Editor’s Note: Loving someone and being over possessive about the person are two completely different things. We should all allow some breathing space in a relationship. Our IL member Shanvy tells us more on breathing space.

I don’t write much on relationships but blame it on Khalil Gibran, the 1850’s poet, whose verses has made me drop in here.

Many a times, when we are in a closed room, with no air, the first thing we do is open up windows to give a little fresh air, to give a breathing space to yourself. The same should be there for every relationship, your breathing over your partner’s neck or stepping on the each other shoes is not going to help.

The best way is to talk about what is it that you are looking for in your marriage or in a relationship. Sometimes, we need to understand that there may be something missing in our relationship.

We need to understand that we fell in love with an individual not with the intention of changing them according to our wishes. Keeping your own space/time is definitely needed and more so when the stress/tensions of the day are more. Be it a tv time, internet time are whatever. Remember, if you have stopped doing something to please your partner/spouse, you resent that freedom that your other half has. Try to balance the whole thing. trying to understand things from the other’s view.

Making a success of an relationship requires discussing your requirements, expectations, opinions and views with an foot firm in the reality rather than floating in the weight of ideologies.

This is the poem of Khalil Gibran that talks so beautifully of giving breathing space in a relationship that brought me to write this up

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping;
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together;
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”