These heart-wrenching dilemmas can shape not only the life of the child but also the entire family dynamic. A mother’s response in such moments becomes a defining factor in determining the emotional wellbeing and future of her child. Let’s explore real-life scenarios that reveal the crucial role of maternal intervention in times of paternal rejection.

When a Father Rejects His Child

Case 1: When the Mother is Unable to Act Forcefully

Sudhir’s mother chose her own survival over her son’s emotional safety. As a child, Sudhir was regularly subjected to verbal and physical abuse by his father for even the smallest infractions, such as not responding quickly enough when called. His monthly allowance was accompanied by hurtful insults like “you good-for-nothing, living off my wealth.” This escalated to public humiliation in adulthood, including being caned in front of guests for a minor car accident.

Sudhir’s mother, despite her meek pleas for mercy, remained passive due to her own financial insecurities. She neither asserted herself nor considered leaving the abusive marriage, effectively failing to protect her son. By the age of 24, Sudhir was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and at 32, he still cowers in fear at the sound of his father’s footsteps, scarred by the deep wounds of rejection and neglect.

Case 2: When the Mother Fails to Take a Stand

Ajit’s story mirrors Sudhir’s in many ways, yet his outcome was different. Ajit always dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, a passion that his father dismissed as disgraceful.

Ajit would dress up his sister’s dolls, and sketch pretty women. He would his mother and sisters on their clothes, for which his father labeled him “gay” in a derogatory manner, rejecting both his talent and his identity.

During one particularly humiliating episode, Ajit left home, deeply wounded by his father’s rejection. His mother, who remained a silent bystander throughout his torment, did nothing to support him. Today, Ajit is a successful yet bitter fashion designer. His unresolved pain manifests in volatile relationships with his family and staff, and he continues to seek validation from the father who rejected him. Despite his success, Ajit remains haunted by his mother’s inaction, wishing she had stood by him when he needed her the most.

Case 3: When the Father Rejects His Child But Mother Stands By

Rohini’s experience reveals a different path. Her father, a self-made businessman, provided her with material comforts but imposed strict rules on her behavior, including forbidding her from interacting with boys. When Rohini, at 19, was caught outside an ice-cream parlor with a boy, her father exploded with anger, calling her derogatory names and threatening to cut off her allowance.

In contrast to the previous stories, Rohini’s mother stood firm in her defense, even when her husband threatened to throw both of them out. With her mother’s unwavering support, Rohini moved to a hostel, and her mother continued to encourage her to be independent and true to herself. Today, Rohini is a self-assured woman, forever grateful for her mother’s courage and guidance.

The Mother’s Response is Crucial

These cases highlight a key truth: when a father rejects his child, the mother’s response can shape the trajectory of the child’s life. Whether driven by fear, financial dependence, or emotional insecurity, a mother’s decision to remain passive can have devastating consequences. Conversely, when a mother steps up to defend her child, she can empower her child to face the world with confidence.

Families where one or both parents fail to prioritize the child’s welfare often become dysfunctional, leaving children feeling emotionally orphaned. The resulting emotional damage can manifest in mental health issues, behavioral problems, and a misguided search for love and validation elsewhere. When a mother neglects her role as the child’s protector, the child feels abandoned, leading to anger, anxiety, and depression. But when a mother stands firm in her role, her children grow into empowered, independent adults.

Case 4: When the Mother Takes Charge

Seema, a mother of two, faced regular verbal abuse from her husband but coped by focusing on raising her children and earning a living through private tutoring. The situation escalated when her husband began verbally attacking their children and refused to finance their higher education. Seema, realizing she could tolerate the abuse herself but not her children’s rejection, took decisive action. She filed for divorce, determined to provide for her children even with her limited means.

Seema’s children, inspired by their mother’s courage, worked hard and achieved successful careers. They remain grateful for her strength and resolve in choosing their well-being over her own comfort.

Why a Mother’s Role is Sacred

Existence has entrusted the mother with the sacred work of nurturing life in the form of the children born through her [referred to as life’s longing for itself by Kahlil Gibran], and therefore you need to live up to the trust placed in you as caregivers to these children. Kahlil Gibran says in The Prophet,

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Summing Up

Mothers are the stabilizing force in a child’s life, guiding them toward their potential, even when the father falters. When a father rejects his child, the mother’s decision to either step in or stand aside profoundly impacts the emotional and psychological health of the child. A mother’s strength, support, and unconditional love are the foundation upon which a child builds their future.

Last updated on 24^th September 2024

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For her, this realisation was a turning point. She decided to start valuing her inner and outer life from then on. She took up reading self-help books, regularly attended meditation classes and started taking time out just for herself: to nurture her needs and her dreams. Obviously her husband could not digest the change. He put every obstacle in her path. The more freely she expressed her opinions, however politely, the more it enraged him. The more time she took to nurture her body and mind, the more his demands increased. It came to a point where he used the ultimate weapon demanding a divorce. Laxmi was shattered. Neither could she regress to her previous submissive state, nor could she deal with this unexpected threat at her age.

Change in anyone has certain important implications. While changing the old passiveness to assertiveness, there is no guarantee of a favourable outcome. When a person starts to change, the family members may either be happy to see the change or become distressed about it. They may find it threatening, and even attempt to sabotage the process of change.

Ripple effects of change

There are always ripple effects of change in the family, and more so in the spouse of the individual who is trying to change. It is humorously said, when depressed married women go into therapy and get better, their husbands [or their marriages] may get worse. For instance if a previously unassertive woman learns assertiveness skills, her husband is likely to be disturbed by her new attitude and behaviour towards him. He will verbally or non-verbally demonstrate his discomfort and is even likely to get angry.

There are many ways in which your partner may resist and obstruct change in you.

1. By yelling and trying to ‘reason’.
2. By weeping, pleading and trying to make you feel guilty.
3. By threatening total rejection.
4. By discrediting the counsellor/therapist who is helping you to change and grow in your best interest.
5. By threatening suicide.

Giving is not always good

It is taught to us that we must give in to our partners if we want our marriage to succeed. Be as giving as you can and your partner will love you forever…is the thinking. But this is not usually true. We have nothing against being a decent, loving and charitable person— mature people care for others, and a world without people who care, is not worth living in. But there is also something like unhealthy giving. You do not build a good marriage by chronically sacrificing yourself out of a distorted and warped sense of ‘deep love’. You only spoil the one you indulge and make yourself miserable. No relationship can stay healthy for long under these conditions.

Change and growth are inevitable. And if you are becoming increasingly aware of your self-defeating ‘sacrificial spirit’, then there will be ‘labour pains’ when giving birth to a new assertive and self-interested you. The greatest pain stems from resistance from your spouse.

