Love is the first enemy of Friendship, and marriage is Second ;)

Hmm yet another time I pick up a subject which my friends wanted to know my opinion of.
And now I realize how blogging is still keeping us abreast with the lovely discussions which we might have had, had we been staying together.

As per the subject, I don't really want to hurt the neutral reader, but I'd also like to please the person who asked me to write this, and the gang which appreciates this talk.
Before really getting on to the subject, let me give you an account of how friendships fare in the long run. I've been experiencing this from long time, and hope everybody else do. We find a few friends in our colleges whom we share a lot of time with. Even better if we get to live with the same set of people after the college while we work. Now what happens is, since we all have individual goals, responsibilities, and of course priorities, we decide to move on. At each such juncture, one of our friends moves out in finding peace with the priorities he has, and we got to live with that. This could happen time and again, more in the current age when we are more ambitious, when each of our friends steps up to the challenges for a brighter future. The toughest time in friendship is to part ways, for instance graduating from college, moving on to different workplace, making a living in different geographical location, etc. And at each such time, we'll have a heart-break, though we get used to it eventually. Since we keep up with friends, it might look a little has changed since the time you had parted, but over a period of time you'll see the difference very very clearly. You would miss the little joys and camaraderie of your friends a lot. On a personal note, if I look back, I've had wonderful time with enthusiastic friends around, and lot of activity each week. But then a few friends had to take a diversion for various reasons, and the gap they have left in my life is so wide to imagine something filling it. That's the way of life, and that's the singlemost thing which makes life an adventure.

One of the very very important reasons due to which friends move on has to do with relationships such as finding a girlfriend or tying a knot. Finding a girlfriend or soul mate is not incidental. You got to spend a lot of time, and have a good heart, tying to understand and work towards making a normal relationship into something very special. Once you start working at a relationship and start spending lot of time, you will obviously feel the dearth of time for other activities or your daily activities. For instance, you might start talking on your mobile for quite a long time, and at times leave no time for anything else. Exactly at this juncture you would face one of the toughest challenges of your life - Balancing your relationships or keeping up with love and friends. And now you tend to feel that Girlfriend is the first enemy if friendship. The latter part of the argument, ie about marriage being the second, one need not explain how much it occupies a person.

But the truth is, we have to draw a line at some point in order to strike a balance between friends and soul mate. Neither could be forgone at the cost of the other. It takes good amount of time to arrive at equilibrium, but more than anything, one needs patience to wait on things to congeal. It lies with the person to approach both the ends with positive attitude and making amends in the time he has. One trick is not treating these two as separate entities in the first place. Essentially, you would need transparency at both the ends. Each of the parties must know of the other clearly, so that they can understand and appreciate the other. By making your friends know about the soul mate, you obviously make her their friend, or at least have them take the relationship positively. But the bottomline is - some price must be paid in terms of the time and energy. Eventually, both would co-exist with a good balance.

As per the marriage, that's definitely something which changes a person drastically. One has so much responsibility and dependence on the other that you can never find time as would have found otherwise. Here, the repercussions are very conspicuous. This is something where you need to set yourself aloof from everything else. Though it's evil, it has to be faced by everybody - so the relative effect could be normal. Even here, after things precipitate, you would have time to get back to all the old times; but the biggest challenge is the time it would take. It takes a lot for a few, and a jiffy for a few others. In any case, it is one of those necessary evils which can not be circumvented. All one can do is act mature in the way he looks at life, and strives to maintain the friendship as he faces the challenges of life.

In reality, if one has to face this dilemma, he is very lucky, that is - he has very good friends whom he can't live without and a good soul mate. So, this is again a kind of a necessary evil which gives life a few twists but overtime gives a perfect balance. But the bottomline is - time decides how painful an affect these two relationships, love and marriage, have on friendship.