While the first 1.5 years had been great with the entire college romance scenario in place, the past year wasn’t. Reality had hit us when we started working in two different cities, and making time for each other now felt like a task.
In a nutshell, I loved Akanksha despite our fights and misunderstandings. I knew that I wanted this relationship to work come what may, but how would that be possible? All that chaos made me feel lost, to be honest. The turning point for me was the day she suggested that we breakup.
We had had innumerable arguments in the past, but the thought of parting ways had never cropped up between us. It was then that I knew I had to do something before I would lose my relationship to our horrible circumstances. That's when I got in touch with a life coach. Some of my reasons for doing so were:
I was desperate to save my relationship, for starters!
There was nobody in my friend circle who would have heard me out without interrupting me with their so called expert advice
People would ask me to ‘man up’ and stop being ‘such a girl’, as if being serious and sensitive were a bad thing for a man
I wanted to share with somebody who would not judge me and treat my situation with the same level of seriousness as I did
My Experience
A plus point that made things a little easy for me was the fact that I knew what I wanted. My life coach termed it as my ‘goal’ - which was to improve my relationship. I was asked to relive my entire experience and share my highs and lows with her.
I then went on to realizing that the main reason behind our fights was lack of understanding and misinterpretation of statements. We were perceiving each other’s words wrongly, and that was making us doubt each other’s intentions as well.
Coming straight to the point, certain coping strategies that my life coach and I came up with were:
Conscious reminders of our Priority
Akanksha was more important to me than those silly little fights. Now that I thought of it - all those arguments seemed stupid in front of her value in my life.
Vowing to believe each other’s clarifications
For instance, there was this one time where I had jokingly said something which had turned into a fight despite me telling Akanksha that it was just a joke. This was wherein we collectively decided to believe each other whenever we would clarify what were our true intentions behind something we said. Deciding to quantify our situation
My life coach asked me to evaluate the duration for which Akanksha and I would continue to work in two different cities. I was made to understand the importance of goal setting when it came to when and how would we see each other next so that we have something great to look forward to.
Creative use of emails
The thought of writing mails to each other dawned upon me as I was brainstorming ideas with my life coach. It was then decided that both Akanksha and I would share positive thoughts we had about one another with each other over mail - be it something one admired about the other, or a moment or experience that was worth writing about. Going back to reading those emails during our bad days would help us feel connected to one another.
A ‘know me how’ guide
This was a good one. Both of us gave each other a unique customized gift in the form of a ‘user manual’ where we had penned down certain facts about ourselves for the other person to know. For example: Akanksha had confessed that she would never suggest a breakup at a serious level, so even if she would say it in the heat of the moment, I should remind myself that she would never mean it. This really helped me understand her better when I remembered that incident where she had asked us to part ways before. ;-)
At present, it has been 7 months to that phase, and I am happiest to be sharing a rock solid relationship with the love of my life all over again!
Also, for those who feel that affection and commitment are things that men aren't really concerned about - well, think again!
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