Decoupling, Throupling and more
It’s 10am on a Monday morning. I am eating Nutella Toast and sipping my coffee as a I write this. What are you doing, as you read this?
In the last edition of this newsletter, right at the end, I’d shared a link to Lacy Phillip’s manifestation practice, and an unbelievable number of people clicked on the link. I’d shared the same link in the edition before but almost no one had clicked on it then.
You know what the big driver was? I’d used the word FREE (because it is FREE!) while sharing it, and that made all the difference. Strange, no? I know a section of my readers, and they’re surely not people who can’t afford to pay $50 to change their entire life’s programming, for instance. But why the hesitation?
Fear of Commitment
Whether you want it or not, change is difficult. We are much more comfortable living with our unhealthy behaviours or relationships than commit to making changes that we truly desire. Commitment demands hard work, but we’ve only evolved to survive, not thrive. So, working hard to thrive is a bit unnatural for most of us.
When we pay for something, there is a pressure to maximise value for our buck (like a gym membership). But by trying something for free, we aren’t bound to maximise returns. We feel less guilty about letting it go to waste. So, people are more inclined to try things for free not because they can’t afford to pay for it, it’s because they are afraid to commit to maximising value for their investment (time/ money).
Decoupling
I watched this hilarious show on Netflix (yes yes I am still unemployed) called Decoupled. It’s written by Manu Joseph, who I later learnt is quite the entertainer on Twitter. The show is about about a Gurgaon-based married couple who are about to separate. The overarching story is ordinary, but the whole show is packed with a lot of raw insights about life, relationships, marriage and sex.
The plot was cliched in the sense that the husband is a south-indian author without a filter and the wife is a suave VC from Mumbai. They have an almost teenage daughter. They’re friends, but they’ve fallen out of love and so they’ve decided to get a divorce. The cultural or professional details apart, who hasn’t heard this story before?
Some marriages work, some don’t. Divorce is common now.
If you’ve budgeted for this inconvenience in your life, great. But if you think divorce is going to be costly for YOU (not the monetary bit), then you’re better off committing some thought and time before getting married.
We live in a very fast changing world, and trying to build for the long-term is much harder today than it ever was. We all want hyper growth, yet we expect our relationships to have the resilience to remain unchanged over time.
I recently read an article about businesses in Japan and what stuck with me is this - when you make the trade off between stability and growth, you build resilience to disasters instead of agility to changes or vice-versa. Relationships are no different.
Pure
Recently, I tried to download a dating app to delete my dummy profile, and in the process, I spotted an ad for this Russian app called PURE. The tag line is anonymous sexting or some such thing.
My god, this is just some other level only. Back in the day, when Yahoo chat was new, we were so young, curious, had all the time, patience and intent to experience the internet to the fullest. But now? Aren’t people exhausted to keep this up? Or is anonymity a fetish now? Has anyone tried this app? I’d love to hear more.
Polyamory
Among the many things I am always curious about, polyamory is one such thing. I had the privilege of speaking to a few people who were gracious enough to share their most private lives with me.
Three big revelations from this round of conversations were:
Polyamory requires constant communication and transparency amongst the partners, but not necessarily anyone else. Since the social landscape around polyamory is still evolving, some people prefer not to get the children or extended families involved. Does it make it harder to normalise poly? Probably.
Each love in a polyamorous relationship is different, and cannot be compared. As a non-poly person, it was hard for me to truly understand this. But these conversations made me wonder if being poly is like parenting - you can’t compare your love for each child. It’s not the same, yet it’s not different.
We are socially conditioned to want one person who can fulfil all our desires, but love has evolved to be diverse. Different people love differently, but we are afraid to break the rules. Some people are brave enough to make up their own rules, and live life the way they desire. For them, polyamory is liberating.
Sneak peak into what I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:
The Other Half of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen: This is a part-Enligh part-Burundian story of a girl who felt like she never fit in. I relate to this. May be some of you do too. It’s probably also why I find stories of the LGBTQ+ community intriguing.
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali: This is a Turkish tale about love and longing. I love these kind of stories that are interesting from the first page.
Shapely Gal song of the month: Distance by Nicky Romero & Olivia Holt