Relationship expectations, career x partner, a poem for home
Turbulent relationships and how to handle them.
I recently learned that every relationship has underlying expectations:
We expect care from our parents. They expect love from us.
We expect reliability from our friends. They expect support from us.
We expect loyalty from our partners. They expect romance from us.
These underlying common expectations are built by centuries of social civilization and moulded by socio-cultural settings. And while a lot of our relationships are and should be defined by fundamental expectations of respect, honesty and trust, most of them turn turbulent when they fall off the typically conventional balance.
When parents care more about their choices for you than your own, even at the cost of your happiness.
When friends don’t support what’s important to you.
When partners don’t have open conversations and affection.
What do you do then? Take the pressure off of these relationships and their tags. First off, get objective. What are you really getting from these individual relationships? If nothing, then it’s a difficult process of gradually letting them go or at least distancing from them. If there’s something, anything - go full preservation mode. The goal is to retain and salvage what’s left for the time being. Hoping the other person catches up in their growth journey with you.
For example, if you expect love, support, care, good conversations and trust from your parents and they can only offer you love and care, accept that that’s all you can get from them. And focus on your doing things that revolve around these select pillars. What about the rest? Look elsewhere. Maybe there’s a friend that can fill your great conversations cup, and maybe there’s a partner who can give you the support you crave. At least until your parents reach a stage where they can give you these things.
Same goes with friendships. Every friend serves a different purpose - there’s one you go for good advice, there’s one who you love to party with, there’s one who’s your constant travel buddy, and so on. Similarly, emotional hierarchies exist. Some friends offer you more support, others offer maybe just a good laugh when you need it. Not every friend can offer you everything. Not every friend will be closest to you, not every friend will be your biggest cheerleader. You have to decide whether what they’re offering is worth retaining the friendship for, and to what extent.
This can be a difficult pill to swallow when you set high standards from all your relationships - when you expect everything to be perfect. Your parents to be the stereotypically perfect parents and your friends to be the stereotypically perfect friends, just to ultimately end up being disappointed.
At the same time though, this learning can make you feel much lighter emotionally - knowing it’s okay to expect only certain things from certain people, even if it goes against the societal norms of how the “ideal” relationship should look like. It might seem fake at first, especially for true empaths who crave depth in all their connections and interactions, but real life is much more complicated and messy.
The good part? You get to curate your energy and presence accordingly. The more some people tick off your boxes and meet your standards, naturally the more of the ✨ real you ✨ they get access to. The more authentic your connection is with them. At the end of the day, those are the ones that truly matter, that belong to your tribe. Wait for them and once you find them, keep them close. 💗
Finding a career is like finding a romantic partner
Before you jokingly dismiss this statement - think about it with me for a second. Your career and your partner are both things you’re likely to spend 80% of your time with. They’re both a long term commitment, and a source of success, growth, purpose and happiness. And if you’re willing to put your foot down and stand up for yourself and your choices against your conservative family, these are the two biggest things in your life that are under your control.
So I think it makes sense to at least experiment with this thought and start thinking about our careers as our romantic partners. I elaborate more about it in my recent reel 👇🏼
Bonus: it can also be referred to for some relationship advice 💁🏼♀️
What is home?
I visited my family in Pune for ~25 days, my first trip back home in 2024. I had a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, a lot of reflections. In honour of my old home in Pune and flying today to my chosen home in Bangalore, here’s a little something:
What is home?
Is it your family that you call home? Or the familiarity they bring?
Is it old friends or new? Or the strangers that lie somewhere in between?
Is it the old lost memories? Is it the rediscovered old journals?
Is it the smell of your childhood clothes that seem to be eternal?
Is it the enclosed walls you grew up in? Or the guarded walls you built within?
What is home?
A place, a person, a memory, a feeling.
Freedom, comfort, love. I’m home.
Recommendations for the week
Summer is almost over which means mango szn is almost over too! I think we all deserve to celebrate the last of it by making this no bake mango cheesecake this weekend. What say? 🥭
I wish there was as much emphasis on mental fitness as there is on physical fitness. If you’re someone who wants to train your brain as much as your body, check out this video for starters 🧠
And on keeping brains fit, if you’re tired of the Netflix induced brain rot and looking to watch something more meaningful, impactful, and inspiring, here’s a compilation of Ted Talks you can watch instead 📺
Until next time 👋🏽