The Power of Relationships

Someone once told me that, “Relationships are worked on, they don’t just work” and I never wanted to believe it until now. Having lived for close to 5 decades, I have struggled to understand why it is so hard to get just the right relationship one yearns for. It can be in a standard family with both parents and their children. There are dynamics that keep changing the relationship set up. Some are strengthening, others tearing apart and yet still some not so satisfying. In the family, not everyone gets along, so the situation is the same even in the workplace, in our neighbourhoods, between countries and in the entire universe.

At the centre of relationships is that between a man and a woman, two sexes that try to merge and become one. However, due to differences in nature, interests, and expectations, this seems to be the most difficult relationship that threatens to tear the world apart. From that union, come a whole lot of repercussions on the most basic of units, the family unit. Once that relationship fails, the effect on the children, and those connected to that family unit are drastic to even contemplate. The animosity that breeds from failed relationships between sexes are everywhere, and many crimes , wars and destabilisation has occurred due to the stress  and seed of destruction planted in the offspring  and related parties.

In some instances, men have resorted to eliminating their wives and girlfriends through violent means. Likewise, women have used their feminine influence to destroy their estranged lovers. Children and relatives have also joined in the fray and it has become a warzone. A day never passes without a story in the press about such atrocities being perpetrated in the name of failed relationships. In my native language we have a saying that it is a heinous exercise to even think about what can happen when “Chaikuda kana chokusema”, loosely translated as “When your lover becomes your enemy.”

It is thus important to keeping reminding ourselves that relationships do not just work automatically. Rather there is work that needs to be done by all parties to ensure success. There is lots of sacrifice that goes into it as well, like forgoing one’s interests for the sake of another, forgiving and forgiving and forgiving. This is all so that we avoid the adverse effects of a failed relationship.