Adapting to each other - Some couples do it right

A key factor in a long-term romantic or married relationship is the effect of passage of time on the relationship. Time can either cement or ravage a relationship. If you are in a healthy relationship, you will settle down into quiet adjustment and enjoyment of each other’s company. If not, you will continue bickering and nagging all your life. Tolerance and acceptance are the cornerstones of a happy relationship.

If you are fortunate enough to be in a positive relationship, have you noticed that as you grow old together, you and your companion (spouse/partner) increasingly think, sound and behave like one another? Maybe it has something to do with the influence of each other’s company, or maybe people do change and adapt to each other in such a way that they adopt the other's characteristics and make them their own.

Lifestyle habits:

Take lifestyle choices. A couple I know has adjusted to each other so much that the husband doesn't even remember that he was a late riser not so long ago before his marriage. Now, according to his wife's habits, he is up by six daily. The lady of the house has taken to exercising daily to match her husband's enthusiasm for fitness.

Or even travel preferences. Couples prefer to consider each other's choices over their own, and come to enjoy these more than what each originally preferred. Computer engineer, Aryan, says “Initially I preferred a holiday by the seaside, while Reema (his spouse) was a confirmed mountain lover. After a lot of initial arguments on where to go for vacations, we decided to go to alternate places every year. Now, I am an avid mountaineering enthusiast while Reema swears by the sea breeze.”

The little adjustment they made went a long way in cementing their relationship. What is better, they learned to take pleasure in the other’s choices, and widened their own horizons in the process.

  

Jazz and rock music enthusiast Amit slowly comes to love his wife Shruti’s ghazal collection with time. Another couple Mahesh and Jaya used to have tiffs over what to watch in the early years of marriage. Now, Jaya enjoys Hollywood thrillers over her original choice, typical Bollywood masala fare.

Which makes it quite evident that tastes in music and films or even books change with time, and couples surprise each other by doing 360 degree turns in their likes and preferences.

Staying with each other and continuous exposure to forms of music or literature diverse from your own choice, influence the mind to slowly accept and appreciate the other’s tastes. You start developing an ear or eye for different forms of art, like Amit and Jaya did. Which is actually a good thing, because it made them more nuanced and versatile human beings.

Thinking like one another:

Let us now come to the more serious aspects of a couple relationship. If the couple is well adjusted to each other’s beliefs and values, they can take increasingly rational decisions on various aspects like education of children, investments, and planning for retirement. Thinking like one another involves understanding the workings of the other person’s mind and psychology. It also goes without saying that it sometimes involves accepting your companion/spouse’s decision over your own.

After ten years of marriage, Alisha and Nikhil, both highly individualistic people, have accepted the fact that they will differ from each other on everything. So how do they adjust? By taking joint decisions on the major issues of life. When their only daughter was to be admitted to school, Alisha’s preference of a convent education won over Nikhil’s desire to admit the child to an international school.

As far as financial planning went, Nikhil wanted to buy a house of their own early into their marriage. While Alisha would have preferred to wait some more time, she understood Nikhil’s urgency and gave up on a lot of comforts to pay for the EMIs of the housing loan.

Let’s grow old together:

Growing old together involves growing to accept and adopt each other’s quirkiness and uniqueness. Like the Wilsons in the famous comic strip ‘Dennis the Menace’ where the dear Mrs. Wilson simply accepts her grumpy husband’s grumbling while quietly maintaining her own identity and choices.

Adapting to your spouse does not mean that you are losing on your individuality. It simply means that you value the relationship over your ego. Remember the Hindi film, ‘Dum Laga Ke Haisha’? Where the bickering couple slowly came around to accepting each other’s defects? Of course, not every husband needs to carry his overweight wife on his back to prove a point!

And then, there are some couples who do not adapt, and you can see it evident by their constant bickering. There is a continuous game of one-upmanship between such couples. Each person wants to have the last word. While all such relationships may not land up at divorce courts, they certainly harbor a lot of unnecessary bitterness.

Adjustment and adapting bring their own rewards. You get the best of both worlds. And you buy some much-deserved peace and happiness in the bargain.

(Published earlier on www.bonobology.com)