Geeta was a battered wife who was a sucker for her husband’s tear-filled, ‘sincere’ apologies. “I am so sorry. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Give me this last chance. I promise this will never happen again. I need you. I love you,” he used to say after a round of battering. This was an oft-repeated scene. Neither did her husband stop battering her, nor did she stop falling for his lines. Then one day, Geeta saw a talk show on battered wives on TV. Watching the stories of many other women who suffered like her and who had finally stood up and said ‘No more’, was an enlightening moment for her. She felt empowered for the first time in the knowledge that she had the right to live her life on her own terms. Statements like, ‘I have the right to have feelings and express them. I have the right to act in my self-interest. I have the right to say ‘no’ continuously played in her head until she acted on them. She walked out on her husband and refused to come back till he entered therapy and the therapist certified that he had made genuine progress. She held her ground even when he threatened suicide.

He realised she meant business and entered therapy unconditionally. Geeta got herself an interesting job and found a new world outside her violent home. Today, he is still in therapy and she is doing self-exploration to find out where she wants to go from here.

Living for your self

Living an assertive and appropriately self-interested life means that individuals have a right to decide how they will live their lives, and not infringe on equal rights of others. If this happens, it is perfectly okay for one to live life in the way one wants.

Of course this does not mean that you leave absolutely everything behind you including the people you are close to. The biggest fear your spouse faces is when he sees you change.

The fear results in a knee-jerk reaction. But if you reassure him, he will understands that you are only leaving behind attitudes and behaviours which are truly unhealthy and detrimental to your growth. If he genuinely cares for your growth, and for the health of your relationship, he will be supportive after the initial resistance. He might even be inspired by your changes to make a few of his own. Like in the case of Vinita and Rajesh. Vinita was brought up in a dysfunctional family. She married Rajesh to get away from it. She was a child-woman with low self-worth, who got into bouts of deep depression and spent hours crying on Rajesh’s shoulder. Rajesh would take care of her like a child and their relationship was more a parent-child one than a man-woman one. Vinita entered therapy for her depressive spells and healed herself, changing the dynamics between her and Rajesh. Rajesh was left confused and felt abandoned, betrayed as he viewed her emotional independence as leaving him behind and that ‘he was no longer needed.’ They entered couple therapy and through a step-by-step process developed a new, healthier relationship. Vinita communicated the gratitude she felt for his support through her painful process of personal growth and how she valued the relationship and wanted to now give to it instead of only taking from it as an emotional child. Rajesh was now relaxed and inspired to deal with his own demons of the past and to live a more fulfilling life as well as give the best of himself to the relationship.

Change generally brings some degree of suffering. This suffering can lead to discovering a new phase where both feel that their valid needs are being met or can even end a relationship, because of the unwillingness to accept transformation.

Change is the only constant and personal growth means being in a state of flux. Evolving constantly in order to self-actualise, one should allow no one or nothing to stand in the way of this dynamic process of change. Changing is actually discovering yourself, an essential part of being yourself.

This was first published in the April 2009 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Check out what role you could be playing in being subjected to bullying by your own child. Is it because you are ‘nice’ to a fault, and come across as over-accommodating to everyone? Is it because you are someone who clowns around and entertains others to get a few laughs but loses his respect? Is it because you are ‘everyone’s fool’ or a ‘sucker’ and your child has seen you allowing everyone to take advantage of you? Is it because you are needy of approval and your child has sensed your vulnerability? Is it because you do not have the demeanour and skills to command respect because of which your child has not learned to respect you?
Remember we teach people how to treat us, and if we want to be treated better, we need to teach them verbally and non-verbally how to treat us better.

It depends on your demeanour

Parents who are ‘passive pushovers’ are so because when they were little children, their strong-willed parents taught them to be unassertive by either rewarding their submissiveness or punishing their assertiveness. A young child believes that his survival and fulfilment of his needs depends on his parents. He thus adopts strategies to ensure the same—in this case submissiveness. He learns submission for his survival due to his parents’ controlling demeanour.

However, just as we learn passivity from our parents’ demeanour with us, we also learn aggression and bullying if parents are too mild-mannered and submissive. When the child views unassertive parents who are unable to protect themselves from others, and thus cannot even ensure their own emotional and social survival in the midst of an aggressive or even assertive world, then the child decides to take on the task of his own survival. He then adopts the instinctive law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest, i.e. the more aggressive his demeanour, the more his chances of ensuring his survival.

Consequences of being Mr Nice

Gaurav had an aggressive father. His father would not tolerate assertiveness and was intolerant of opinions different from his own. Gaurav’s mother, however, controlled her son through her teary-eyed guilt-provoking submissiveness. Gaurav learned to be Mr. Nice Guy for his survival. When he became a father himself, his son Saahil, gradually noticed in him the fear of hurting others and of rejection. Saahil picked on this trait of passivity. He saw his father as a man who was emotionally and socially dependent on the world, and who could not hold his own in the big bad world. He started using intimidating tactics to test whether his father could resist them. To begin with, Saahil did so to know how much he could depend on his father for his own survival, but later he realised that he could push his father to greater limits and get away. Then two things happened. The first thing is that it become clear to Saahil that he needed to be self-reliant to survive in the world, as no one could protect him. If the father could not protect himself from his own son, how could he protect the son from the world? The second realisation was that the father was weak and that Saahil could push him around and have his way.

Saahil grew into a teenager who on one hand was disrespectful to the father and on the other hand who fought with his father to provoke him to stand up for himself. Saahil was crying out for help regarding his relationship with his father. He hated himself for bullying his own father and getting away with it and blamed the father for it all. Deep inside him, Saahil wanted his father to set boundaries to help him relate more respectfully. Fortunately, Gaurav was open to family therapy, where he gradually gained insight into the cause of the pained father-son relationship and changed his stimulus in the relationship from sick submissiveness to healthy assertiveness. Saahil soon learned to respect the boundaries drawn by his father, and became a more confident and assertive boy himself, as he was now learning from a healthy role-model in his father.

Need of approval damages too

Sania was free-thinking daughter of ambitious and controlling parents. Her free-thinking spirit was met with disapproval by both parents. As she chose to do her own thing, she was left craving for parental approval and unconditional acceptance as a person. When Sania became a mother herself, she continued to be driven by her need for approval and acceptance. This made her an anxious mother as she strived hard to be the perfect parent.

The pursuit of perfection often made her over-demanding on herself in her role as a mother, resulting in her being frequently highly-strung and irritable with Suraj, her son. Feeling guilty for her irritability, she would then compensate by being overly indulgent towards Suraj. She swung from striving to be a ‘good mother’ to viewing herself as a ‘bad mother’, and with her swinging from anxiety to guilt, Suraj swung too.

