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Responsibility as Parents

Radhanath Swami

Radhanath SwamiI remember, I was a little boy 6 years old. Once my mother said, “Your father is a good person and everyone likes him, but we might have to get divorced.” I started to cry. I was so confused. ‘How is this?’

My mother told my father that I cried. So they decided they would never divorce. ‘We can’t do this to our children.’ And last May they celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary.

That is integrity, that is compassion. That is what parents are supposed to do. Marriage is responsibility. Responsibility to each other as husband and wife; responsibility for the mental, physical and spiritual well being of the children. Do you know that 92% of juvenile deliquescence in the United States of America is children coming from divorced or broken house parents? This is Federal statistics. 97% of juveniles in prison are coming from broken marriages. But people like to politely protect their own desires and needs by saying, “We will do it smoothly, it won’t disturb the children.”

Why so much conflict within marriage? Because instead of thinking in terms of ‘we’, we are thinking in terms of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ – selfishness, ego.

– Radhanath Swami

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Arrest that situation!

Arrest that situation!

Arrest that situation!From here on, I’ll be writing series of short sutras that go a long way in making your married life more happier!

Its an often heard complaint from men that they don’t know how to deal with their upset wife. The question arises simply because men are ill-equipped to really know how a woman ‘feels.’

Women are made up of feelings, largely, just like men are made up of an healthy amount of ego. Addressing her feelings in the right manner is as important for her as is addressing the ego of a man in the right manner. It becomes especially true when she is upset with you! It might seem trivial in a man’s perspective that she is disturbed over an insignificant matter & you might just want your wife to brush it aside and expect her to move on with the more important matters in life. But wait, does it make sense to expect something from an already upset person? Common sense says no, isn’t it? Especially, to ignore someone’s hurt feelings and just walk over it as if nothing has happened will leave that person feel more hurt and more upset. Marriage is about care and respect. When you respect your wife’s feelings, she will respect & love you 100 folds more.

You might have good reasons but its her feelings that need to be healed right now and when it is a matter of feelings, logic or debate will not help the situation. When one is upset, it means that they experience something being taken away from them- they experience a lack or a hurt. If not healed right away, this lack will grow, add and multiply over a period of time and fester into a complicated situation which you at that point will be unable to reverse.

Instead of countering her being upset with your anger or harshness, you might want to treat her with kindness realizing that something has been taken away from the core of her heart & that has been caused by your own action/inaction. The position of humility and mutual respect is never truer than in marriage. Usually, when we take a humble position, solution automatically presents itself- providence sent! But assuming that humble position might not come to us naturally. Nevertheless, we can practice it by what I call stepping ‘out-of-your-body.’ When you remind yourself that you are not this body and that the other person is hurt & is seeking your kindness, you allow yourself to contemplate on ways you can make that person feel better, voila, the solution presents itself before you! If its too difficult to assume that position of humility, you can try to lend a sympathetic ear and allow your spouse to express her feelings. Just by listening to her woes, you can make your spouse feel better. In a marriage any situation or matter can be resolved just by listening to the other person sympathetically & in the long run, you can also build strong unbreakable bonds with each other.

Here are some dont’s :

a. Don’t ignore that your wife is upset with you. Acknowledge & take steps to pacify her.

b. Don’t start explaining how you are not wrong! By being defensive, you are telling her that you are not willing to ease her pain.
c. Don’t try to resolve the matter using logic. It will only worsen the situation.
d. Don’t belittle your wife’s feelings. You may not like how your spouse feels but you have to respect it. By respecting her feelings, you inadvertently get your spouse on your side!
e. Don’t run away from the situation if you are on the wrong side. Nothing works in a marriage like a genuine apology.

If you find that your wife is unwilling to open up or tell you what is bothering her, then give her time by assuring her that you are always available for her. It takes patience to heal a deep seated wound formed over a long period of time.

Radhanath Swami gives a simple insightful message on happiness in marriage. He says ‘seeing other people in terms of their desires rather than your own is the basic principle of loving them. Whenever there are differences, be respectful.’

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman

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Mid-marriage crisis!

Mid-marriage crisis!

