July 13, 2007

When the spoon becomes just a spoon


There is a point in a relationship when you discover that things have lost their meaning. You suddenly discover that you are not the same person and that this is not what you signed up for. The point where you look at you partner wondering why you fell in love in the first place.
You look back and remember how good it was when you first met. The tingles of like and the first buzzes of love. You go on keeping the little memories, match boxes from places you visited, the plastic spoon you used to share your first bowl of soup and lots of tiny little meaningless things that meant everything at that time.
And you keep going on, replacing the tingles with a soft feeling of security, breaking the uncertainty of anticipation with the routine of a relation.
Then life takes over, instead of you and me it becomes you, me and everyone. It is the stage where the relation is like a little boat in an angry ocean. And in the ocean tiny things disappear, in the storm whispering sweet nothings is of no use. And some how you wake up on the fact that yelling have replaced talking and fights have become the official way of communication. You come to the point to face that the little boat is drowning and then you have to face the fear of facing each other and finding out that you have nothing in common.
The point you both discover that the spoon you kept is just a spoon and that the little things that meant everything belongs to your trash can.
The moment you know that boredom has conquered. And that there is nothing left to be done.
Boredom isn’t an instant thing, it grows over time that I even think it is a parasite that lives on the love plant. It takes as much time as for love to develop but secretly it suffocates the poor plant that seems strong but fails to face the slightest breeze.
We start the relation with the belief that we are not like any other couple. Love always comes in a promotional package that reads genuine that’s mostly believed to be unique too. And this believe of uniqueness has the seeds of boredom and hence the destruction of the relation.
Love relations are genuine but are not unique, we opt for uniqueness in away to prove to ourselves that this relation will be a big boat to stand for the oceans waves ignoring that no matter how big the boat is, the ocean will always be bigger and no matter how strong the boat is, storms will always be fierce.
Out of uniqueness come expectations, expectations that the other will always understand and will always fulfill. And out of expectations come unfulfilled needs and frustrations. And out of frustrations come subsurface anger, and out of anger comes the loss of curiosity and then the boat flips and the storm takes over.
We cause the boredom by refraining from communicating our needs in a clear way, we expect for love to be the answer for the questions that we didn’t ask. We expect the other to read our minds and act the way we want. We push the limits by doing things that we think will make our significant other happy in the time we don’t really want. We suppress anger and accumulate frustration. And instead of facing the storm side by side we face it back to back and when the time for eye contact come we find out that we have lost the aim and that spoon is just a spoon after all.

Picture from: studio.nathanielguy.com

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

dear thougtful,
you r unbelievable!!, you have such a way of revieling your inner self that is hard to match..and that is uniqe! i am really moved with what u wrote in this post, because it is the truth that no one admits in a relationship,
you are wright, people like to feel uniqe and special out of ego
people have high expectation that might change the other to a totaly different person than the one they knew. to a person f their making.
i salute you for your thoughts and wish you the best.

Shimaa Gamal said...

Dear Finding Nimo

Thank you very much for your sweet comment. I am so happy my thoughts echoed.
Thanks again

Egyptiana Trapped Soul said...

i have learned that rule number one in a relationship, in order to survive: No Expectations

they deform the image of the partner...

to live the moment is better!!!