Let there be indiscriminate proposing…..

Have been thinking and coming up with theories about life and love. And I have discovered one thing today about relationships. Some people who are considering a person as a potential mate put a lot of thought into whether the person has what it takes to be a compatible mate.

Will the person fit in with your lifestyle, family, career goals, family goals or all the other things that are important to you? Do you think you want to wake up with this person every day? Do you truly believe that living with this person can enhance the quality of your life? Once you're sure, you simply pop the question. Shall we?


Another group of people spends a lot of time analyzing what the other person thinks of them. They try to interpret the potential partner’s reactions, openness to a relationship with them and try to read signs and signals. They are so apprehensive of the response that it takes aeons for them to just make an expression of interest.

It’s hard enough knowing your own mind about a person. Trying to guess what’s on someone else’s mind, especially when you are a mix of apprehension and hope about those feelings is somewhat disastrous.

I don’t see why it is not easy to ask a question to which you want to know the answer. Is it a fear of rejection? Is it a fear of losing whatever exists by trying to take it to a new level? Is it because you have no reason left to hope and have no direction to go in if the answer is negative?

Honestly, I can’t see many reasons why the simplest step is not the most obvious for everyone. And I believe that it probably has to do with the level of maturity of a person. A more mature person is not ashamed of his feelings and has the conviction to stand and fall by them. He’s able to recognize his own emotions, acknowledge them, articulate them and accept the other person’s right to do the same.

I remember so many instances when this “Mujhe kucch kehna hai” style of functioning killed romance altogether. Boys who write the girl’s name in blood; or write love letters and express their love to the girl’s friends in order to gauge her emotions; who try to throw out conversational gambits to see how she reacts in order to look for a clue.

I have seen a gamut of them in the course of my life. All this bumbling around has confused and repulsed the object of his affections instead of attracting her. The era where women reacted in righteous, puritanical anger at a proposal is long past. Women recognize that expression of interest is an okay thing to do.

Of course there will always be the few women who will brag about the new boy in the bag. And there will be women who need to have a proposal a day to keep low self esteem away, simply so they can look at the number of proposals they have received to bolster up their egos on bad hair days. At worst, she will giggle with her friends over the ridiculousness of the idea that you aspired to her.

These are strong arguments in favour of caution, if only to keep the egg off your face. But look at the other side. If that’s how shallow the object of your affection is, the less time spent analyzing her motives, the better. You can live down anything – including your occasional bad taste in mates. After all, I once wanted to marry Dharmendra.