Mid-marriage crisis!Oflate, I’m witnessing many unhealthy trends in marriage. While some are trying to live in uncomfortable zones in a marriage, i,e brushing the issues under the carpet, many others are calling it quits! Three of my close family friends’ marriage is on the rocks. One couple is living separately from the past two years and is contemplating divorce and the other two have fresh scars of separation.

But what troubles me most is when two adults come together and take the sacred vow of marriage and commitment to each other, they somehow miss to carry with them the essential ingredients that will enable them to keep those vows in the long run and soon their relationship becomes one transaction after another with no real depth to it. Many of us get so caught up in pleasing the many
people in our lives that the one person that matters the most in our lives takes the brunt of it all in form of your neglect!

You might be operating under the aura of ‘well, all that I’m doing is for him/her!’…but my friend, is it understood and appreciated in the same manner by him/her? There are many tell-tale signs of trouble brewing in your marriage, one of which is when both of you are running different schedules (packed & hectic too) & there is not much overlap time. I see many couples, young and old
grappling with this issue–they have too many things on their plates, more than they can chew comfortably.

It is well known that the path to a relationship breakdown is littered with small choices that lead relentlessly away from commitment and partnership towards a different priority or interest. It is the accumulation of these seemingly insignificant choices that draw a person way off course until they suddenly wake up to what is going on, and wonder how they got to where they now find themselves. So, take heed when things are still under control.

It becomes primary that the husband and wife maintain a healthy channel of communication between them. Thumb rule that a good communication system exists between the husband and the wife is when the husband feels he is rightly understood by the wife and the wife feels she is rightly understood and cared for by the husband. But, as time passes and as life gets busier loaded with increased responsibilities for both husband and the wife, the channel of communication becomes weaker and weaker, because of which there might creep in a certain level of dissatisfaction in either or both the parties. When this development is not arrested by taking time to hear each other out, the dissatisfaction keeps piling up, which keeps eroding all previous good credits & when the balance goes negative, such piled up dissatisfaction erupts in the mode of bitter fights whenever one is confronted with a difference of opinion.

Off course, when two people come together, there is bound to be difference of opinion. That is not the problem, but how you deal with the differences is all about a healthy or an unhealthy relationship. When differences lead one to bitter fights and hurts are kept locked inside the heart, that is when a relationship can be termed as unhealthy.

If you are reading this, please examine your own life pattern. Is your spouse happy with the quality of time you spend with him/her? Have you established a healthy channel of communication with him/her? Do either of you feel unloved or uncared for by your spouse? Is there any kind of bitterness expressed by your spouse towards you or by you towards your spouse? Are there accumulated hurts & resentments locked up within you?

If the answer to any of the above question is yes, then you have eroded lines of communication between the two of you and the onus is on you to rectify it by re-establishing the cords of healthy communication between you.

The primary duty of the householder in Grihasta Ashram is to fulfill all the needs of his wife and children. Similarly, the primary duty of a wife is to serve her husband and follow in his footsteps & bring up children in a loving atmosphere. It is said that in such a grihasta’s house, Goddess of Fortune, Laxmi, herself resides and the house becomes vaikuntha or abode of Lord Vishnu.
Please note carefully that we cannot aspire for Higher Worlds or make spiritual progress if we are achievers outside but are failing in our primary duty in the Grihasta Ashram. How seriously then must we take up the matters of rectifying the mistakes in our household life!

It is a challenging task to build right channels of communication when you are carrying bitter hurts & deep scars from the relationship because your deep need to be understood rightly has not been fulfilled. But there is hope, there is hope if you are willing to give up your ‘victim’ stance and allow healing measures to be brought into the relationship. Healing happens automatically when good communication is reestablished.

The most important thing you have to do if you feel you are the ‘victim’ in your relationship is to release those emotions that you’ve bottled up and start expressing what is in your mind!

