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Relationship. A word so deep and full of meaning when you utter it with that lively smile spread all over your face, lightening up your eyes, warming your gaze. When you say to yourself or announce to your friends and families that, “Yes. We are in a relationship.”

How beautiful it sounds and means with the flow of feelings that brim up at your heart. It feels like the most beautiful ornament of life until it takes you to a point where you look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, “Is it real? Is it worth it?” When you start feeling like you are done with the next person or you simply hold on to them only in the primitive stages of an acquaintance when everything has its excitement and thrill. They say you cannot actually know a person until you have lived with them.

What truly is a relationship? Is it just about ongoing smiles and feelings of love? But those things often get wept over by thousand other emotions. Yes, the relationship does not only mean being together and throwing compliments and getting happy over dreamy dates and gifts, although these have their own places. But these elements are just the icing on the top of the cake. The relationship is when you can “relate”. Relate to the happiness and sadness of your partner. It is when their depression and hardships become your depression and hardships. It is when you relate to the other person for who they are but not what you dream them to be.

The relationship is not a physical concept but a deep mental one. Where the heart is the brain in a way that it comes over the materialistic norms set by the various examples of top love stories and fascinations. The relationship is when you can tell from a distance that something is upsetting your partner. The relationship is when you don’t have to use parables to confirm that indeed you are in a relationship. The relationship is when you don’t need to work for making up an image to prove to the world that we are perfect. The relationship, in fact, is the melody of imperfections tuning the two human beings into a wonder of understanding and love. It is the acceptance of your partner with all their flaws and lacking.

The relationship is not for showing off to others because then you are prioritizing others perception of the love that only you and your partner can possibly comprehend. It is not something to flaunt but keep. Knowing your partner’s favorite color or dish would hold no meaning when you wouldn’t know how to stand by them in case of severe hardship or problem. Knowing what style of clothing your partner would want you to wear would end up nowhere when you don’t know how your partner would want you to make them feel okay and belonged to. The relationship is not about being similar but being united within all differences of thoughts and views.

The relationship is the capacity for forgiveness you build for another person. The essence of the relationship is what the next person becomes for you and what you become for them. Relationships do not have a pure concrete beginning or end, it is a merge of all the colors of dawn and all the colors of the sunset. The relationship is a reality that becomes part of who you are and who you become. It stays with you and resides by you. Until or unless one of these factors fall short. Because it doesn’t remain a relationship then.

The relationship is a word which today has been made common to such an extent that even a fling for a day or two would be used for its base. Whereas relationship is a long-term deep meaning word which consists of human bond that overlaps and interconnects into one being. That is when the most important question comes in. Do relationships possess a lifespan?

Relationships grow. Deteriorated or embellished… they grow. They are never meant to end. Until we make them. Relationships never promised a simple terrain of life. Relationship if considered as the “relationship” would tell a cryptic secret within itself. That it is a ship and a ship has to go a long way, from the shallow shore of the calm serene sea to the worst of thunderous storms that make it thrash here and there. It’s a sea of emotions that this ship floats over. Then how could you say that it will always be a plain track of life? No, it is full of ups and downs. And if one fall proves to be an end for you, then it is you who have not yet grasped the concept of relationship. It is not a common happening that would appear like a magician out of thin air in your life and vanquish in the same way.

No, it is the most beautiful and special part of your life that is meant to last. It is not a mere crush on someone or the magnet of attraction towards the next person but the feeling of being at home when you spend time with them. It is the home you make yourself into to occupy your loved one is what it is. And a home does not end. A home is not a decorated house, adorned with materialistic paraphernalia that would fall to dust. Home is where you feel like yourself. It can be a small tent in a forest or cocooned place under the starry sky… in a relationship, the two persons become the home for one another. And if you do not feel at home, you never were in a relationship. A relationship is a ship of two sailors if one of them fails to remember that they would drown the other person along with them too.

Are they any good? Are relationships good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy? Relationships are bound to happen. They take place. They are connections and humans never stop connecting. But whether a relationship is bad or good, healthy or unhealthy entirely depends on how we keep it up and how many parts we give from our side in it. It is not the relationship but your role in a relationship that makes the relationship good or bad. Most of all, the relationship is not only about feeling giddy with happiness and loved but BELONGED TO and RELATED TO. And that can only happen when the relationship is GOOD. You are your own pioneer in the discoveries of this beautiful word.

When do relationships lose their meanings?

When they are not a relationship but a relationship. When they are delusions because the next person makes you feel the way you want to but not what you are eventually meant to. There are times when you fall for someone who does not love you back after a while. It happens that you happen to like something in them or something that gave you motivation.

