I was in Delhi recently and got into a healthy discussion about relationships with a friend.
She seems to be always fighting with her boyfriend and as usual she was in a fight when this discussion came up. One thing is clear — that they are in love, but twisted love. I realised that a lot of relationships fall into this category of strange kind of love.
“How do you claim that he loves you when seeing you laugh and having a good time with your friends makes him furious?” I laughed with my friend trying to figure it out. “It does not make sense to me,” I said. I tried to reason with her hoping that she would pay heed to my logic. “If he is not with me to share my good times, I feel he tortures me,” she confesses. However, if he is very possessive, it means that he loves her! He seems to punish her every time she does something she really enjoys by abusing her or making her feel guilty.
The abusing is a reaction to the intense anger which he is not able to control seeing her having a good time independent of him. His logic stemming from the notion of deep love.
Early in life when I was a teenager falling in and out of love, I believed that when someone loves you, he/she wants to see you happy, regardless of whether he/she is there to enjoy it with you or not. My friend’s logic fell way below my understanding when she tried to convince me that her man loves her.
In my belief if the man draws a sense of comfort only if he is there to enjoy her good moments, and otherwise is in a state of fury, then he cannot love her. Love means to see your partner happy and sometimes there are other things that can make her happy, which don’t involve him.
“Why should he get angry if you do some harmless things without him, that too especially when he is out of town?” I started getting emotional about my point. Somewhere down the line she started seeing sense in what I was saying, but she was not giving up. “He said that to achieve the most special relationship with him, I have to make sacrifices and make an effort. Once that is achieved, then we can have a future together,” she argued again.
Delusional! I shook my head. This won’t work in the long run I wanted to tell her, but did not want to cross a line of interference. “And if I do what he wants, he is most loving,” she added.
I wanted to shake her up and put some sense into her. I gave it one more shot. “He fell for you the way you were. He knew what you were like. Why would he like to change you by suppressing you so much, knowing that you love him,” I said calmly. My friend is not a feminist but she surely has self-respect, I thought to myself now confused. He shouts at her into submission. She gives in, half the reason being not to get into an argument and half being fear of losing him. She has to realise the limits on her own, I thought backing off from the argument. There is no point, she seems to be in a spell.
“An abusive relationship” I am told by another good friend of hers. The mystery of an abusive relationship is that a woman is oblivious to it, justifying it till she explodes and all limits are pushed.
Why don’t these kind of men look beyond their own insecurities, just understand that they have a good thing going and not let it go otherwise it is inevitable that it will. “Easier said than done,” I shrugged.

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