It could be that you do not get sufficient opportunity in your relationship to express yourself? Many a times we mistake “tolerance” for “agreeing to everything” that the other person says & thereby refrain from expressing our minds to our spouse or may be it is a trait you borrowed from your childhood wherein you had a mother or a father who did not have the opportunity to
express himself or herself much to his/her spouse. Whatever the reason is, if you are not able to express yourself or state clearly what is in your mind & keep it concealed from your spouse, two things happen–one is frustration sets in you. The more you ‘do not express,’ the more ‘hurt’ you accumulate, to the point that you finally have to explode one day & you begin to express yourself in a heavily negative manner i,e in an accusatory/blaming manner. The other is that your spouse remains clueless about what is going on in your mind & does not know how to react to your bitterness and at best, harsh words are exchanged leaving you more ‘hurt’ and more ‘dissatisfied’ in the relationship.

Therefore, for a healthy relationship, it is of utmost importance that both the parties must learn to express their mind & heart and in doing so must clarify their individual ‘needs’ to each other, in the right (positive) manner so that the other person is able to understand you and do the needful & that you start feeling fulfilled in your relationship. Remember, in a marriage, both have equal right to say, ‘I dont agree’ and save long term consequence of bottled up frustrations, but it must be said in a manner that does not hurt the other person.

If you think you cannot express your mind to your spouse without being sharp, critical or angry i,e without a negative undertone, then it is best to begin by writing down your thoughts and feelings. Writing down your thoughts will give you enough time to modulate your emotions i,e edit what is negative & put forth your point in a more positive tone so that your spouse is able to understand, appreciate & take further steps to rectify the situation. You can also ensure that your point is heard completely by your spouse.

HINT: Learn to express your emotions without blaming the other person. For eg: Instead of saying, “You always hurt me by not listening to me.” you can say, “I feel hurt when someone does not listen to me. I request you to listen to me when I have something to say.”

Listening to your spouse is an art that many of us fail at. By listening carefully & without any biases to your spouse’s point of view or to his/her feelings/ramblings of the day, you show that you care & your spouse feels understood by you. Listening is an art because when you listen you have to be non-judgmental! Believe me, its a challenge to not throw in our opinion or solution when another person is speaking…try it! However, listening to your spouse is the only way to let him/her know that you understand! So, imagine the damage you are causing to the relationship every time you are preoccupied with some other thought/task when your spouse is speaking or have a bored/tired expression or dismiss what he/she has to say without giving it much thought!

While we are learning to express ourselves more positively, it is also equally important to be repentant for all the negativity that was caused by you, harsh words that you have hurled at him/her or for your careless attitude. This step goes ahead of all the other steps as nothing disarms the other & opens him/her to you than a well timed genuine apology.

It is also important to acknowledge the good things in your marriage, especially showing gratitude to your spouse. It positively reinforces loving feelings between the couple and sets a chain of positive feelings rolling. You have to do it sincerely and not just for the sake of it. You can also write a thank you note or use sms, to thank your spouse for the little ordinary things that he/she
does everyday for you.

Reestablishing a loving relationship with your spouse must be your top most priority. Nobody else will do it for you and it won’t be easy at all. But if you stay determined & give your sincere best, the Lord who is in the heart of everyone will enable it. Remember to always keep the communication lines open between the two of you and resolve your past hurts in good times by forgiving small & big hurts and taking stock of your own feelings every now and then.

However, if you or your spouse are unable to resolve your differences on your own, seek help from a neutral person who is an expert at solving relationship problems. Eg: a marriage counsellor. The counsellor will help you air out your grievances in a healthy manner, help re-build the cords of communication & both of you will discover a new meaningful life of togetherness!

In this context, Radhanath Swami has beautifully summarized in one of his lectures that the focus, the centre of your relationship should be to create a favorable environment to lead spiritual lives. In order to do so, there has to be a spirit of service between the two of you. That service should be offered with affection and care. And especially with tolerance. In this age, tolerance is most required, because by the nature of this age when two egos come together, there is bound to be conflict. There will be disagreements and misunderstandings, and as time goes on, certain things about each other will become disgusting and there will be great disagreements. It is inevitable. The sanctity of your marriage will be based on how you don’t take these differences very seriously.

