“It makes me feel good to be alive”
“It stimulates me.”
“It’s better than making love.”
Is ‘it’ a wonder drug? No, in fact these people are describing the effects of an age-old potion, one that cannot be bottled by any pharmaceutical company. ‘It’ is a feeling of bonding, of being in sync with your partner.
Marriages may be made in heaven but it takes a lot of love and effort to make them work on earth. The need for harmonious relationships is essential in these fast-changing times. Poor communication skills can cause many family disagreements, misunderstandings and conflicts. Relationships once maintained are further enriched by communication or destroyed through lack of it.
Connect With Your Better Half [Illustration by Shinod AP]
What does one mean by compatibility? Perhaps the comfort level the partners share, a readiness to laugh together, a concern about each other’s goals and values and a sense of incompleteness without each other. This compatibility is not a given; one has to work at it continuously.
Talking things out and ironing misunderstandings is a big part of a relationship. But taking a relationship for granted is something that comes easy to most humans beings.
And then even something as simple as one partner nursing a headache in bed and another wanting an evening out with friends can become a battleground for sore hearts and egos.
Different couples react differently. In some cases couples may try to solve repeated conflicts by verbal violence. Others may clam up and avoid the conflict altogether. Still others try to resolve the issue by keeping channels of communication open.
A mutual respect for each other, a willingness to make space for each other’s idiosyncracies and value each other as individuals with a sense of pride in their work, whatever its nature, is what forms the glue of compatibility.
At the beginning of a companionship compatibility seems like a good idea. When a couple works at it, several years later, sunk in sofas that assume the shape of their owners, they admit that it was after all a good idea.
