It’s easy for a man and a woman who are in different relationships to meet and connect emotionally and physically at work and other meeting grounds. No more is this the world where people live their life in isolation, says Roberto Rossi. So what happens if you like spending time with someone else? Does that mean you’re cheating?
More often than not, things can sometimes be lost in translation when it comes to your relationship with a loved one. Without clear boundaries set, it’s even more likely that relationships won’t last past the initial honeymoon period. It seems nowadays you can’t even fart or sneeze without your loved one having opinions about it. Why is this happening? Only god knows, but as couples become more and more immersed into each other’s daily lives, problems seem to be occurring left, right and centre!
Just think about it for a moment. Have you been in a situation that has been so small and so insignificant, that in the end you ended up having a row with your partner and probably took a few days to resolve while the dust settled? Have you been in that situation when in looking at what is positive in the relationship, you instead focus on the negative? There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s up to you to find the torch that can take you there.
I’ve lost you, haven’t I?
Recently a friend of mine came to me with a dilemma. His girlfriend had left him because he often sent text messages to a female work colleague. This girl from work would phone him occasionally to talk, to gossip, etc. His girlfriend came to him concerned, and even after he had comforted her over a few glasses of Portuguese Rose, she came right back at him with the sucker punch, “but you always see her at work, why do you need to talk to her more?”
His response was somber, and there wasn’t much he could have said back, other than “she’s a friend who likes to talk, what’s wrong with that?” Of course, some level of flirtation probably took place, but let’s be big boys and girls here, who doesn’t flirt?
As a few months went by, a one-off, random office drinks party ended with my friend and his workmate sharing a kiss. Of course my tone changed, but in the end I felt this couple had a lot more going for them then, to allow a stupid kiss to get in the way. Three years together, and a stupid kiss could ruin all of that? Who hasn’t done something stupid which they come to regret, or rather forget? But this is it. When he told his girlfriend about the kiss, she was obviously pissed off, but she automatically assumed that he was stirring a hornet’s nest with this woman from work.
Fair enough, I thought. She was well entitled to believe that something could come from this because they had locked lips. But it was her failure to reflect on their relationship to understand that such a scenario was always a miniscule event in a wider picture. She assumed that that one kiss had started an entire illicit relationship between her man and the woman from work, and she just wasn’t ready to accept that perhaps, just maybe, it was an unfortunate event that happened by accident. We all do it.
Anyone can fall prey to such accidents, given the circumstances and chances of timing. No one’s a saint and no one’s a sinner if you really weigh the circumstances. Humans have emotions, and in having these emotions, they have assumptions that develop over time to maintain these emotions. All of us have assumptions about something, it’s a defense mechanism to keep us in check.
But as the American actor Henry Winkler once said, ‘assumptions are the termites of relationships’. They eat at you and your partner, and in the end, just like a termite loves to grind down on wood, the termite assumption eats at the tree you and your partner have grown together.