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman

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Bond that acts as a glue

Bond that acts as a glue

Bond that acts as a glue“We, as parents, must understand the serious responsibility that we have in inculcating love for God in the hearts of children. If our children do not feel love they will not understand God’s love because the love of the parent is translated to the children as the love of God. When they feel their parents’ love, they can actually begin to understand God’s love.” – Radhanath Swami

I was recently attending a workshop on ‘happiness in marriage’ and the trainer asked the gathered members (about 100) how many of us had a happy childhood. Much to my shock, only 3 hands went up and everybody else thought they had a rather unhappy childhood. What do you think? Did you have a happy or an unhappy childhood? The trainer said that in his various training programs across the globe, this has been a common factor–most of us were victims of bad parenting and bad schooling!
Children are an integral part of our married life. We expect that our child will bring good fortune and happiness to us but do we try to give it a loving and nurturing environment for it to grow & blossom happily?

With the start of the school season, I hear familiar morning routine sound coming out of homes with young ones, ‘Get up or you’ll get late for school,’ ‘brush your teeth fast,’ ‘haven’t you finished taking your bath yet?’ ‘hurry up or you’ll miss your school bus!’
Sounds an all too familiar routine? Today, as parents and as responsible creators of a bright future, we seem to be bringing up the next generation in a constant mode of threat and hurry thereby unwittingly pushing the child into a childhood he hardly deserves, a childhood which he would as a grown up man wants to forget fast (just like many of us!)! Place yourself into the shoes of your child just for a day and you will know how difficult it is even for a fully grown up adult to bear & fulfill the constant demands placed on you. We seem to have placed great expectations on the tender child who is yet to learn to fully express himself, who is yet fully blossom into an independent thinker and decision maker.

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness rightly called ‘modern education institutions’ as killer of the soul. In the name of disciplining the child, the free child is forced to sit in rows in a classroom, without fidgeting, without talking and is expected to behave unlike a child and in the name of educating the child, he is overburdened with reading and writing & bombarded with a lot of information, more than his little brain is able to process and his memory is overloaded with age inappropriate study material! Catch them young has made more harm than good. If we teach the child to write, read and spell in preschool, they will not become better writers, readers and spellers by the time they reach 1st grade. According to the physiological developmental of a child, his neurological pathways for writing, reading and spelling haven’t fully formed. The result is greater number of children, particularly boys, diagnosed with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and attention deficiency problems. Research shows strong linkages between learning disabilities and starting schooling way too early. Furthermore, children will develop hatred for reading and writing and will not want to go to school. Reading & writing should be taught in school only after children have developed both their right and left reading centers in the brain (ie by the age of 6+) and have developed the “bridge” pathway that connects the two reading centers (bilateral integration).

The deeper issue is when parents, in their own day today busyness don’t have time for the child! Parents who are themselves ill-equipped to reason out their child’s behavior or invest time and effort in deeply understanding and catering to their child’s needs are looking for quick solutions & sending them to kindergarten or to school at the earliest possible as it seems to be the most feasible option that they have on hand today. Parents’ own rat races, work and social pressures make them anxious about their
kids’ behavior and performance. They are often preoccupied in seeing their child succeed and are intolerant of anything other than excellence, causing far too many expectations on the young child and stretching his natural limits. Mistakes & experimenting seem unpardonable. But, wait a minute….why are we forgetting that our child is just a child who wants his time and space to discover himself! He will, sooner or later, respond to inspiration and perform and give you happiness and joy. Remember, our forceful actions and unrealistic demands on them will only produce contrary results! If you were able to observe this same child at the age of fifty, you should probably find him suffering from terrible sclerosis or arterial hardening, the cause of which will be unknown at that point in time but it was actually planted in him when he was a child of five due to the constant pressures and burdens which robbed away his childhood and brought adulthood and old age early on! We must therefore know how it all adds up forty or fifty years later, of our management of the child.

We are quick to brand a child as ‘attention deficient’ or ‘hyperactive’ or ‘unmanageable’ but have we taken a closer look at our contribution to this as well? Do we know how our fast-paced lifestyle, media heavy culture and fast food culture is affecting
the child’s physiology and psychology? Do we want to know how our children are victims, for want of meaningful learning environment, of the detours erected in our culture, schools and homes? Step into the child’s shoes to really understand what it is looking for? His deepest need is your love, your time and your attention, dear parents and nothing else! Let’s look at how we can create a difference in the life of our child in three different dimensions that affect his/her happiness- a. taking the right decision of his/her schooling b. creating the right atmosphere for his/her natural growth in a stress free atmosphere c. how to be loving authorities as against strict disciplinarians.

