“How poor are they that have not patience!
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”
–William Shakespeare
From Aristotle to Tolstoy, Plautus to Shakespeare, all great luminaries the world has ever known have emphasized patience as an ever treasurable virtue time and again, throughout centuries. Even Mahatma Gandhi went on to say “To lose patience is to lose the battle” and indeed, patience is the key to achieve anything professional or personal. Perseverance and dedication accompanied by just the right amount of patience can yield magical results leaving you surprised but coming to terms with reality, a lot of people do not seem to possess the golden virtue of patience. In a 21st century world characterized by overnight transformations and quick successes, most of us are not ready to devote time and patience to anything we do. Yes, time. If patience is one side of a coin, then, time has to be the other and they do run hand in hand, mutually supporting each other. And when it comes to your relationship, all kinds of it and specifically romantic ones, patience stands apart as an imperative quality for your relationship to blossom and mature into a beautiful flower that inspires many around you.
Table of Contents
New Relationships and the importance of patience in them
The initial phase of your relationship is of paramount importance, since that is the time when you usually lay down the premise for something colossal, something that’s longevity is absolutely unknown to you. A new individual is more like “unpathed waters” and “undreamt shores”. The tendency of the majority of people during this period is to drop uncountable text messages, meet ever so frequently, give the most exciting of gifts to each other or bombard each other’s doorstep with flowers every other day. These are lovely acts of love that we always cherish, however, the process of gradually and carefully unravelling every minute detail about your partner, having intimate, vulnerable conversations on topics that they usually reserve for silent contemplations and hearing out each other with an open mind and an unfaltering patience can work beyond wonders.
Reasons You Need Patience
Modern day relationships require the towering presence of patience which they most definitely lack, quite often. We live in a time where there are multifarious choices and all, quite competent ones. You do not like a phone or a job, a car or a house, you immediately go grab a new one and this approach to life has misguided far too many individuals in their relationships. This is because humans and material things function in a very different manner and we humans tend to equalize the two. You cannot determine whether you and your partner are compatible for a long journey in just a month’s time. No. That’s not how new relationships function.
Trivial fights and misunderstandings easily lead you to resort to irrevocable decisions and splits these days. In order to avoid them, we should subscribe to every bit of patience that there is, in all our cells. We do understand that you do not belong to your grandparents’ generation, nor is such unquestionable submission to your partner desirable or logical in today’s age but what you must try and emulate from them is the art of holding on to each other and never letting go of even the last glint of hope, no matter how bad it gets. You cannot afford to get impatient and apathetic towards your partner. Putting up an egoistic air can also cause irreparable damages to your budding relationships.
Different Ways To Be Patient-
- Focus on your life too!
- Accept any situation as it is
- Communicate
- Avoid comparing
- No room for jealousy at all
- Discover new things about each other
Focus on your life too!
A new relationship fills you with butterflies of exhilaration and enchantment grips your veins. You are apprehensive as well as excited at the sudden mercy of cupid on you and with that heart of yours pounding with joy, you wanna give your heart and soul to the relationship. You are possessed by this irresistible urge to dedicate all the time and attention you have in the world to this new relationship of yours but that is not advisable at all. Tagore once said that if you want a lasting relationship which does not turn into a burden eventually, you will have to understand and establish your lover in the centre of this world and not place them outside of it because if you do so, you are separating a human from the organic world that he rightfully inhabits. Thus, divorcing your lover from the world is an artificial way to love, the consequences of which are catastrophic in most cases.
You have a life of your own, your friends, work, family, hobbies and other inclinations which you should nurture and nourish rather than giving all of yourself to your relationship. A romantic partner enhances the beauty of your life for sure, but do not give them the power to complete you because you are a complete individual in yourself.
Accept it.
Acceptance is the best way out of any unpleasant situation in a relationship. A new relationship acts like an expository act of a drama, revealing to you so many unknown things about your partner. Accept them. Accept that they cannot behave or look in a certain way that you want them to. Try to come to terms with the fact that your partner might not be emotionally able to deal with fights in the same way that you do. The internal construct of a person cannot be changed because it is something they have internalized over years, so accept them the way they are and save yourself the burden of yet another impatience.
Communicate!
If you sense a dispute or a big fight coming your way, never keep it to yourself assuming that a thousand different things might have gone wrong. Just keep in mind that it’s always easier to discuss than to debate. Raise the topic that you think is bothering you or your partner and discuss the hell out of it so that it does not give rise to future misunderstandings.
Avoid comparing
Your relationship is definitely not your favourite jeans or a coffee mug that you compare it with anyone else’s. You can’t be panicking about why something that is happening in your friend’s relationship is not happening in yours. That’s utterly silly and strictly decline giving food to any such stupid thought. Every new relationship moves at its own pace and takes its own time to mature.
No Room For Jealousy at all
If you and your partner are on social media and follow each other, it’s very likely that you will come across their posts. Do not get obsessed however, with who’s commenting and who’s reacting and do not question everything that’s there on their handles. Their commitment to you does not necessarily mean you are possessing them even slightly. Have faith in your partner, have faith in the person that they are, not what they portray to be on social media or elsewhere. Provide them with ample personal space that a human being needs, to evolve over time. Jealousy drives you insane and therefore avoid it as much as possible, especially when your relationship is new.
Discover new things!
A very significant step of every new relationship is to discover endless things that just you two know about each other and the world is unaware of. Suppose you love gardening so much that you would buy all plants if you could have it your way and she hates the red roses you are planning to give her and loves orchids, instead. Now,these are situations that make your relationship more interesting because although you like each other, you do not know each other a lot. This also involves a lot of guess-work which is funny and exciting at the same time. You eventually come to know each other through a series of questions and patient discussions that helps the bond grow stronger.
Although easier said than done, patience truly simplifies every other problem emerging in a new relationship and is thus, a virtue that people should resort to whenever they see things falling apart due to impatience. It does take some adjustments and a calm mind to practice patience, but we should remain focused on working towards it and practising it better.
Just reading doesn’t help? Want more effective solutions? No worries. Download the Evolve App and you’ll surely find better ways to deal with your impatience issues. Hope you have a great relationship ahead!
Damayanti Dubey is a final year English major at Loreto College, Kolkata. She is a writer by passion and loves to indulge in languages, especially English, Bengali, and Urdu. She aims at exploring all of their intricacies and nuances. Damayanti is a disciple of Padma Bhushan Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty and is a national scholar of Indian classical music. She has always believed that a sound mind, free from the clutches of regressive and negative thoughts is the key to living a healthy life and makes efforts to promote mental wellness through the power of her words.
Damayanti believes in thinking beyond boundaries.