He soon realised his mother’s vulnerability, and played on it. He realised that if she needed his approval for her emotional nourishment, then she probably could not be emotionally available for him, leaving him anxious about fending for himself emotionally. He also fathomed that he could push her guilt-provoking buttons to bully her into indulging him in whatever he wanted. He felt anxious and guilty for manipulating her, especially when she would be affectionate towards him. He was not only angry with her vulnerability, but also angry with her for letting him manipulate her due to her need for approval, thus blaming her for how confused and miserable he felt within.
Subsequently, Sania accessed family therapy to understand Suraj’s mood swings from being angry and intimidating to feeling anxious and guilty. She understood that she needed to overcome her need for approval, thus instilling confidence in Suraj that he could rely on his parent to be his emotional strength. She also needed to stop indulging Suraj and draw firm boundaries for him to help him understand what was acceptable and what was not.

As Sania became emotionally empowered, Suraj’s behaviour also changed for the better. He learned to stop pushing as Sania refused to budge and get into any guilt trips. He soon became a more rational and less moody boy.

Children need parents not friends

Sometimes parents think that they can reach their children better if they are friends. This is not true. Children need parents and not friends to nurture them into being emotionally strong, secure and stable human beings, albeit parenting need not always be a poker faced affair. Parenting requires gentle love as well as tough love, with the ability to know when to use what.

During their growing years, children need to feel that they can rely on someone stronger than themselves for their survival. Later, as they gradually venture out into the world on their own, they need balanced and assertive role models to learn from.

If you come across as a friend and clown around your child and his friends, then you lose the title and the respect of a nurturing parent, as you facilitate disrespectful behaviour and bullying on the part of your child towards you.

It is vital for the healthy emotional development of our children that we as parents exercise healthy love for our child, which is neither fearful nor indulgent; neither submissive nor possessive; and neither punishing nor controlling. Our love should be caring, committed, comforting, strong, stable, steadfast, balanced and unconditional.

So stop your childish and helpless ‘whine’ about your children bullying you, and grow up and develop a ‘spine’ of healthy parenting. If you grow up, rest assured, so will your children.

This was first published in the December 2010 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Real-time incidents

Vikram was 10 years older to Tina. Their marriage was based on him having a beautiful young girl on his arm to show off, while she wanted a Prince Charming doting on her and spending romantic moments with her. But later, her disillusionment went to such an extent that she suffered an eating disorder, got severely depressed, and attempted suicide, twice.

In another incident, Alka had a persecution complex and would be paranoid about Hemant’s interactions with his family. Even though she had attempted suicide twice, she would not acknowledge that she needed psychiatric intervention. After once such attempt, Hemant finally decided that it was time to call it quits.

Samir and Priyal had different aspirations, and their own childhood traumas to make peace with. Both realised that their marriage was not working out and the strain was showing on both of them. Although the topic of separation had come up from time to time, they clung on to the marriage supposedly for their daughter, till one day Samir, suffered his first major and fatal heart attack and was no more. He was just 35.

Choosing the lesser evil

In all the above cases, the couples could have parted amicably. But they stuck to the marriage and dreaded the mere thought of divorce. Eventually, they were existentially pushed to a separation. This brings up some significant questions:

Is it better that the marriage ends in a court, in a mental asylum, an ICU or the morgue? Or is it better to part amicably after having an emotional closure on the relationship, by wishing each other well? Or remain locked in a painful loveless and bitter bondage with both actively or passively aggressive with each other?

Is it better that the children get caught in a bad marriage and stay with warring parents under the same roof, or that they stay with either one with visits to the other?

Remember, the question here is not about providing oneself, the partner, the relationship and the children, but about which is the lesser of the two evils?

For the sake of your children

In the course of our practice, we have interacted with hundreds of couples in bad marriages, and also children caught in the crossfire. All of the children who are witness to the verbally or sometimes even physically violent scenes, initially innocently seek to fix it by appealing to both parents to stop warring and make amends in their own simplistic way of looking at things. That is how children treat their own friendships, where they are ‘best friends’ one day, enemies the next and then ‘best friends’ again.

However, children whose appeals fall on deaf ears, and who continue to witness the escalating conflicts, often tell one or both of their parents to separate and put them [the children] out of their misery.

Once the children are grown-up themselves, and are able to understand how miserable both parents are together, they often advise one or both of the parents to leave the agonising relationship for their own sake, and find peace with themselves, away from each other.

Children, under the whose guise couples desperately hang on to a failing marriage, are the worst affected. They are victimised and scarred permanently with having to hear derogatory words. They feel torn and forced to take sides. This behaviour on the part of parents is the responsible for the children having low self-worth, and making self-defeating decisions in their own man-woman relationships in the future.

Are the pay-offs really worth it?

People hang on to bad marriages that have no hope of improving simply because of some pay-offs that either one or both the partners receive by remaining in the marriage—however unfulfilling or painful the marriage may otherwise be. Besides financial gains and a social standing because of the marriage, very often women remain in the marriage because they do not have cordial relations with their own family and do not want to go back there. Low self-worth, which makes people believe that they cannot do better than what they have, also makes them dread a divorce.

Sometimes it is the sheer laziness of beginning a new life that could make different physical, mental, emotional, social and financial demands on you, that keeps people in painful marriages.

Whatever be the reason, the bottom line is that it is a sick dependency on the marriage and the insistence of finding the ideal solution that keeps people in self-defeating marriages. And it is the job of the counsellor to confront and present them with a reality-check of all their pay-offs. They usually come to a counsellor only to vent their frustrations and expect the counsellor to wave a magic wand and somehow change their spouse and their relationship for the better. They hate the counsellor for showing them that they are in a marriage of convenience and cannot postpone the inevitable ‘dreaded divorce’ for too long.

At such times they are suggested a trial separation so that they can either make some genuine and radical changes in themselves in order to relate harmoniously with each other and start afresh in the marriage. Or experience the peace away from each other and know that they can survive without the marriage and may even be happier alone.

Need for a reality check

If you are honest with yourself, this period also helps to integrate what has been seen and heard throughout in the marriage. Here, the non-verbal and verbal data in the relationship is correctly interpreted, alone or with the help of a counsellor. This accurate interpretation is important because, very often, one believes what one wants to believe, and remains in an illusion.

When the husband says, “Darling, I really care for you and I can’t bear to see you hurt”, the wife hears, “I love you with all my heart, I am attracted to you and will remain a devoted husband, and I will do nothing, which could be remotely hurtful in this relationship”. However, what the husband really means is, ‘I care for you only as much as any non-sexual friend. However, I can’t find the courage to say this to your face. But I feel guilty for not loving you in the way that you insist that I do, and therefore, I need to have some physical and emotional distance between us’.