Play in the formative years is an essential seed which bears fruit for the whole lifetime. Play dominates the lives of young children. A healthy child wants to play from morning to night. His play bubbles up from deep within and helps keep the life forces, so necessary for his growth. If a child loses interest in play, it is usually a sign of illness. Children who play significantly during early childhood have an advantage in physical development, socio-emotional development and in cognitive development including areas of language, intelligence, curiosity, innovation and imagination.

Children should be taught in a noncompetitive environment to fully blossom their innate talents. They need a regular day today rhythm to develop a sense of security. Therefore, they need to eat, play & sleep at proper times & not according to our convenience. Family time must be introduced wherein the family gets healthy time in the evening to play together at a park or in the playground with the kids and the whole family gets time to eat their dinner together at the table speaking to each other and quietly settling into the night. Such regular and natural rhythms and routines in eating and sleeping as well as daily activities will promote a more relaxed atmosphere and a stress free environment for the natural growth of a child.

In the rigmarole of life, unconsciously and unwittingly, we become bad parents whereas when our precious little one is born, we dream of being his best parents. We can still do it because a child is so loving and forgiving that it takes him hardly anytime to start reciprocating to your new loving ways. Believe me, try it! When the child sees us as loving authorities and not as someone that he is forced to comply to, we will automatically get the result we want i,e the child starts listening to the parent. Its almost like magic. But it will not come easy. You have to invest time and be an integral part of his childhood. It means when the child wants you to listen to him, you have to listen to him! It may be one thousand times a day. This is the single most important investment you will do to secure your child’s future. You will be amazed at how it works. A child learns by imitating and it looks out for adult role models to imitate. Without adult models, children cannot shape their own brains. If you are inattentive when the child wants attention, the child learns to be inattentive and is uninterested in what you have to say to him! When you listen to your child with full attention, the child learns to be attentive.

The child is usually not looking for solutions from adults but is looking for some empathy. So, instead of correcting the behavior of the child every-time the child brings a complaint or shares some unpleasant incident with you, just give him a patient hearing. When you are empathetic to the child and listen to the child, you are laying foundation to establish vital lines of communication between you and your child and slowly the child begins to trust you and will soon start looking upto you to solve his life problems. Secondly, you have to be a part of his childhood in that you must take out time to play with him, read out stories to him, build models/do craft with him, take him out to the park/playground and be involved in his childhood. This is the second most important investment you will do that goes a long way in giving security to the child.

A child feel secure when he knows that you, as a parent, love him and are interested in him. Love is a verb, it is action oriented. When you invest time in building a relationship with the child, he sees it as love. Love isn’t buying him an expensive toy in lieu of your time! Mind you, when you buy him things in place of giving your time to him, he is learning to replace things with people from you! Third and a very important aspect in the art of parenting is to soften the frenetic scheduling of the lives of children, giving them some quiet time to play, to ponder, to reflect and to use their inner voice. Replace your list of ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that,’ by defining large boundaries for them. They have a need to explore and repetitive don’ts will only lead the child to experience a frustrated childhood! Remember it from your own childhood experience, don’t you? As adults need their space, children too need to have their own space and time–a time for them to be with themselves, not with school or studies or homework or tuitions or any other extra-curricular classes that frenzied parents subscribe their young ones to such as violin class, tennis class, bharatanatyam class, karate class or swimming class. You might think that it will provide entertainment value for your child but these classes are way too organized and regulated to provide any entertainment value and must not be enforced upon the child unless the child has some definitive talent and willfully wants to take up to it.

Remember always, parents’ love, time and attention are non-tradable items for the child. When we understand this aspect and not neglect it, we allow the child to grow up and blossom naturally. We then enable them to grow up as confident young adults ready to face the world! Childhood years are foundational to the long term health and happiness of an individual. So, as parents, we hold the responsibility of executing our duty with as much seriousness as we would on our work front. As a society, we might have already lost our traditional knowledge in bringing up kids in a cultured, loving and protective environment but we can, as responsible parents do some soul searching and be genuinely interested in attending to the needs and cares of our child. When we are deeply interested in the child, pathways will emerge. See the world from the hopeful and happy eyes of your child! You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth….Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.- Khalil Gibran

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman

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Transcendence in Relationships

Transcendence in Relationships

Transcendence in RelationshipsThe couple went into the counsellor’s chambers and both of them were determined that they didn’t want to be in this marriage because they didn’t feel love for each other and there was growing animosity with each passing day. The wife said she didn’t sense his commitment to their marriage from the beginning and the husband argued for hours on how each time he was reminded that love is not just a feeling but it’s a commitment.

