Let Go Of The Toxic Relations In Your Life, No Matter What Tag They Hold

Sometimes, some relations in your life are merely there due to the tag they hold. What if you decide to not let the tags define these and just let them go?

I sat on the sofa holding a freshly brewed cup of tea and clicked on the link my friend had emailed. It was a video of a talk by BK Shivani. My friend had sent the link following a discussing we had at her place the weekend before. We’d somehow ended up discussing drawing boundaries for one’s mental and physical well-being. The basic gist of the talk was that it is important to simplify relationships and look beyond their names or the tags attached to them.

For example, the words mother, uncle, father-in-law all have a quality attached to them. And people behave in accordance to that relation, irrespective of their real nature. What BK Shivani says in the video is that one needs to understand that the person is a soul first with their own qualities before the relation.

It was the simplicity of the message that opened up a sense of understanding in me that led me to question certain people in my life. There are a number of people in life who have a certain relationship with me. But due to this relationship, I never questioned their behaviour and quietly nursed the hurt they inflicted on me.

Why shouldn’t I hold on to these ‘petty things’?

Take for example, there are people who rarely ever bother replying to a well-intentioned text message. Their excuse is that they were busy or since they were older than I am, it was okay for them to treat me this way! They even had the audacity to tell me not to hold on to such petty things!

Then, there are the ones who constantly belittle me. There were times when I was very proud of myself because maybe I cooked something fancy and carefully took a picture to share. When I did share it, there never was an acknowledgement, forget appreciation! The same applied to any accolades or achievements I had in my life!

There are also the ones who are outright rude! They speak rudely and only have bad things to say. No matter how hard you try, they will never really care. I spent a major chunk of my life believing that since they had some role in my life, I shouldn’t hold on to such petty behaviour. And each time, I let go. Now, obviously, I had my heart broken a number of times due to this.

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It took me time, but eventually, I stopped

Gradually, I stopped connecting and sharing. I stopped trying but the heart, it stayed. What I did not realise what that this ‘not replying to a well-intentioned message’ was also a response. Never appreciation and always demotivating was a response too! And it was a response I never should have put up with in the first place, irrespective of the relationship.

I learnt that relationships are based on how one person treats the other and not what the tag attached to them says. Interestingly, I am not the only one. My friend, the one who sent the video to me was shocked at her mother’s bias toward her.

She was troubled due to this for a very long time until she realised that more than her mother, the person under the tag was an individual too. This understanding liberated her. Now, she values her relationships with people by the behaviour meted out to her, not by the tags they hold.

While we treat people according to the way they treat us, we need to take note that your own niceness need not be compromised on. I believe that’s who you are.

And for all the other people struggling with issues in all the relationships in their lives, it is high time you looked at things as they are. You need to look beyond the name of the relationship and everything it brings with it!

Picture credits: Pexels

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