This painful, yet accurate interpretation of the husband’s words is often the dirty job of the counsellor, when the wife chooses to delude herself into believing that her failing marriage can be rescued, even with evidence to prove otherwise. This painful truth has to be revealed to free her from illusions. She has to be given hope that though painful in the short-term, she can live a better life by making wiser choices today.

Sometimes, divorce is the only option, and though it is not the ideal life you had envisioned for yourself, it still might be the lesser of the two evils. If you cannot live together harmoniously, it is better to live harmoniously apart.

This was first published in the February 2010 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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We never saw her again for a long time. After a year from our first meeting she appeared again, this time again sobbing bitterly because her teenage son had run away from home after being brutally beaten by his father. She had continued to stay in a bad marriage for some rational-sounding, but perverted reason. We went through an arduous process of extensive counselling which included a lot of confrontation, before she finally walked out of the marriage.

But more often than not, the bad marriage continues. The partners continue to suffer themselves and inflict suffering on the other, and the children bear the brunt of this toxic relationship, just because of bad choices made by their parents.

Besides physical abuse, there are other extremely toxic elements in a relationship which warrant the end of the relationship. For example, if one of the partners is an alcoholic or a drug addict, if there is a life-threatening mental illness in the partner, or even if there is extreme and sustained mental and verbal abuse causing emotional torture. Why the aggrieved partner does not end such a toxic relationship is worth examining.

Like we said earlier, reasons for remaining in a bad marriage are always rational-sounding, but are truly perverted.

Reasons or excuses?

Some of the rational-sounding excuses are, “He says he is sorry, I  think I should give him a chance”, “He is sick, he needs me”, “He says he’ll change and this time he says that he means it”, “He is a good man really”, “The children need both of us” and many more. The aggrieved partner believes what s/he wants to believe and continues to derive comfort in this delusion. The real reasons for staying in a bad marriage are of course completely different.

Counselees often come for therapy sessions claiming that they want to end their suffering in bad relationships, but in their innermost beings, they consciously or unconsciously do not want to end such relationships. On the contrary, they cling to their bad marriages, which are obviously advantageous to them in some way and are giving them some pay-offs.

These pay-offs could be in the form of financial security, social status—the unwillingness to be labelled a divorcee which they equate with being a failure—emotional co-dependency, a false ‘belief’ that I deserve this suffering for past sins… the list is endless.

Often, those who have rebelled and married against the wish of their parents, either out of caste or with a person from a different financial or social status, stay in a bad marriage. They fear exposure, and retrospectively being proven wrong, and this is what keeps them in a bad marriage, till the very end. They are willing to suffer in the marriage, but their pride cannot bear the thought of even retrospectively being proven wrong. They thus sacrifice emotional health at the altar of the ego-centric mind.

The critical point

Very often, we come across people who are sitting in front of us after traumatic experiences in their relationships. Why did they wait for so long? For some, such traumas are a turning point, a soul-searching time, a moment of truth, and counselling works miracles with them; they get out of a bad marriage. But for others, the marriage ends in a mental asylum, the intensive care unit of a hospital or even in the morgue. Many learn a lot through traumatic relationships, and many don’t!

Being honest with yourself

But do you really want to live a balanced life? That is the million-dollar question. If you say you want to and yet continue to be in a bad marriage, see what is stopping you, why the discrepancy between the insight and the behaviour, what is the pay-off/benefit being derived out of remaining in the relationship?

As you seek to understand why you act in certain ways, look hard and honestly at what you are getting out of your action. If you never take your eye off that truth, you can continue to close in on the answer. Identify the pay-off that drives your behaviour. Name it, label it. You can’t change what you don’t label. Say it in words. Once you clearly identify and label the pay-off, you can consciously unplug from it. Fail to identify it, and you are like a puppet on a string, being controlled by some unknown person or thing.

Victim or victor

Once you are aware of the dynamics of your behaviour, you can then make a conscious choice—the choice between being a victim or a victor.

When you choose to be a victim, you gain in external power [the poor-me, so good and helpless v/s the big bad world—is a very powerful ego state] and lose internal power [you are resentful towards those who have victimised you and thus you lose inner peace]. When you choose to be a victor, you lose in external power [you are not better than the world around you] and gain in internal power [peace and harmony].

You are accountable for the choices you make today. Is it truly a profitable transaction to continue to remain in a bad marriage, to continue to play the role of a victim? You have a choice. If you do want to get out, then listen to the wisdom that is trying to come through to you in different forms, from within, i.e. the mirror of your soul, and also from without, i.e. the mirror of the relationship. Take responsibility now. You can do it. It is so exciting to know that I am not a victim of my body-mind, but a creator of my own health. I can choose not to be a victim anymore. Instead, I can be a victor. Choose to be a victor.

This was first published in the August 2009 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Is man a polygamous animal?

Before we talk about infidelity, it’s important that we address polygamy. Because, adulterous individuals often justify their actions by saying that man is a polygamous animal, and that it is natural to have multiple partners. They compare themselves to animals and say that they too, like animals, function with biological instincts.

This comparison is wrong. Because animals don’t have the security of bank accounts, a job, assured meals and a woman tucked away at home to indulge, if none other is available outside. They do not aspire for name, fame, and prestige. They do not go for gourmet meals, overeat, and indulge—they do not live to eat like man, but follow their biology faithfully and merely eat to live. They do not stimulate themselves with pornography.

So, we see that man does everything that animals don’t in every other sphere of life but in the sexual arena. He follows the law of man in other areas, but wants to follow the law of the jungle in the sexual sphere only.

But as therapists we understand the statement, ‘man is a polygamous animal’ in a deeper context. Yes, man is a polygamous animal to begin with. However, he is born with a capacity to evolve as a higher being—from animal-man to man-man to ultimately a God-man. He is much more than just biology. He has been given the ability to love, to nurture, to discriminate, to evolve and to actualise himself.

There are three levels of functioning in a person—the level of ‘experience’, the level of ‘awareness of the experience’ and the level of ‘decision’. If you experience a biological attraction and are aware of what you are experiencing, it is okay up till that point. But when you nurse and nurture this attraction in your fantasies and then translate your fantasies into reality, you consciously decide to respond only to the biological man and not to the nurturing, discriminating and evolving aspect of yourself. Thus, you are not integrated in yourself. The biological man in you is attracted to a biological woman. That is a natural biological occurrence. But a human being is not just confined to his biology. He has been gifted with ‘discrimination’, something that animals do not possess. Thus, if you do not integrate sex and love, it can only leave you psychologically de-stabilised, dissatisfied, with psychological scars.

Social double standards

Now let us address the issue, whether promiscuity is more prevalent in men than in women.