You could have been possessed with the charm but you may not have grown into it unless the next person has provided you the fertility for its growth. That someone makes you feel like you are the one for them, you’re their “soulmate” (another word misinterpreted), that you’re the one and only in their life that they truly stopped to consider. That they can’t begin to think like that regarding someone else but they eventually do that’s why the element of “drawing away” arises.

First, they let you feel “special”, they familiarize with you, probing into your personality until all the barriers have been taken down and you’re not sure later on whether it was out of curiosity or genuine love of getting belonged to? They ask you to open up to them and feel more whereas those things are meant to naturally come to you. They tell you that they are always going to be there for you, they verbally give all acceptance and validation for every version of you and make you feel loved but in the long run, you find out that they only “reassured” you, never actually did it when you most needed it. Because they have not opened their hearts to the fullest.

That is why eventually, their attitude and tone of voice seem to alter and they tell you that they do not love you any more… that they have “fallen out” of love. Whereas you always fall in love and experience such depths that you can never come up because of the weight of discoveries that add up to your being. They even proffer the idea of maintaining “friendship” after somehow having “fallen out”. Human relations are not rooms to enter or leave or try.

They are homes. If you failed to become the home of the next person then how can you offer friendship which is such a pure beautiful gift of nature? That is when you realize that that person never ever even understood the meaning of “friendship” then how could they have understood the meaning of “love”?! Indeed, to have fallen prey to such an encroaching love is painful but if the meaning of the relationship is kept realized apart from all the feel-good sentiments, we can save ourselves from the delusional display of love.

Then comes the unfortunate case of those who have fallen in love with someone to whom they cannot confess their feelings of love. One-sided feelings are not the basis for a relationship. If you have halted in the run of the life and are fixating on such a love, then it is unfair to yourself as well as the next person. If you have fallen in love with your friend’s girlfriend or your teacher or any married person, then the best thing is to let them live on and not tell them. And to hear the hum of the train of your life that would not stop at any station permanently. To be fair to yourself and gear up for giving more chances to your life.

Otherwise crying over something you can’t have will dissipate the chances of your having something better. If the next person is single, come up with the “honesty is the best policy”. It is best for you to go up to the person and confess because otherwise what kind of love really is it where you can’t even convey your message. What is the worst that can happen? Are they saying no? But that is way better than pondering upon for the rest of your life than what would have happened if you had told them. It is better to take such weight off your chest. You exist and you need to take responsibility for yourself.

If the next person happens to be your friend to whom you can’t simply say because that would be so out of the box for the normal chitchat you two are used to have, then to be honest, you have to come clean with your feelings in the very start before your feelings escalate and make you fall hard. You would learn to control yourself instead of dreaming on. Oblivion is what we all should be aware of. Dwelling upon the “wish” for the relationship would simply veer you away from many other bounties the life may have in its way. If you’re too deep into the next available person and you can’t tell them, talk to your parents to talk to their parents.

Take the risk there is because if he/she accepts then you’re good to go otherwise it is not the end of the world and the risk you would have taken would be better than watching him/her being tied to someone else while you never even tried to approach them. If you are single and it so happens that someone is telling you honestly about their feelings, then do take time to consider. Indeed, in the rush of life and its hubbub, some pure confessions can be overshadowed by the plague of momentary flings. But if the next person is willing to give you everything, do take time to give it your thought.

Telling someone you love them is the best thing you can do if you want to initiate the relationship with them. Unless that person is someone married or taken, someone who is already committed. If that is the case then true love would be to never disturb them. One should never build their house on the house of the others. If you do tell them, then you have more of an attraction rather than love, because love would demand that you’d rather have them living happily, free of outer interferences that might affect their relationship.

Then there is the case for those who do not love you back. No matter how much you have fallen for them and did for them, they fail to take notice. Then the best solution is to acknowledge your existence and have some self-respect and close that chapter of the book in hope of coming across another set of another chapter in the book of your life. You have to keep turning the pages to unravel your story. Do not stick to one character that will not complete your story ever.

And when you finally are in a relationship, understand what you are in. It is not some favorite clothes you have thought to try on and with the passage of time, you’d outgrow them. Because that simply just are not relationships. If you want a true relationship, wait for the right person and become the right person. Wait for the person who materializes into the soothing element of your soul and a piece of your mind that calms it. To find such a person is one of the main quests of life. When you find them, keep them. Only then you would get someone you deserve. It is a precious relation that forms the core of your life. If it is not that, you’re not in a relationship, because that is not the essence of the relationship.

Develop a relationship in which you can decipher between thousand different smiles of your loved one.