In Reading the Messages in relationships

Our relationships always take place in the level of ‘being’. The nature of relationship is picked up by the messages that are send forth from the sender. The humans cannot but relate. It is because you cannot avoid meeting people. Wherever you are, you meet with people unless you choose to avoid them willingly or choosing to go into seclusion. Now how does one pick up the messages that are send forth from the other human being in relation? For example, a woman takes interest in a man. The advances of the woman are read by the inner capacity and emotional maturity of the man. Let’s say that there is an attraction between them. There are also two elements – visible and invisible. In the visible aspect of the relationship that exists between the two, we can say that they are male and female. What happens in the invisible? It might be a ‘reverence for the mystery’. But in the relationship, both the parties will read up messages and respond or withdraw accordingly. In Transactional analysis, we hear about life script (Basically, life script is the idea that we tend to have an unconscious life plan - like a story - that we make up as children about ourselves and our lives, which we tend to keep to and follow even when we are adults).

            What is so charming in the man that attracts the woman – the beauty of the body? The tone in which he speaks? (There is also an inner dynamics that takes place in the mind of the woman/ man. We make present the reality of relationship in the mind as it takes place in the physical realm. We might be scripting the reality and identifying the messages in correspondence with the script). But the physical world and the world that we create in the mind are two different things. Just take for example the saying – “I feel lonely in the crowd” = the physical world of me is that I am surrounded by people all over; I am one among the many present. But my internal world constitutes my lonely self. Another example might serve the purpose. On one of the Sundays, I went to visit a family. The grandmother in the family was possessed. She could not wear a rosary around her neck. Whenever someone puts on a rosary on her neck, she used to be violent and throw it away. But there are also other adults and children in the family. The adults are not afraid at this event. But the children in the family are fearful to approach her, thinking that the spirit that possesses her might get into them. Here we see the world of the adults and the world of the children.

Now the problem here is that – How to read the messages rightly every moment? How to genuinely construct realities around? In the Ricourian language, the whole world is a text. It is also very Biblical in the sense that God before creating the world said, “let it be, and it came to be.” So the saying and the making present are the functions in creating a reality. But most of the times the messages are picked wrongly because we ‘read into it’. What we need to do is to read ‘with’ and ‘within the context’. Yet another problem might come up. How to judge the genuineness of the reality constructed or the event that happens… Bernard Lonergan has the right answer: “Objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity”. How do you understand the relationship between two people? See how genuine is the person. And one does not need to strike a relationship desperately. If one is genuine, genuine relationship will follow.