Women are as prone to engage in trysts outside matrimony as men, because the same rules of biology apply to them too. However, there are social double standards, where men who have sex outside marriage are ‘studs’, but women who step out are ‘sluts’. Patriarchal structures give men more freedom to cut corners and violate prohibitions without remorse. The same double standards also exist while viewing sexual escapades of powerful and glamorous demigods. The ‘rich and famous’ tend to get away with eccentricities and moral irregularities. In fact, their deviations add exotica to their personality, whereas the ‘ordinary middle-class citizens’ have to explain and be accountable for the passions of their mind and body.

Breeding grounds for infidelity

The other question the Beckham escapades throw up is should you ‘kiss and tell’? Should you disclose your extra-marital affairs?

Firstly, infidelity in a marriage is not confined to a sexual tryst alone. Shirley Glass, USA’s godmother of infidelity research, and author of Not Just Friends, says, “One doesn’t have to have sex to be unfaithful. Secret emotional attachments outside a marriage can be just as great a betrayal as extra-marital sex.”

It is important to mention here that extra-marital affairs are not always a sport, or an indiscriminate indulgence of biological urges. Often, the marriage is in troubled waters for other reasons, which are not being resolved through healthy communication. Instead of finding a solution within the marriage, one starts finding the solution outside, such as in extra-marital affairs.

Sudhir was developing an attraction for his colleague. He was married to Seema, who carried a lot of ‘baggage’ from her unfulfilled and unresolved relationship with her parents. This made her into a very demanding, needy and clingy wife, who gave her husband no room to grow as a person. His need for an adult and mature companion made him step out of marriage to seek such a companion.

Priyal felt alone in her marriage with Aditya, who was a wealthy businessman, and the dutiful son of a widowed mother. Aditya expected Priyal to be a daughter-in-law and companion to his mother, and a wife to him in between his business trips. She felt lonely raising her son, with no one to share her joys and sorrows. Her need for emotional closeness and warmth made her transcend the threshold of marriage to fulfil her yearning body-mind.

Karan was an executive officer in his wife Bina’s father’s company. He was asked to fit in with her family at all times irrespective of his opinions, feelings or needs. His anger took the form of withdrawal from intimacy in the marriage and an extra-marital affair.

If you have lost a needle in your house, you don’t try finding it outside under a streetlight just because it is dark in your house. You cannot find outside what you have lost inside. What is needed, is lighting a lamp in the house, and finding the lost needle where it is lost —within the house.

All the above cases could have been resolved through humble introspection, and open and healthy communication between the partners, instead of infidelity. The choice of stepping out, of course, comes with a heavy price.

Repercussions of disclosure

The consequences of ‘kissing and telling’; disclosing your extra-marital affairs too, can be quite different in different cases.

The disclosure can either end up in a legal separation, or it could end in an ‘emotional divorce’ where the couple remains locked in a painful relationship for the sake of the children, finances, or family and social circumstances. Surprisingly though, the disclosure also sometimes, acts as a catalyst in setting right all that was wrong in the marriage, with both doing some introspection and growing up.

A legal separation is usually the option chosen by the aggrieved party if s/he has a good alternative available in terms of parental and family support, financial stability, no children and therefore the higher possibility of another intimate relationship. Couples also resort to this when either or both, do not want to introspect into their own contribution to the relationship problems. And when they allow their hurt, anger and pride to dictate their decision to separate. Bina took the option of legal separation when Karan disclosed his affair, because of the above reasons.

An ‘emotional divorce’ is riddled with pain where there is depression and guilt in the partner who has confessed to an affair, and aggression in the form of constant taunts about the affair from the ‘righteous’ one, as in the case of Priyal and Aditya. Priyal was guilt-ridden and depressed after she disclosed her affair, and Aditya left no opportunity to rub it all in as often as he could. They opted to remain ‘technically married’ because of their very young son, Priyal’s lack of finances, Aditya’s need for a caregiver for his ageing mother, and his need for a wife ‘to show off’ at social occasions.

When Seema got suspicious of Sudhir’s late working hours and confronted him one day, he said that he had grown increasingly fond of his colleague; a woman who understood and empathised with his problems, who valued and appreciated his creativity, who was a source of support and strength, and where he felt he was accepted and could relax and be himself. This was a ‘wake up call’ for Seema. She almost instantly identified how she was contaminating her marriage by only ‘taking’ and not ‘giving’, and got her act together. She got into individual therapy for herself, healed her past, and got down to ‘giving’ in the relationship. They got into couple counselling, there was free and frank communication, a lot of tears of repentance, and a step-by-step reconnection process that both of them went through—the result—an authentic mutually satisfying and fulfilling relationship.

So if you ‘kiss and tell’, there is no telling what the result might be. Then the question remains, ‘Should you?’

To tell or not to tell

The answer is, if you are in a troubled marriage, and having an affair, you need to seek help for the marriage through counselling, so that the root of the problem is addressed. If there is to be a self-disclosure, then the partner is emotionally prepared by the counsellor to receive the information constructively and to process it in a healthy manner.

If you have previously had an affair and now have realised your folly and have no intention of repeating the same behaviour, then you are not the same person who transgressed. You need to forgive yourself and work on establishing a healthy relationship with your partner. It is not imperative that you discuss your past if you are truly not the same anymore.

However, the decision to disclose or not is a very personal one. The concept of facilitative genuineness can help you decide whether or not to ‘kiss and tell’. If you feel that your disclosure could help and be beneficial for your partner and facilitate a better, more ‘real’ relationship, then you should disclose. However, if you feel that your disclosure will in no way help but in fact harm your partner, and the relationship, then you need to keep the information to yourself. Facilitative genuineness of course, should in no way be used as a guise for withholding or sharing information to serve your own best interest. Therefore, the decision to disclose or not, requires a whole lot of integrity in a person.

Gautama, the Buddha was giving a discourse in a village under a tree, when a man came up to him, spat on his face, abused him angrily and walked away. Buddha wiped his face and continued the discourse. The next day the same man came up to Buddha, fell on his knees, cried and begged for forgiveness. Buddha said, ‘You are not the same person. Whom should I forgive?’

This was published first in the June 2009 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Trying to mould the man into a ‘custom-made’ partner to suit her taste is a gross mistake women make. He will resent the fact that you don’t accept and appreciate him for who he is.

Last word: This does not mean that relationships should not be negotiated.

But the negotiations must be win-win and not win-lose for a relationship to be mutually respectful.

2. Psycho-analysing him

Often, women subject their partners to psychoanalysis based on self-help books/pop psychology articles they have read, talk show discussions they have heard, or personal growth workshops they have attended.

They should stop it right away. Your psycho-babble might cost you the man-woman relationship as you might be way off base in your amateur analysis and thus offend him. Even if you are right on track, he might not be prepared to receive this insight constructively or to deal with so much vulnerability.

Last word: Leave psychoanalysis to the professionals; be his loving partner instead.

