Backbiting and gossip are rife in a society where social aspiration and climbing up the ladder for invitations and name-dropping abound. So how do relationships and friendships survive in a predominantly farcical and superficial urban milieu that page three culture dominates?
The timeless ingredients that outlast rapids and turbulence in relationships are communication and trust.
When all else points to a loved one or a friend being guilty, telling you that they are at fault, and you are the victim — stop to think and evaluate the situation before jumping to conclusions.
I’d like to ask you if words like ‘loyalty’, ‘trust’ and ‘honesty’ have become obsolete, traded for attributes like ambition, pecking order and social advancement. Then which world am I living in? My answer to this is — qualities like loyalty and trust are classics that outlast transient shallow trends.
If you’ve cared for and loved someone for years, and something goes wrong where your loved one is ostensibly to blame, stop to think, evaluate, communicate and discuss the situation before jumping to conclusions. Ask what transpired and if he or she had anything to do with the problem. Always draw from the ‘bank balance’ of good memories and the loyalty you’ve seen all the years of knowing them. Don’t discount all past happy experiences and just arrive at an impetuous conclusion where you have tried and found a person guilty in your own head.
Recently a jealous social climber tried to implicate an innocent friend of mine by spreading an untrue story about her. The innocent girl lost a close friend, who without choosing to check, corroborate and communicate, just stopped speaking to her. The loss of a good relationship belonged to the innocent girl and her close friend while the jealous social climber just laughed all the way to her next trouble-making option.
The fault here lies not with the social climber but the close friend who did not look into her own bank balance of years of goodwill and shared memories, nor did she bother to check what had happened or why it had happened. She just chose to jump to the conclusion about a good friend who had been loyal to her and never shown any propensity of a lack of loyalty.
The smart thing then is to confront the person who you feel is guilty of betraying you — lover, husband or long time friend. Not in front of a large group of friends but in privacy. Do not approach them with preconceived notions, aggression, an attitude of accusation but with the desire to understand what happened. Just like Chinese whispers, it is possible the story was reported and re-reported wrong. It is also possible that there is some troublemaker trying to break up a good relationship, spread stories, and fan flames toward some personal agendas.
To build a strong bond, you cannot terrorise and throw tantrums. A person will be loyal and faithful with love in their hearts, not fear and trauma.
The one thing you need to always remember is, while it takes years of nurture and sacrifice to create a good relationship which is real, not one born from materialism and mutual agenda, it takes just a second to break a relationship.
The author is a luxury consultant and lifestyle columnist. You can mail her at nishajamvwal@gmail.com
