Attraction , Infatuation or Love’?

Is Boy-Girl Relationship an Issue?

1.  According to students’ feedback from single gender as well as co-ed Schools, most of them are affected by it from as early as junior classes and that the bar is getting lower.  Intensity of it continues even during college life.

2.  Essence of the issue boils down to developing a clear perspective on  attraction, infatuation & love viewed through the Prism of Values.

3.  Prism of Values: What is it? This prism helps one to understand the difference between Rights & Wrongs and develop the ability to follow the path of righteousness having objectively evaluated the consequences of choices.  It has to be self-implanted after working thru the maze of self doubts. Fact is that those without the prism in place are likely to be misguided by feelings and feel like helpless losers.

4.  Why is it an Issue?

• In this competing world of materialism, parents have very little time to interact with children to provide them emotional support. Thus most children with empty love tank remain vulnerable to peer pressure and develop immature understanding of relationship.
• Parents with conservative and traditional mind sets adopt an ostrich approach on the issue of sexuality and B-G relationship. Result, kids grow up with unhealthy attitude towards such relationship.
• In absence of credible source to clarify doubts, youth rely on unfiltered inputs from peers and media.
• Media influence (TV, internet, pornography) is so powerful that most teenagers learn to make choices without thinking of consequences be it violence, substance abuse and physical relationship. Intriguingly, they fail to realize that media never addresses negative consequences of choices.
• Warped value consensus of Money, Power & Status prevalent all around.
• With confusing inputs from elders (parents, relatives & teachers), kids grow up without a clear understanding whether it is good or bad to talk with the opposite sex?

Real Life Examples.

1.  Three class IX students were extremely worried about their performance in the ensuing annual examination. Distracted by girls and their revealing clothes, they were unable to concentrate on studies.  Was it attraction or infatuation or love?

2.  One late evening, a class VIII boy arrives at Doon Youth Center (DYC) seeking an urgent counseling session. While sitting down, he shared his ‘bhayankar’ depression.  His recent proposal was not only rejected by her, she has also snapped their friendship of 8 months.  The boy was planning to commit suicide if she did not speak to him by a certain date. Was it attraction or infatuation or love?

3.  One 17 year old girl was into relationship with a guy for few years. During this time she could sense that he was using her emotionally and financially by cooking up stories. Somehow she was unable to say NO to his frequent demands for money. Suddenly he started ignoring her. Unable to deal with her emotional struggle, she sought help at DYC. Was it attraction or infatuation or love?

4.  A class XII girl was asked to have sexual contact as a birthday gift to her boy friend. Was it attraction or infatuation or love?

Factors Affecting B/G Relationship.

1.  Clear understanding of the dynamics of boy-girl relationship needs to be worked out by each individual based on certain real life parameters having bearing on relationship. Once the factual aspects crystalise, a teenager is likely to be better equipped to deal with this crucial struggle of adolescence.  Obvious question, therefore, would be what are the factors that affect relationship?

2.  Few basic factors are:

a.   Do we respect each other? In other words do we respect perspective/choice of each other?

b.  Do we trust each other?

c.   Do we understand each other?

d.  Are we transparent in sharing feelings?

e.   Are we possessive of each other? In other words am I comfortable when my friend interacts with others irrespective of gender?

f.   Do we spend long hours in person or on telephone?

g.  Do I feel insecure when I am unable to keep contact with my partner?

h.  Am I able to disagree with my partner without hesitation?

i.    Are parents aware of our relationship?

j.    Do I feel weak while interacting with my partner?

Check List as a Ready Reckoner

By making use of the ready reckoner  it should be possible to identify the type of relationship in each case.

Conclusion.

1.  Whereas it is a natural phenomenon to feel attracted for the opposite sex, remaining distracted by it should raise alarm bells.  By inserting the prism of values in one’s thinking would enable an adolescent to manage his/her feelings to maintain a healthy relationship without getting distracted.

2.  In the existing circumstances, youth have no option but to empower themselves by raising their awareness level on issues that parents and teachers are not comfortable talking. They need to interact on such issues with someone of their choice so that they are equipped to deal with real life situations comfortably.

P.S. : A big hug and much thanks go out to Sushant who put this article together !