The counsellor, ripe with age and wisdom clarified, “I do not agree that feelings are unimportant, and there is only commitment. I do believe, however, that commitment should lead the day. Feelings are an important part of the relationship. But feelings come and go. However, commitment is the glue that holds the relationship together. “Love” is choosing to love someone, not just a feeling. I cannot create emotions, as you note. But I can choose to act lovingly when the emotions aren’t there.”

“Are feelings worthless? Absolutely not! But feelings and emotions are fickle. They come and go. The marriage vows are built on commitment through thick-and-thin. We don’t make a promise to ‘love as long as I feel that emotion.’ We promise to love through good and bad times, up and down times, healthy and sick days! We make those vows because we know the emotion will not always be there, so we promise to work through that.”

Marriage experts point out that one of the several possibilities that gets in the way of loving couples is unaddressed anger and resentment built-up over time.

Let’s look at how resentment builds up in a relationship. At the root of it, resentment stems mostly from childhood hurts or hurts from past lifetimes (as past life regressors put it). When you carry hurts from your childhood such as feeling unimportant, not valued, rejected, accused, guilty, powerless, inadequate or being unlovable–such hurts leave impressions in the unconscious mind that distort your view of current reality. When someone triggers one of your deep set hurt, recognizing the pain it might cause you, you immediately want to escape it and thereby take shelter in blaming the other or getting angry and abusive with the one whose action is hurting you. So, people blaming one another are just trying to relieve the pain of their deep set hurts.

Such deep-set hurts create alongside a deep need. A need which turns into expectation in a relationship i,e the person who is carrying a deep-set hurt expects the other person to treat him/her in a certain manner. When the other person fails to treat him/her in that manner, the deep need is unfulfilled and it leads to resentment. Resentment arises from unfulfilled needs. Note that if the expectation is not connected to a deep-set hurt, it will not lead to resentment.

In a husband-wife relationship, need for affection, appreciation, loyalty are some of the deep needs. When such deep needs are not met, there is scope for blaming, anger, and subsequently resentment. When there is resentment, there is blame. When we blame someone, some part of us feels relieved, isn’t it? Unfortunately, blame does not cure the pain, it only masks it for a while. If we are extremely conscious of our acts, we can know that by accepting our part responsibly and by developing a magnanimous heart to forgive the other person of his faults, can we truly experience relief from the pain that bothers the heart.

In his ‘Life of Total Forgiveness’ seminar, Mahatma Das, a monk & renunciant in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition says, resentment is not about what was done to you but about how you responded to what was done to you. He says anger, blame and resentment are emotions on the surface & mostly we are in touch with only these emotions. But if we dig a little more deeper, they have their root in more difficult feelings such as hurt, sadness and disappointment. He advices the participants that healing deep-set hurts is possible when we do a deep emotional excavation and release the emotional tension that we are holding onto by forgiving the person who hurt us. He says, resentment is about you being right and the other being wrong. As long as you need to be right, you won’t forgive. As long as you need to tell others how wrong your offender was, you won’t forgive. When it
comes to forgiving, being right is wrong!

Different ways help different people. When a spouse feels deeply understood and cared for, he or she is able to release some deep hurts. For some people intellectually understanding the direct negative implications on one’s own physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health helps. It is said that resentment is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person will die. If we are holding onto resentment and are not willing to let go of it, we carry it forward to many more lifetimes until one day we have give it up by forgiving the other person. Healers vouch that what we are dealing with in this lifetime, we did not handle it well in our past lifetime. Karmically too, when you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free. A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said, ‘Don’t be angry with the agent of your karma.’

Sincere forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time. They say to forgive is divine! It is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.

