Love Affair Life Cycle

After writing a couple of posts on this subject, I didn't want to delve more or be a cynic especially when I myself am a product of love marriage; but decided to pen down some thoughts based on experiences of those whom I've seen from close quarters. My previous articles on the topic were:

• Love Marriage vs Arranged Marriage
• Love, Pyar, Prema etc

Parents are getting more liberal and progressive these days and we see lot more cases of love marriages than earlier generations or even a decade ago. That may be a good sign from one point of view but that means youngsters are completely given charge of THE most important decision of their lives at the age when they are not always ready or matured to take one.

18-25 is a really tricky age when one falls in love with almost every good looking / attractive or interesting person of the opposite sex because everybody is subconsciously looking for a prospective life partner. On the other hand everybody is subconsciously trying to impress those of opposite sex by projecting their best side, or sometimes an artificial or made up persona (again with or without their own knowledge). So it's quite a confusing situation.

Boys naturally get attracted to beautiful, charming, sexy, talkative girls who elevate their status in their circles. Girls get attracted to handsome, humorous, interesting, charming, romantic guys who can provide them some security. That's quite natural

When a boy and a girl start talking to and liking each other (due to factors mentioned above), they will have a lot to talk, share, discuss, express for a period of time. This is when they spend hours together on phone calls, instant messages, text messages day and night. That's really a beautiful phase of any relationship.This is when "love" blossoms because they find each other very interesting, enterprising and engaging enough to spend the rest of their lives. The problem exists in the fact that nobody realizes that's a temporary phase because no couple can talk or share things like that forever. The aura or utopia vanishes in an year, sometimes even months or even worse, in some cases days. This is the period when a lot of couples get committed for marriage or a long term relationship. That's what they call love and also convince themselves that they know a lot about the other person and hence it's not infatuation anymore. That's when they get into some kind of intimate moments or physical relationships.

But after the cloud of interesting phase passes away, comes a phase of strange silence, longing for those golden days, dearth of interesting topics to talk about, lack of time for each other. This is the phase where the bogeyman called "possessiveness" creeps in. This is when boy and girl start fighting and cribbing over some "extra-attention" she/he gives to other boys/girls. Things start to change. Restrictions, instructions, follow-ups on each other take place of sweet-nothings. Worse if arguments about family customs, conflicts in backgrounds, fear of mental, emotional and social adjustments post marriage take center stage. In short, it would be "mini-hell".

A lot of couples break-up in this phase and find solace in other people who try to get them out of their bad phase. Some people stay in relationships just because they don't want to hurt their partners or don't want to be selfish or even worse don't want to treat "love" as a business - without realizing that these foolishly romantic lines will ruin two lives and families one day. And those out of bad relationships would feel like free birds :) Thus love affair life cycle ends. But if the couple really falls in love with each other, this phase too would be a temporary one and they can lead a happy and beautiful life forever because their real love starts just here notwithstanding all earlier sugar-coated conversations, spending hours on phone etc.

This quite often happens in arranged marriages as well. Couple brought into arranged relationship by their parents too will go through the utopia phase of colorful thoughts, sweet nothings, flowery conversations which will end at some point, but they come to terms with the next phase because they know they are tied by social norms and hence secondary thoughts don't even creep into their minds.

I personally know people who jumped into commitments because they like the way other person talks or behaves or looks like and then struggle through the next phase of converting love into marriage or marriage into love, and sometimes it's too late for them to back-off. A relationship which begins on the basis of superficial, artificial, unimportant or temporary factors will result in a bitter end or a bad marriage. Its good such relationships remain as crushes or infatuations forever.