There are a few contenders to the title of ‘the icon’ of the modern age--jet travel, information superhighway, inter-galactic exploration, genome sequencing and so on. All these represent tremendous advancements made by the human intellect in understanding the forces governing our physical life. But, without negating their value, the modern age can be seen as the age of dissolution of relationships.
We have been able to conquer distances and diseases, but have not learned to maintain intimacy in our relationships or to keep them healthy. We think about disconnecting before we even connect. It is not a joke that before the marriage between two rich and famous persons is celebrated, their lawyers meet to draw up the terms of their divorce.
They pay their lawyers a smaller sum to arrive at an agreement on terms of divorce than they would have to spend on litigation in a ‘bitter divorce’. This speaks volumes about what in a relationship strikes the partners as important. The health of human relationships is in a sorry state, to say the least.
There are several facets to a relationship--physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and financial. Attaching the right degree of priority to these and learning to make compromises in the face of perceived excesses and inadequacies are vital to the maintenance of healthy relationships. It is dangerous to conceive of an ideal relationship in terms of the most desirable proportion of these factors and to dump every relationship tha.