3. Rejecting vulnerability and fallibility

If women view a man who is sometimes unsure, seeks support or is emotional as a ‘wimp’ and ‘not man enough’, they are not allowing him to be human.

If he’s made to feel that he has to be the rock or the pillar for you 24/7 with little margin for error, then this strain of being ‘superhuman’ will start telling on him and on the relationship.

Last word: An adult-adult relationship is one of equals, and if he feels he does not have the right to be human, and is not loved and accepted as a vulnerable human being, the foundation of the relationship gets eroded.

4. Insisting he be a mind-reader

If a woman insists that her partner be constantly tuned into her moods and non-verbal cues, and know what she needs, wants, desires, or what her thoughts and feelings are and why…it will be a long wait for them.

And if he is accused of not ‘knowing’ what to do in the moment based on his ‘mind-reading’ of you, you will succeed in making him feel extremely confused, anxious, guilty and angry.

Last word: Such emotions are a sure shot antidote to love. Learn to express what you need and want without expecting him to know it all without you saying.

5. Being clingy and needy

If a woman insists on being the ‘be all and end all’ of the man’s existence, and demands a 100 per cent of his time beyond work and absolute essentials like his morning bathroom routine, she will make him feel claustrophobic in the relationship.

If he feels enslaved by your neediness and your clinginess, he will seek more space away from you. The more he seeks such space, the more clingy you might feel, setting in motion a vicious cycle that can only distance you from each other.

Last word: Remember, a healthy balance in the space and time allocated for the couple, the individual, family, work and social life is critical for a sustainable relationship.

6. Comparing him to other men

If women constantly put their men down by comparing them to other men they know, they are chipping away at the man’s self-esteem.

In comparing him, you are declaring that as he is not attractive to you, and that he has to be someone other than himself to be loved and accepted by you. This obviously cannot bode well for the relationship.

Last word: Stop comparing and learn to see the good qualities in him—love him for who he is.

7. Running down his family and friends

If a woman makes a hobby out of fault-finding, writing off, and putting down her husband’s parents, his siblings and his close friends, she is definitely not endearing herself to him.

Forcing him to ‘choose’ with ultimatums, and putting him in a precarious position where his loyalties between you and the others are stretched, is not a mature way to handle a relationship.

Last word: Discuss your concerns about the dynamics without crude put-downs to reach a mutually acceptable and comfortable solution.

8. Guilt-tripping him

When a woman uses words such as, ‘If you don’t do xyz, it means you do not love/care for me’, it makes the man feel that he is not good enough and inadequate as a partner and thus not worthy of the woman’s love.

Last word: Holding him ransom to the ‘if you loved me you would do xyz’, and guilt-tripping him to fulfil your demands, will make him hate you in the long-run, though he may do your bidding at that time. Give him space and liberty to be himself.

9. Score-keeping

If a woman keeps a little black mental diary, and lists all she has ‘done’ for her mate and compares it with what he has ‘not done’ for her, and if her need for one-up-man-ship and keeping the ‘I’ and ‘you’ score supersedes creating the space for negotiating what ‘we’ can do to better ‘our’ relationship, she will be left only with a score card in her hand.

Last word: If your need to win is much more than your need to be happy, that is exactly what you will have—you will celebrate your winning score alone.

Tear that diary and look at what you both can do together in your relationship instead of measuring each other’s individual contributions to the relationship.

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This relationship is rife with anger, resentment, guilt, anxiety, sorrow and manipulation instead of being a source of joy, trust, warmth, safety, fairness, relaxation, love and acceptance.

Instead of being on the same side, parents and children are on opposite sides, constantly on guard against each other, both feeling a sense of betrayal, hurt and distrust. What makes this most intimate relationship go wrong?

When a child is born, it is dependent on the parents for its physical survival. It expects emotional nurturing from them as well. Unfortunately, this is where things start to go wrong.

Being able to reproduce, and provide for the child’s physical needs till she is dependent on you, does not qualify as parenting. Even animals reproduce biologically and feed their little ones.

Human beings are capable of much more than just being biological parents like animals, and human children need much more than just physical nurturing. We are capable of love, forgiveness, wisdom and justice—the qualities of a true parent. But this does not always happen.

Most children grow up feeling physically nurtured but emotionally deprived, because their biological parents, whom they rely on for emotional fulfilment, are themselves emotionally empty.

Sandhya’s 5-year-old son was constantly cranky and was socially inept. Sandhya herself had been a depressive for several years. She was always around for her son for all his physical needs but was unable to give of herself emotionally as she found herself in an emotional ‘black hole’. She was caught up in her own issues with her parents.

Sandhya’s mother believed that sacrifice and martyrdom were the highest virtues, and she resented Sandhya’s zest for the good life. When Sandhya opted to join a dance troupe and travel the world, her mother was aghast and turned away from her.

Her father was too meek to stand up in support of his daughter. Sandhya felt unloved, unaccepted, hurt, and angry, and remained locked in pain. The result was that her pain got transferred to her son, and the emotional ‘pain chain’ continued.

Parents are supposed to be emotionally nurturing, unconditionally loving and accepting of their children. Children naturally tend to take this love for granted. There is nothing abnormal or wrong about it. However, some parents fall short in fulfilling this expectation, and children are devastated.

Lack of love

The evidence of the crippling effects of a loveless life is found in the offices of psychiatrists, which are filled with children and adults who have no awareness of their own worth and no sense of identity.

They are filled with hatred and fear, and tortured by anxieties. Only because the parental love that they should have been able to take for granted was simply not available.

Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning: “The salvation of man is through love and in love”. Psychotherapist Alfred Adler has said: “All human failures are the result of a lack of love.” Today, psychotherapists are unanimous in the praise of love and love relationships as the chief source of human maturation.

Only recently have the behavioural sciences reached the point of enlightenment to show us that unconditional love is the only soil in which the seed of a person can grow. Someone must empower the child to believe in himself, and only someone who loves him unconditionally can do this.

The question then is: Should children take their parents’ love for granted? The answer is a yes. However, since such love is not always forthcoming, children need to be helped in their inner healing.

They need to be assisted in coming to terms with the fact that their biological parents might not be emotionally equipped to provide that love. Psychotherapists have to help such loveless children parent themselves, and to find the source of reliable, dependable and authentic love and empowerment within themselves.

Material dependency

Another question is: How much should the child take for granted? What is normal and natural, valid and justified?

If you have observed a bird with her fledglings in her nest, you will see that till the fledglings do not have the strength in their wings, the mother feeds them with great care. As soon as the little birds start to flit around, the mother bird uses her beak to poke at them till they are out; she watches them fly away to their destinies.

It is normal for a human child to seek physical and material nurturing till it reaches physical maturity. But after that, children need to fend for themselves and seek their own destinies.