‘As difficult as it seems, you can be sure of this: At the core of the heart, you have the power to move beyond the old issues that are still hindering your freedom. The hardest things–the ones that push you up against your limits–are the very things you need to address to make a quantum leap into a fresh inner and outer life.’ – Doc Childre and Howard Martin

Radhanath Swami in his discourse on forgiveness defines love as the capacity to endlessly forgive. He explains at length how our inability to make the choice to forgive, creates pain suffering and chaos, not only in the lives of others but ours too!    Without forgiveness, no relationship can be satisfying. This is the real secret of successful relationships–the ability to forgive the other unconditionally! He says that this quality of forgiveness is more illuminating than the light of the sun and those who have that ability to forgive are invested with the power to access the mercy and the love of god.

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman


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What a woman wants

What a woman wants

What a woman wantsA friend called me the other day and confided in me that she is exasperated and is at her wits ends and does not know what to do. She seemed quite depressed as well. So, I asked her to come over for a chat. She grabbed the proposal and was at my door in an hour’s time. When we sat down to speak, all she managed was to cry and much later she told me, ‘my husband, he just does not care to listen to me!’ The poor woman, I realized, had such pent up emotions locked up within herself, which had never found a vent.

A woman needs emotional support from her husband as much as he needs physical intimacy from his wife. A couple needs to strike a balance by meeting each of their needs. A woman can read cues from her husband’s actions and behavior and know his needs exactly but where she goes wrong is in expecting the husband to read her actions and behavior to know her needs and fulfill it. Irrespective of the number of years in marriage, the husband is unable to know ‘what the woman really wants?’ Its a big mystery for him
because it is not his area of expertise, so to say, to read the ‘mind’ of his wife and so he draws a blank, everytime he attempts to fulfill his wife’s need.

To make matters worse, a woman is not enabled to be articulate about her needs, so, she ‘expects’ her husband to know it somehow and when the need is not fulfilled, one can expect an emotional outburst which is generally termed as ‘anger.’ Remember, she has been created an emotional being and therefore, she looks for emotional fulfillment but when she does not find it, the emotions are bottled up and when it reaches the brim, it has to burst out. has to vent out her bottled up emotions unless ofcourse she has a very fulfilling and satisfactory relationship with her husband.

I have a question for all the husbands here. What do you do when your wife bursts out crying during a discussion/ argument?

Well, most likely the wife expects some emotional support from her husband and the plea comes in form of tears but what happens is that generally the man does not know how to deal with emotions. Whenever he is put in an emotionally charged situation, he would like to be left alone. So thinking, he walks away, imagining it to be the best solution. He hardly knows that her tears are in the first place because of feeling ‘alone,’ and if he walks away from her now, she will feel more alone and depressed.

Digging a little deeper, we find that, as little boys they are constantly fed the idea that crying is silly behavior. So, men grow up with this wrong notion and by the time they enter wedlock, their emotional side has mostly eased out of them. They also do not have much training in how they can deal with other’s emotions. Men may think that they can do without this skill but trust me this skill will help you keep your marriage going! This is true because, when a woman finds an emotionally supportive husband, she does wonders to her marriage. You not only gain her confidence and loyalty automatically but you will that she will walk that extra mile to please you, keep the house neat and tidy, bring up the kids in a loving atmosphere, cook nice meals for the family, respect your parents and support you in all your endeavors. Who does not want such a wife? But it will all be yours with a little investment into finding out what pleases your wife the most by addressing her emotional needs.

Do you remember a time when you sat beside your wife, wiped her tears dry and consoled her with sweet words of reassurance that she will always find you besides her whenever she needs you the most. When was the last time you did it? Let me guess, probably when you met her first! And why did you do that? Because it pleased her the most when you said it. Isn’t it? So, what stops you from doing it now? Think deeply about it & you could solve a major jigsaw puzzle in your life!

Every woman’s emotional need is different. To make matters simple for you, I have listed down 3 broad categories of what a woman wants the most from her husband (not in any particular order of priority). This has been culled out of Willard F. Harley, Jr.‘s international best selling book ‘His Needs Her Needs’ wherein he lists out his widely researched emotional needs of spouses and provides a questionnaire to find out your most important emotional need and how effective your spouse is in dealing with this need.

