It is election season in India, and democracy is the divinity that is worshiped at this time, no matter what other wishes get expressed in different quarters. Some long for a benign, benevolent and beloved dictator who will at last bring India to the glory India deserves by herding all the diverse groups and interests of the billion people here. In other quarters, wishes for an elite, educated group reminiscent of a Roman senate that rules over the plebeians can be heard, ostensibly to save India from the errors of judgment that an uneducated, illiterate, irreverent mass of people might make for everyone as a whole. Others wish for a god incarnate to come back to whom everyone submits.
Whatever the wishes of individuals, it is democracy we have and cherish, and yet it is often not a principle we implement at all in our private lives, and certainly not much when we look at love and relationships. There are few institutions that are so undemocratic as a family.
Remember Calvin going to a parent with opinion polls and suggestions on what it would take to win the elections again and be a parent for another term? The reformist ideals of that child gets quickly crushed with the ‘elected for life’ comment by the parent in question, and there’s nothing poor Calvin can do other than talk to the eternally amused but suffering Hobbes on strategies to assert their rights.
What would it mean to have a democracy in loving relationships? Even when there are just two adults in a relationship, it is hard to be democratic. Sometimes it is harder than when there are multiple people just because there’s no tie-breaker between two people in a relationship when they differ in terms of what they are considering – no matter if it is a simple thing like what that eat for dinner, or what show they watch. Unopposed elections are rarer in relationships than the once in twelve years occurrence that we see in Indian politics. We are more likely to just see different levels of compromises, negotiations, surrender or something else that keeps the wheels moving.
The interesting thing is that just like democracy in the real world, where it matters more whether voices are heard rather than who wins, even in relationships, it is really being able to feel that you have a voice, and that the voice is heard and attended to, and that even if the popular vote goes a different way, the idea that your voice has some power and will be respected – that seems to be the key. We are ok with someone else winning this time – we just work on making our voices and opinions heard more and more clearly so that the next time around, we are more likely to win.
If the voice is silent too long or silenced too harshly, then trouble brews very quickly. That’s the same in love and relationships. It is not that we need an actual democracy in our relationships, but the idea of democracy – that our voices matter.
Loveology
Mahesh Natarajan
(The author is a counsellor with InnerSight)
(The writer’s views are personal)