However, parents who are unable to emotionally nurture their children, provide for them materially even beyond the age of physical maturity. The disastrous result of this lopsided nurturing is in the form of emotionally stunted and materially ill-equipped biological adults like Rohit.

Rohit was the only son of a workaholic father and a fanatically religious mother. While Rohit was growing up, his father was busy expanding his business. Rohit’s mother too was busy earning a name and position for herself in the religious cult she was associated with. Rohit was provided for materially by his parents even in adulthood.

His father gave him money to compensate for the lack of love from his side, and the mother gave her full support saying, being born in a rich family was Rohit’s karma and therefore he needn’t labour for money.

When the business suffered a major setback, the father had a heart attack. Rohit was devastated. He was suddenly faced with cutting back his expenses and having to work to sustain his lavish lifestyle.

He was neither equipped to fend for himself nor could he postpone material gratification. At the same time, he had low self-worth and feelings of being unloved because of the emotional deprivation from the parents. All this led to Rohit having anxiety attacks and depression.

So his parents took him to a psychiatrist. But they were unable to see the role they had played in Rohit’s condition. Rohit refused to take charge of his life, his father continued to work and his mother had to sell her jewellery.

The verdict

As seen in Rohit’s case, when children take their parents for granted to provide materially for them for the rest of their lives, it is almost always a result of lopsided upbringing.

It is parents who create dependent individuals with low self-worth, who have valid emotional needs but invalid material needs.

Children should be able to take their parents’ unconditional love and acceptance for granted, as it is only unconditional love that can assure a child’s growth to his full and total potential. We can be confident that a child will be correctly disciplined and will grow into a mature, balanced and confident adult only if our primary relationship with him is one of unconditional love.

But are parents capable of being taken for granted by their children? Perhaps not!

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At every step in life, you are faced with a choice. The choices you make then, determine the next set of choices that become available to you. Mature individuals know this.

Let us examine some reasons of cheating we have come across in our practice of counselling couples. We realised that far from feeling regret, many people, in fact, feel deserving of a relationship on the side.

6 lame reasons for cheating in marriage

I deserve it

Dev had a mistress in Switzerland. She had been his interpreter cum secretary when he started his business there. He claimed that when he got married, he had an inferiority complex as back then he was a “nobody”. This prevented him from objectively evaluating if he would be compatible with his wife.

He was now a successful business man and felt that he deserved to have true love and the pleasures of life with an attractive and compatible woman. After all, he had worked hard to be where he was. He asked his wife to deal with this reality and accept the status quo for the material comforts he provided, or agree for divorce.

Then, there are also men who abuse the religious sanction they receive for more than one marriage, by getting involved with other women. Some men even claim they have ‘royal blood’ in their veins. They feel this gives them the right to have a mistress like their ancestors. Yet others see it as a sign of wealth and prosperity if they can materially look after many women.

Such people do not feel the need to resist post-marriage attractions, and they permit themselves to think about and engage in cheating by being in more than one relationship at a time.

A word of advice: Those who justify cheating in their marriages need to engage in the light-shedding process of counselling. This will help them evaluate the validity of the cause, and objectively examine the reasons for the same in their marital relationship or their individual pasts. It is only through such a process that the individual can be helped to understand one’s own attitudinal and behavioural patterns, and heal.

Entitlement issues

Kalpana had grown up seeing both her parents engage freely in infidelity. Her father justified his cheating as a need for a mentally stimulating company of an educated woman, which his wife didn’t provide. Her mother reasoned hers as the need for emotional support and companionship, which Kalpana’s father didn’t provide.

As a child, at one level Kalpana was confused and upset with the estrangement of her parents, and their subsequent justification of their respective extra-marital affairs to her. At another level, there was a need to accommodate her parents’ conduct. This was an attempt to overcome her own feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth due to her lineage.

As a result, Kalpana herself engaged in a string of extra-marital affairs, each one lasting briefly. She explained her own behaviour each time, saying that her husband was making a big thing out of nothing. She saw her marriage as an arrangement, which she was willing to continue, provided that she be allowed to find ‘happiness’ wherever she found it. Kalpana was re-enacting the script her parents followed.

A word of advice: Those who are repeating history by living a life of promiscuity like their parents should examine the deep pain they experienced as a child of such parents. They should ask themselves if they felt that the parents should have exercised another option, such as attempting a mutually fulfilling relationship through counselling, or having a respectable and friendly separation, where the interest of the child is kept in mind. This could help them with insight into their own options today.

Cult culture

Mohan belonged to a spiritual cult that encouraged open marriage as a more evolved form of relating between man and woman, under the guise of discouraging dependency. You can well imagine his marital life. He had convinced his wife of living this life, and had dumped several of his post-marital girlfriends saying that he was discouraging dependency in them, thus doing them a favour. He would sell the same spiritual jargon to them and move on to his next affair. Two of his ex-girlfriends, who were almost his daughter’s age, came to us for counselling, nursing their wounds. They were confused about relationships.

A word of advice: Those who condone an open marriage because of a cult, could evaluate the credentials of those who propagate it. They should ask themselves whether they are using this concept as a cop out to avoid being in a committed relationship, in which partners exchange constructive feedback for personal growth.

Rebel trouble

Individuals growing up in authoritarian households with an extremely moralistic upbringing often creates in them a deep desire to rebel. They might rush into marrying out of caste or marry early, to adopt a lifestyle that is completely different from their parents’.

They develop an attitude of rebelling against any form of binding whether of the family or of being in a committed relationship. Sona was one such person. She married a foreigner, had a baby, and was done with the rebellion against her parents.

However, the rebellious streak remained and manifested when her husband asked her to participate in a family tradition. She rebelled against being told to do so and threw a fit. The conflicts soon began. She looked for someone who would humour her and let her do as she pleased, and subsequently left her husband and child to live with a younger man.

A word of advice: The indiscriminate rebels without a cause need to examine their automatic reactions and consciously break free from them. They need to decide with their partners, and with the help of a counsellor, if the marriage can be saved in a fulfilling way. Together, they could start afresh, or separate amicably and maturely.

Cheating for kicks

Some married women claim that getting attention from a male colleague gives them a high. They are curious to see how far this can go and to what extent they can keep the attentive male on a string. They justify their affairs by saying that their husbands are unattractive, uncommunicative or insensitive, and if they can get it elsewhere, they deserve to enjoy it.

A word of advice: Those who take what they have for granted, and experiment with post-marriage attractions for the kick of it obviously have no other creative outlet. An empty mind is an ideal place for the devil to start his workshop; such individuals should engage in some creative pursuit to channel their energies, so that they can feel the joy of what they have i.e. the positives in their partner and their relationship.

Office spouse

There also is an increasing trend of having ‘work-husbands’ and ‘work-wives’. This happens because of the long hours people spend at work.

