PERILS OF A LOOSE TONGUE

On the night before I was due to get engaged I was having dinner with two colleagues while we were all on call. They were both a little bit older and were already married. They started telling me stories of their marriages. I still remember when one of them said, "When we live with someone 4 hours a day, 6 hours a day, 8 hours a day, (like at work) we can pretend to be a nicer person than we really are. We take care about how we behave and what we say in front of people, presenting our best face. But when we are at home with someone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, we cannot pretend anymore. We are just the way we are." he further said that before he got married, if someone had told him that he will be behaving in these ways after marriage, he would have laughed and said, "you are crazy. that is not me. I am not that kind of a person. But, to my surprise, I do and I can't even stop myself behaving like that. I don't care anymore" Definitely not the kind of stories I wanted to hear a day before I was due to get formally engaged!

I was reminded of this when something happened recently and I suddenly realised how little we care about the feelings of those who are closest to us and who we spend most of our life with, as compared to those we meet for a few hours a day or maybe a few times a week or a month. It made me reflect deeply on my own behaviour. I realised that when I am with people I know superficially socially or professionally, I take great care to ensure that I do not say or do anything that will come across as being unpleasant. I choose every word every action carefully, considering how what I am going to say or do will affect the person in front of me.

However, when I am with people closest to me, I hardly think twice before blurting out whatever has come to my mind in the moment. I do not pause to reflect whether what I am about to say is going to hurt their feelings, break their heart, put them down, or make them feel miserable. I tell myself that we are only joking, but I am the only one who is laughing. I say the harshest of things, use the most pain-inflicting words, without even remembering what this person and I have been through together for the last so many decades.

It is a strange phenomenon that we care so much about not hurting those who we barely know, but not at all about hurting those who are closest to us.