probably tell the man that she was busy helping my friend. Maybe the man had a similar thing in his life. My friend and her parents provided a legitimate diversion to the sister. Maybe a much needed diversion. 

If someone is unable to find time for a particular person or activity (POA) then that POA was never that important to them. If that person actively finds other activities to do while keeping the POA under wraps then that POA was more like a drug - nice to dally with but not nice to have full time.

The idea of people sacrificing their life for the sake of someone other than their children is remote. 

My friend felt that her sister used to help her, F, out at some cost to her own relationship. Na. No way. It was likely convenient to S. That  definitely doesn't reduce the value of the help provided.

That leads to an aphorism. If someone seems to be sacrificing their life, they aren't. They are doing it for some personally convenient or desirable reason. 

I finally asked my friend if she would feel better if her sister had (1) sacrificed her own life, not getting married nor having her own family, for the sake of parents or (2) if sister had a personal reason for not getting married that had nothing to do with the parents.

My friend replied that the second option was better. She had also earlier told me that her sister was also unlikely to have resorted to option 1.

This being the case I wonder how my friend, an intelligent woman, thought that the sister, at great cost to herself, was handling multiple fronts without letting on that she was in a relationship.

Women love the abstract idea of a sacrifice but at a tangible level they hate it. I have often seen my friend and other women indulge in such emotional orgasms - hoopla about sacrifices. And often times when I lead them through the circumstances and explain the rationale behind said "sacrifice", they realize half heartedly that there never was a sacrifice. 

I say half heartedly because they, people like my friend, would repeat the "sacrifice" incident again to another gullible audience eliciting orgasmic ooohs and aahs.

Reality is fairly depressing. No wonder the adventurous take to poetry. And we resort to opinions from our S1. 

(For an intro into S1, S2 read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html)

Additional Reading
https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/02/vikram-or-vetaal.html - More on sacrifices