A man and woman working together can communicate better with each other and empathise, especially if both are having issues at home. In such a case, there is a strong chance of the work relationship becoming more attractive and taking precedence over the marital relationship. Although it is termed as good friendship by the one engaging in such a relationship, it is labelled by the married partner as emotional infidelity or emotional cheating.

Professional environments (a call-centre, for instance) demand long working hours in close proximity with colleagues and are a natural breeding ground for such emotional attractions. There is a possibility of cheating in the form of physical intimacy as the relationship gets more intense with time.

A word of advice: To counter work attractions, it helps to consciously maintain work-life balance. Increase communication time with your spouse and create pleasant memories. Whenever possible take a vacation, and iron out all differences through constructive dialogue to find a win-win situation.

When it’s time to end the marriage

Most people who give in to post-marriage attractions do so because they think that the grass is greener on the other side. However, that illusion is soon broken. The truth is, you are the same person, and you carry yourself into every relationship. Therefore, unless you fully understand your own motivation and behaviour, you will perpetually be looking for greener pastures.

Finally, if you have truly found the love of your life even after marriage, then have the courage to end the previous relationship and live the life of your dreams. But, if you want to have your cake and eat it too by continuing adulterous relationships, remember, this decision has far-reaching consequences. It affects not just your own emotional well-being, but also lives of your children.

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Their children, for some reason, are not comfortable sharing details of their lives with their parents, like Allen, who peddled drugs during his college years.

Although he was not a ‘user’, Allen did it to earn some extra money to spend on his rich girlfriend, who later broke off with him. After that, he started using the drugs himself. He now peddled to sustain his addiction.

His parents heard of his involvement with drugs for the first time at a police station when he was arrested with a group at a rave party. Allen’s father was a school principal and his mother was involved in social service and church activities.

His upbringing was such that even while he was doing what he was doing, he knew that it was self-destructive. Yet, he went ahead with it as a choice and hid it from his parents because he didn’t want to deal with detoxification and rehabilitation.

Chitra’s family was orthodox. Her father was an authoritarian and mother, submissive. She was aware of how strongly her family reacted to anything that did not fit into their scheme of things.

She had seen her father’s stern stance when her elder sister Komal had expressed her desire to marry a decent boy from a different caste. Komal was confined to the house. Her father even threatened suicide if Komal went ahead with the affair.

Her mother would cry hysterically because of the shame Komal had brought on the family. Chitra rebelled against her family on the sly by engaging in smoking and drinking. Once she lied about going to a college trip and spent the weekend with her boyfriend.

She had unprotected sex under the influence of alcohol. She got pregnant and had an abortion—all this without the knowledge of her parents. Not wanting to marry anyone else, her sister Komal committed suicide. Chitra was extremely depressed when she came to us.

We engaged them in family therapy to help them deal with the tragedy. We also helped the parents understand the circumstances that led to choices made by Komal and Chitra, and the reasons for Chitra’s secret life.

Children do not disclose their lives to their parents because they are aware how unreasonable and self-destructive their choices are. They know that their parents will reason with them out of genuine concern. But the children do not want to hear the ‘external’ voice of reason, as they have muffled their own ‘inner’ voice of reason as in the case of Allen.

Another reason why children keep secrets is that they do not trust their rigid and inflexible parents to take a reasonable stance in any issue. They have experienced disproportionate reactions, and unreasonable and unilateral decisions made by parents with no scope to reason and negotiate.

Such children not only keep secrets, but also indiscriminately rebel against their parents’ rigidities, sometimes against their own interest, as in the case of Chitra.

Children fear being judged harshly. They fear facing anger and rejection, or being mocked by their parents. Worse, they are scared of being distrusted and emotionally abandoned. They also keep things from their parents when they feel confused and ashamed like Sapna.

From the age of 10, Sapna witnessed her mother in compromising positions with her father’s male friends when he was not home. She was confused as she saw her quiet and submissive father being completely normal with the same friends, and relating normally with her mother.

She wondered whether he knew and was ignoring it, or whether he was oblivious to what went on. It left her fearful and confused as she debated talking about it to her father and mother. Would her father distrust her? Would he laugh and dismiss it, thus giving his blessing to all that was happening?

Would it create problems between her parents? Would her mother get angry and abandon her emotionally? Sapna reeled under shame, anxiety, anger, depression. She harboured feelings of inadequacy within herself for being a child of such parents.

As a result, she held back from them—neither did she express herself on this matter, nor did she share with them anything else about her own life. Having made such unhealthy decisions for themselves, she felt that her parents were incapable of guiding her.

Cathy had been sexually molested by her father since she was 13 years old. At 14, when she first told her mother about the ‘bad things’ her father did, her mother reacted with a bitter outburst. She blamed Cathy for trying to ruin their marriage, accused her of maligning a sweet and hardworking father, and called her a characterless girl who fantasised about her father.

Cathy felt most unsafe in a place where she should have felt most safe—in the care of her biological mother. Cathy clamped up forever. She saw her mother as completely unreliable and undependable for her safety and security.

Her parental home was the most threatening place to her physical and emotional survival. She left home at the age of 15 never to return, and lived a life of anonymity. She kept her life a secret not only from her parents but from everyone else as well, as she could not bring herself to trust anyone.

She opened up much later in therapy when she was extremely depressed and had suicidal ideation.

On several occasions, Amit had seen his father touch his younger sister inappropriately. He had also seen his mother noticing the same but keeping quiet about it. His sense of shame and confusion with the warped attitudes and behaviours of his parents made him a secretive person forever.

He never shared anything with his parents about his academics, his friends, his career plans, his concerns, his dreams or aspirations. An uneasy distant relationship existed between them.

As you can see Sapna, Cathy and Amit could not rely on their parents. This created an unbridgeable divide between them. The parents in all these cases had made such unhealthy choices, had such a distorted scale of values, and had behaved so inappropriately, that the children almost felt like ’emotional orphans’, and therefore kept their lives to themselves.

What we learn from these real life stories is that children need to feel emotionally safe and secure. They need to be able to trust that reason will prevail, and that negotiation is possible between them and their parents. Only such a relaxed and balanced environment will help them open up their lives to their parents, and help establish a healthy relationship where there is free, frank and fearless communication.

The world is not a safe place for our children—it’s a world where drugs and violence are commonplace, where chances of sexual perversion and molestation are increasing, and where the tentacles of danger reach right into our households through the internet.

In this scenario, the only safety we can provide to our children is healthy values, which empower them when they are out in the real world.

For such communication to take place on a sustained basis, our children need to allow us to be a part of their world. This can happen only when they believe that we, as parents, are trustworthy, balanced, rational, loving, and are ourselves living effective lives. Remember, you impress by who you are and not by what you say.

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