1. Conversation (talking about events of the day, personal feelings, and plans for the future; showing interest in her favorite topics of conversation; balancing conversation; using it to inform, investigate, and understand her) Conversation has three most vital aspects to it-

a. Listening: Just listen to her! Listen and not wait for your turn to talk. Most women just want to be heard, not advised. And most men want to fix, rather than do nothing. So the idea of providing “support” by plain listening, as women want can be difficult to grasp. When she is sharing her day today happenings etc, she doesn’t want you to solve her problems or tell her how to handle it, she just needs you to listen and be sympathetic.
b. Undivided attention (Stop talking to your spouse or answering her questions while answering to an email or while reading the newspaper or while answering another phone call. Donot multi-task! Sit down and look her in the face and actively listen.)
c. Being non-judgmental She needs to know you will not feel or think differently about her for expressing herself. Provide her that forum.

2. Affection & intimacy (the expression of love in words and action, creating an environment that clearly and repeatedly expresses love free from the distinctively sensual element. Creating an intimate space to brings about a sense of fulfillment and feeling of togetherness-need not be sensual).

3. Domestic Support (creation of a home environment for you that offers a refuge from the stresses of life; management of the home and care of the children— including but not limited to cooking meals, washing dishes, washing and ironing clothes, housecleaning etc).

Other needs listed in his book include Admiration, Family Commitment, Financial Support, Sexual Fulfillment, Recreational Companionship, Honesty & openness, An Attractive Spouse. You can find the questionnaire at http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forms/enq.pdf

You can research along with your spouse on her most important emotional needs and work out a commitment plan either stated or unstated and work towards a more healthier married life! Trust me, the very fact that you are genuinely interested in knowing her emotional needs will get her immediately on your side.

Radhanath Swami often gets the newly married couple promise each other that the wife will always be on the side of her husband and the husband will never see a tear in his wife’s eye. He adds that love means to serve and to serve means to please. So, when we serve each other by pleasing each other in our marriage, our home becomes Vaikuntha.

On a secondary note, men are entitled to their emotions–to feel and to express them as well. It does not make you less manly if you do, rather it goes a long way in creating a more beautiful relationship in your marriage.

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman

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Appreciate

Communicate Perfection

Communicate Perfection

Communicate PerfectionSometimes in marriage we communicate with everyone except the person we are living with. – Radhanath Swami.

Radhanath Swami recounts one of his childhood impressions. Everydayhis mother cooked a loving meal for his father but she thought that her husband didn’t ever like it. So little Radhanath Swami (then Richard) asked his father whether he liked his dinner. His father replied he loved it. Richard asked whether his father has ever told his wife how he liked the dinner? “Well, I think I did… Maybe I didn’t… but she should know Doesn’t she know?”

Generally, spouses take care of fulfilling each other’s physical needs like good housing, clothing, and health. But it’s the lack of emotional care that tends to push marriages off-track. Everyone needs appreciation and encouragement. Each spouse has a responsibility of making the other partner happy by providing him or her a fulfilling life. Mutual respect and care forms the essential framework that supports any successful marriage; mutual affection may come and go. By always clinging on to this framework, the mutual affection can grow into actual deep love connected to the soul.

For example, many ladies think that their husband just doesn’t care for them, that he just doesn’t like anything they do for the husband. But when asked, the husbands say that they really do appreciate their wife a lot, but why should they tell that to her explicitly? Shouldn’t she already know? Radhanth Swami quips that unless the spouse is a mystic, he or she is not going to know how the other spouse feels. Communication is important. Sometimes in marriage the spouses communicate with everyone except the person they live with. Communication amongst spouses is to really express one’s appreciation and affection for each other in encouraging words. Such honest communication is critical for a healthy relationship; the journey of married life can become dreary and unfulfilling otherwise.

Marriage shouldn’t degenerate to a life sentence of tolerance just to respect the vows taken at the time of marriage. A true marriage is dynamic, flowing, and very connected to the divine. Struggles in married life are not depressants, but invigorating spiritual challenges. By  encouraging each other the spouses can face these challenges confidently. Every challenge overcome together takes the spouses to a higher spiritual platform. Indeed, notes Radhanath Swami, such a married life is a path of perfection.