You may have noticed a bit of a pattern over the last month in which I end up writing about relationships. Like much of my writing, these posts have been reflective of my own losses and ‘wins’ in relationships. (I want to know when the word ‘relationship’ came to be synonymous with romantic love?) For me, relationships come in all sorts of packages – and include the well defined ones of husband-wife, parent-child, sibling-sibling, friends, boyfriend-girlfriend, teacher-student….I could go on. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, it would be natural for me to write about love, you’d think? This is about love, but of a different kind. I want to write about a question that has been bothering me for a while a question that one of my readers sent me : Do relationships need labels? His ‘story’ got me thinking and I’m reflecting on it today using my imagination to provide details.
Do Relationships Need Labels? #FridayReflections
I watched you for a while and wondered whether you were really all that you seemed to be. Your world seemed so different from mine. Your generation too. And I wondered when we’d see another side of you, behind the smiles and simplicity. I watched you as you struggled with your personal pain. I wished that I could be there to to make you smile again. Yet, you shook it off with courage and took things on the chin. When you smiled through your pain, and reached out to someone else’s need, you won my heart.
Thoughtfulness and kindness seemed second nature to you. Your smiles and laughter made my heart swell with joy. I wanted to be around you always to enjoy your presence and your attention.
That there was chemistry between us, I will not deny. But you knew I’d never disrespect you in any way. I know you found me special and reached out to know me more. I began to pour out my dreams, my plans, my future, so you could help me explore myself better.
Then one day I found them watching, their small minds full of sin. I heard them talk about you and saw them grin. I moved away from you although it hurt me so. I couldn’t let them insult you any more.
Why put love in a box and label it?
Why put love in a box
And label it
All pretty with a bow?
How do we label what I feel for you
And what you feel for me?
Who dictates that loving you is so wrong?
I know deep within how my love
Brought new meaning and purpose to my life
And a spring in my step.
So I stand around the edges and watch you knowing that you don’t understand why I no longer let you come close to me. It is to protect you from the small minded lot, who if they had their sway, would destroy you with their words.
I couldn’t let them do that. No, I’d rather be the one to take the blame for trying to fly beyond the norm.
I let them talk about me and deride me with their grins, for they’ll soon forget and move to find other lives and ‘sins’.
Isn’t it sad that often love is questioned and made into something bad when it doesn’t fit into a preset label?
#FridayReflections
Friday Reflections is a link up hosted by Shalini at KohlEyed Me and me, Corinne at Everyday Gyaan. We invite you to join us every Friday to share a good cup of tea and your reflections based on the prompts we provide.
Here’s how #FridayReflections works:
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- Write a post using one of the prompts for the week provided below.
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Prompts for 9 February 2018
1. Do relationships need labels?
2. Quote: “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
3. Picture prompt via Corinne Rodrigues
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Corinne Rodrigues
Corinne all relationships that do not fall in the ‘socially ‘ or ‘culturally’ accepted parameters are bound to draw attention and invite uncharitable comments….. As long as the people concerned are pure of heart, it is all that really matters…. And I do believe that love does conquer all
For me, it sure does need a label. One can’t just assume because the other can deny it. DTR: Define the relationship. 🙂
Labeling the relationship first suffocates it and then kills it gradually. Living in a society that is governed by certain defined and some assumed norms, comes with this heavy price tag.
That was a sad story. I wish we didn’t need to put labels to relationships – but the truth is we are part of a society that insists on doing just that, specially when there’s a man and a woman involved.
This really got me thinking… I have always felt all relationships have a definition… If there’s no definition, one or both might get hurt. Emotions are really complicated in undefined relationships. It doesn’t have to be the norm… It can be a unique definition of it’s own… But it does need a name. As for the social norms, people often ridicule things that they don’t understand. Someone once said – Simple mind, simple thinking. Ignore them.
Hi Corinnne! I love reading all your blogs..they are so real, perceptive, wise and sensitive. I loved this one in particular ..Keep dishing out gyaan..no one does it like the way you do. 🙂 Love and Cheers!
Beautifully written. So many beautiful things in life are indeed better without labels.