Being in love is a beautiful feeling. The knowledge that someone is there by your side who adores you and likes to be with you is indeed flattering and heartwarming. A lot of people want to hang on to that feeling and take things forward with a hope in their heart.
However, it is also true that two people need time to figure out what they want from each other and how they want to navigate through life together. Not every couple wants the same things from life and yet they invariably end up following the same trajectory. From flirting with each other, proposing to each other, making their relationship official, getting married to having kids – most couples are conditioned to believe that this is the only way to go about it. Any slight detour is met with snide remarks, suspicion and a lot of speculation.
What if a couple doesn't want to marry at all? What if they want to take longer before making their relationship official? What if they don't want to announce it on Instagram that they're seeing each other? The answers to all these questions are always subjective, and yet most people end up following the same path as all couples. A lot of times it's the societal pressure that bogs a couple down.
Relationship counselor Ruchi Ruuh says, “When people in relationships move to next stages without deliberation, it weakens the foundation of a relationship. A lot of times people make commitments to each other without fully understanding their own expectations. This explains why we often see couples experiencing emotional burnout. Besides, a lot of them also ignore red flags along the way.” She adds that the societal pressure to conform to traditional relationship milestones can push couples into making decisions they’re not ready for, resulting in regret later on. She advises couples to be more intentional rather than just going with the flow.
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"I had been dating my boyfriend for 4 years and as soon as I turned 27, everyone around me started to push me into marrying him. In my opinion, we were still in the getting-to-know-each-other phase. We still weren't sure in our hearts if we really envisaged a future together. But the pressure simply kept mounting. My parents would often tell me that 'Why he is not marrying you now that you know each other for 4 years. We hope he doesn't dump you one fine day unannounced'. Remarks like this brainwashed me and triggered me. I started having fights with boyfriend and I too hopped on the bandwagon that he marries me ASAP. In hindsight, I feel it was a poor decision. We both should have focussed on our careers more and let things take their own course," says Sabina, 28, a consultant.
"My husband and I were definitely were on a relationship escalator. We thought we were just going with the flow, but the truth is we were just doing things that our families expected out of us. We never just in our early 20s when everyone around had started assuming that we would tie the knot soon. You know that expectation of people somewhere impacts you subconsciously. You also start believing the same things. In fact, I had my baby when I was at the peak of my career. Why? Well, because my in laws wanted to surprise them with a good news anymore. I feel all our decisions have somewhere been dictated by our families and friends. Come to think of it, my husband and I had never really sat together to plan any of the seminal moments in life. This is certainly not a wise thing we did, because today we feel there's a lot of chasm between us because we messed up our timeline of relationship by just going with the flow," says Diljeet, 34, a homemaker.
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It's safe to say that it's always a good idea to take the relationship staircase or ladder rather than relationship escalator. It may seem more fun when things are happening in a rush in a relationship, but there's a bright possibility that the thrill of it all may not last long. The benefit of using a relationship staircase is that it allows people more time to understand what they want from life and from each other. It helps them plan things the way they want it without any stipulations and distractions from society. Do you agree with this? Let us know.