KOCHI: Has your relationship come to a place that you wish to somehow take an eraser and clear away all the painful past and have a fresh start?
Despite our best intentions, sometimes our relationships take a deep turn away from the path we intended when we started out and find ourselves in a rocky place. It could be terribly hurtful, and we might be full of anger and resentment, bewildered how it even got there. It would be hard enough because we discovered that our choice of a partner was wrong and that we had found out through some stroke of luck or misfortune that this person was not at all who we thought they were.
It is harder still if we find that we are in a very tough place but still think that we are both really good people and it is just an odd but specific set of events, misunderstandings and fate that we find ourselves hating on each other and hurting in our own spaces.
In such circumstances, we don’t really want to separate at all, nor can we continue as things are, but we just really, really need a fresh start.
Just asking for a new beginning is not easy. Yet, events like a new year, a birthday or an anniversary help us think that a fresh start is even possible. Being able to mark the end of a period and start a new one, even if it is merely symbolic, it can still be a harbinger of hope and enough to imagine new possibilities.
Few events compare to the New Year for such an ooportunity. There is some magic in being able to count down the end of a year, watch the clock tick into midnight, and a whole new year emerge, full of potential. When you look at your partner with hope at such a time and find that hope reflected back, it can be just the tiniest moment of a positive connection, making what seemed impossible not only possible but even probable.
A record number of people in relationships are likely to hug and begin to make up at that moment.
This year has been a horrible one for a lot of us for several globally distressing events and certainly for more personal reasons, and yet, even for those of us finding it hard to feel hopeful, it is hard to not pause the cynicism for a few moments when the clock strikes midnight.
If you feel you want a fresh start to your relationship, if you want to start a new conversation and open up to the possibility of healing and restarting your journey towards a healthier and happier relationship, go ahead and seize the opportunity that this new year brings. Make it a happy new year.
(The writer’s views are personal)