Pain and pleasure can be two sides of a relationship coin, but the first side has the capacity to maim, and even destroy. Film actor Deepika Padukone’s recent confessions on depression, and those on relationship break-ups she made a few years ago, underline that potential
Recently, popular film star Deepika Padukone created a buzz when she admitted to having been struck by a bout of serious depression. In an interview to NDTV, a television news channel, Padukone said she had experienced it out of the blue, at a time when she was winning awards and accolades all around. She told Barkha Dutt, the interviewer: “I woke up one morning just feeling empty, you know, like this pittish feeling in my stomach. I woke up like feeling directionless, I didn’t know where to go, I didn't know what to do and I had these bouts of feeling so low that I would just start crying at the drop of the hat.” She had to seek psychiatric help, and recovered over weeks.
It was not clear from the interview what made a successful actor suddenly plunge down the emotional drain. It may have been more personal than the pain of just seeing her parents off, as she related. But whatever, it brought into focus a human frailty that few have the courage to acknowledge, let alone seek remedy. This reluctance can, and does in some instances, lead to grave consequences, including suicide. The World Health Organisation has reported that India is the most depressed country, with a rate of 36 per cent.
Padukone had gone through difficult times before and had opened up in another television interview in 2011, much like she did in the recent one. There, she spoke not of depression per se but of the anguish she endured following a relationship break-up. Her observations made more sense than the reams of advice experts provide, often at a price. Analysing the reason(s) that led to the turmoil, she admitted to rather too easily getting emotionally attached to people. That fault, she said, contributed in a large way to her psychological disarray soon after the split with a friend. But it was the other remark that she made — that she gave “100 per cent” to a relationship — which was at the core of her grief. People who remain frivolous in relationships are the least affected. Those who give that ‘100 per cent’, end up as the foolish ones.
While Deepika managed well and eventually overcome the crisis, until depression hit her some years later, a study quoted on the Internet tells us that men are less-well equipped to cope with such trauma. According to the findings of a research team of sociologists from the Wake Forest University and the Florida State University, men draw inwards and drift into loneliness when hit by a failed relationship, while the affected women seek comfort in the company of friends and family.
The American poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who wrote through the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century and became universally popular through her lines, “laugh and the world laughs with you/Weep, and you weep alone”, hit the nail on the head when she pointed out that, as humans we tend to hurt people who like us the most. She reflected:
“There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found/ While journeying east and west/ The only folks we really wound/ Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know/ We please the fleeting guest/ And deal full many a thoughtless blow/ To those who love us best.”
The Internet is full of advice on how to manage relationship disasters (just as it tells us the ways to cultivate a relationship). The ‘rational approach’ the Net educates us, should be to categorise the broken bond. Was it a toxic relationship that deserved to endIJ Or was it worthwhile to sustainIJ Social pundits tell us that, whatever the nature, a break can often be refreshing to the heart and soul. At the very least, it provides an occasion to the players to re-assess the alliance objectively. It could, they point out, lead to the re-establishment of ties or a more elaborate distancing. Robert Brault is a popular name on the Net, who offers nuggets of encouragement on the subject. He philosophises:
“Sometimes two people need to step apart, and make a space between
That each might see the other anew, in a glance across a room or silhouetted against the moon.
If we ignore the romanticism, it is possible to see the wisdom in the suggestion. However, emotions cannot be clinically controlled. How natural it would be for two people, until very recently close friends, to encounter each other as strangers in a roomIJ Can one indulge in an objective assessment of the other after having provided that ‘space’, in such an unreal situationIJ Had this to be the way of the world, relationships would be dry and robotic.
The desire to seek space is a lame explanation for glorifying a break-up, because any sort of meaningful human relationship inherently creates an individual space for each partner, while at the same time it construes a common binding ground.
Author Jan Yager in his book, When Friendship Turns Unfriendly, dwells at length on the ‘negative’ and the ‘positive’ of the relationship. He writes, “Too little attention has been paid to the notion that negative friendships can wreak havoc. Another reason (for writing the book) is to have a forum to explore the possible causes of finding yourself in such a relationship, and how to best rid yourself of a noxious friend.” A noxious friend is one who, among other things, does not respect you as a person, always tests your self-esteem and generally remains unconcerned with your insensitivities. Of course, it is possible that the person you consider as ‘noxious’, is not really so, but a figment of your imagination, now deeply prejudiced.
However, the author is more caught up with bigger challenges — that of finding potentially dangerous friendships. He says, “Some potentially destructive or harmful friendships may be difficult to spot. That’s because when a friendship is forming, your friend may be charming, polite, and completely appropriate. Once your friendship is well underway, a friend may change. The very act of becoming friends may send someone with intimacy problems into an emotional tail-spin, changing those involved as well as their behaviour towards each other. As friends become closer and more intimate, expectations also may arise; disappointments become more likely, and painful, than during the early stage of the evolving friendship.”
While it may appear fatalistic, the recognition that grief and hurt are inalienable in any relationship, can help in coping with the crisis. The problem again is that such pain visits the person genuinely committed to a relationship — be it friendship or anything else. A certain level of stoic, is thus, called for. After all, ‘Happiness is on wings, grief lingers long/Pain supports life, when all pleasure is gone’.
(The writer is Opinion Editor, The Pioneer)