Seeking social validation! Is it saving or destroying marriages?

Seeking social validation! Is it saving or destroying marriages?

Today we live in a world where success and failure are determined by the world around us, defined by the society. People live their lives conforming to the norms, seeking validations at every step of their journey, to ensure they are meeting the expectations of the society to be recognised as a success. This is a matrix, and we are programmed by the architects of society to live life like rats in a rat race. Through their conscious efforts, they have managed to keep people at a low level of consciousness, living a low life, never allowed to think or contemplate. It is the validation from society that defines man’s worth, his purpose and his greatness.

We are living to the expectations of others, striving every day, every minute to showcase to the world our lifestyle through our consumption ability – the resources/wealth we are able to amass in order to afford all the objects of luxury and comfort. World is now filled with objects that provide us with sensory pleasures visually, feel on our body, taste, smell etc. Happiness has been defined in the modern day as the pleasure one experiences out of enjoyment of these sensory objects. Most couples relate a successful relationship to their ability to lead a life fueled by comforts and luxuries. And as they embark on this journey to meet the social expectations, their time is spent on their relentless efforts to make money. In the process man fails to realise his natural urge for contentment, his feeling of fulfillment that comes from deep within, beyond his senses.

He lacks the realisation that the only way he can experience this is by fulfilling his emotional and spiritual needs, which are personal to each individual. This is constituted by a combination of unique innate traits he is born with, brought from his past life experiences and those formed from the experiences he has lived so far in this lifetime. Human experiences cause traumas, scars and wounds deep within and from these stems insecurities and inadequacies. These translate to specific behavioural traits, cravings and desires. It is every person’s desire that their partner understand their needs and through words and actions make them feel the way they desire to be felt. Thoughtful gestures, acts of service, expression of affection, care, use of words etc become detrimental in how emotional needs are met.

As partners are busy running after errands and earning money, there is hardly any focus on these in a relationship, leaving the emotional needs of the partner overlooked and unattended. Superficially couples appear to possess everything the society has defined as success, but the marriage fails. Their needs being fulfilled by someone outside the marriage is often the reason for the failure. In most cases, more than his/her inability to attend to their partner’s emotional needs, it is their lack of time that leads to the failure. The earlier a partner realises this and takes the effort to change his/her priorities, they could build a happy relationship together.

Changing priorities means valuing time over money and using more time to attend to the emotional needs of their loved ones. This requires letting go of many things that they have been conditioned with, or what have been set as the norms by the society to be recognised as a success. The name, fame, wealth, social validation, recognition as a success, the level of comforts they are used to are all obstacles in their way stopping them from mending their ways. In their priority list their relationship is superceded by their recognition, image, perception in others’ minds and they end up letting go of their partner. They lose out on the precious gift called life while choosing to live their life securing the society’s validation. This is the sad reality we see today.

The inability of a person to realise these is due to his/her level of consciousness. As one’s level of consciousness rises, one starts to understand life differently, beyond physicality one starts to understand emotions and goes on to realise the identity from which originates all these needs, finally realising the Absolute reality or SELF. This is possible through a process of self improvement, by constantly seeking to refine oneself to become a better version of themselves. Each step towards SELF-Realisation makes one detach from the idea of “me” and he starts to let go everything he thought was “mine”. He start seeing others as himself, he starts understanding others better, he tends to be less selfish and more he start giving. Secret to a happy relationship is better understanding and that is possible only through self improvement.