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I wonder whether Homosexuality is as big an issue in India as it is in the United States. I never really cared it about when I was in India; I guess I didn’t have to. None of my friends were homosexual and although I did hear gay jokes from time to time they never really meant anything different than any other jokes. And homosexuality being the taboo

subject that it is, wasn’t really talked about as much other stuff. Even in DYC where we talk about practically everything, from abortion to proactive-ism, homosexuality isn’t really something that is discussed. The closest I’ve come to having an actual discussion about it was when my parents, who are staunch Christians, told me that homosexuality is a sin and that the Bible condemns it. For the longest time I only thought about homosexuality in an abstract, I don’t really care kind of way.

In the six months that I’ve been here in the United States, however, I’ve had to deal with homosexuality in a much more personal way than I would have normally liked. Three of my closest friends here in college are LGBTQs (Translation = Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Questioning). Two are them are fairly stereotypical homosexuals. They act exactly as one would generally expect a gay or bisexual person to act like. Despite being fairly good friends with them I never actually did see homosexuality the way they did. It was only when my closest guy friend—a guy whom I almost got set up with(yes, as in the dating kind)—“came out” to me at the end of last year that I came face to face with this issue for real.

Francis[ actual name withheld ] isn’t really a stereotypical homosexual person. It actually took me a while to believe him when he told me that he was gay. Lesson # 1: Homosexuals are really not the way movies and books make us think they are. Francis[ actual name withheld ] is like any other guy of his age; he plays sports, he almost obsessively loves football, he dresses in jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts and jackets, he has a relatively deep voice (no high pitched whining at all), he knows about more about current affairs and politics than I do and he’s a staunch activist of human rights. The only difference between Francis[ actual name withheld ] and any other guy of his age is his sexual preference. It seems a little unfair that I can announce that I find a guy attractive out loud and not get any reaction(except maybe a few agreements), but Francis[ actual name withheld ] can’t do the same without getting called a homo, a fag or even a pervert, even if people think that he’s joking.

I could hardly dare to say that having a gay best friend means that I can now understand homosexuals and their predicaments. On the contrary, the more I learn about homosexuality the more I realize how difficult it is for a straight/heterosexual person like me to really see the world the way they do. Homosexuals, even in a ‘liberal’ country like America are constantly facing discrimination. The common man in America is almost as superstitious about homosexuality as someone in India is about a black cat crossing one’s path (no offense to anyone who does believe that). Homosexuality is considered to be a disease, a mental disorder or even “God’s curse”. I recently watched a documentary called For The Bible Tells Me So”, which is a defense of homosexuality against the Christian way of thinking about it. It includes interviews with several sets of religious parents regarding their personal experiences raising homosexual children, and also interviews with those (adult) children. It also includes footage of anti-homosexuality rallies and has several very opinionated quotes that condemn homosexuality. Watching that footage made me wonder: If watching all that made me feel so queasy, what about the homosexual person against whom all that hate was directed? They must feel a million times worse than I do.

One of the most common beliefs about homosexuality is that it is a choice. Parents who find out that their child is homosexual send them for counseling and put them under medication in an effort to ‘de-gay’ them. I don’t think a homosexual can choose to be who he/she is more than I can choose to be straight. It’s just that socially it is not acceptable to be anything other than heterosexual. Legally a homosexual person has fewer rights than a heterosexual person, Gay marriages are not allowed in most of the states in the US—it seems interesting that the government is working harder to ban gay marriages than it is to deal with the ever increasing divorce rates; gay partners are not given the same rights as family members for hospital visitation and gay people getting appointed to high posts have to face death threats almost every day (case in point Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who had to wear a bullet proof vest under his robes when he was getting ordained, just in case.) I think that denying such rights to gay people is one of the grossest injustices being done in the world today. And trying to legalize this injustice is even more depraved than that. As Rita May Brown says: “No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody.”

Even if homosexuality is a sin—which I personally don’t agree with any longer—it still doesn’t give heterosexual people the license to de-humanize them. Gay people are god’s creation, just as straight people are. I feel depriving homosexuals of any right that is given to a heterosexual people is what really should be called a sin. As Paul Newman put it: I’m a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either… There are so many qualities that make up a human being… by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private [lives] is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

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