Dosti Yaari Rishtedaari

Ever wondered why there is a wide smile on our faces when we plan to have our friends over or go out holidaying with them but the same smile turns a little less wide or sometimes vanishes if the word friends is replaced by relatives in these instances. When friends are always ‘wanted’, why are relatives termed as ‘unwanted guests’? Of course, like we pick and choose our friends, we also categorize our relatives into nice and not so nice ones.

Why do some relationships work better? When trying to understand this in depth, I realized certain relations have a burden of authority or superiority of age, power, status or sometimes the relation itself. Which means relatives unknowingly impose authority of being older in age or superior in relations. Whereas friendship does not have the burden of being judged or fulfilling expectations. One does not need to flaunt one’s superiority.

Imagine if the same relatives were our friends, would we see them through a different lens? Probably yes, because the rules for friends are different from that for relatives. If love brings people together, what makes love different for friends and relatives? Why are envelopes largely exchanged only with relatives and not within friends. The love from friends is not measured by gifts.

We involuntarily tend to have an equal relationship with friends despite the gap in age or financial status; whereas with relatives one of us in the relation is always superior. This presence of equality in one’s relations is called horizontal relations. However, the ones that lack equality are vertical relationships. This concept of horizontal and vertical relationships has been very well explained in the book titled — ‘The courage to be disliked’.

Parent-child relationship, boss-employee or teacher-student relationship can be easily understood examples of vertical relationship. It is a hierarchical relationship as one person sees the other beneath him/her. In most cultures and communities, we are naturally coached to lean towards vertical relationships. All words that are used to judge people are words that come out of vertical relationships. If one is building horizontal relationships, there will be words of gratitude, mutual respect and joy.

We cannot merely be dependent on vertical relationships and need to make our way forward freely without being disliked or judged and that’s why we need — friends. And that is also the reason why despite being around hundred plus relatives in a family wedding, we experience joy at a different level if we bump into that one friend.

Let us try to apply the rules of friendship to build equal, happier and meaningful relationships not only with our friends but with our relatives as well.

Oct 14, 2020

Nidhi