No matter where you live and who you are right now. Relationships have always chased you. Whether it is New York or New Delhi, you have fallen in love, had your share of happiness and lost the person somewhere while walking on the path of life. But relationships don't bother us. What bothers us is the 'state' of the person/s involved. We can be in a serious/casual/die-hard/fling or any other kind of relationship but it is not the commitment we are afraid of. It is the attachment with one's memories when the other leaves. Or sometimes when both does....

A common study suggests that nearly 47% of the world's total population suffers from the fear of break up. The paranoia haunts them so deeply that it makes almost impossible for them to fall for anybody else. We all crave for freedom, which is the most common instinct among-st all of us yet we are somehow scared of the same when it is offered on a silver platter after abandoning our loved one or vice-versa. Why are we so panic-striken about it? And why do we continue to endure this silently? Nearly half the society that we live in is afraid to date. And sadly, the reason is nothing but our fear of loneliness ..our fear of returning to the same place from where we began. Why can't we go back to the normal lives again? We live in it right now and are happy. So what exactly is the reason that scares the shit out of us? Do we expect a fairy tale romance? Does our senses shut down as soon as the heart turns into a field full of butterflies?

I myself believed in not falling in love..."break ups are painful, I would rather stay single and wait for the perfect one than cry for months who left me in the mid sea..." I once said. But today, I know how wrong I was....but then, I can't blame myself much. Being a 17 year old girl, I always fantasized a perfect partner when in reality there is nothing of that sort. Even not me! So when I began to date nearly two years later and decided to take a jump from the cliff of 'singularity' I closed my eyes praying to prove my 17-year-old-self wrong. But somehow she cannot be completely denied. Yes, perfect men and blah blah do not exist but Yes, break-ups are filthy and they are fucking painful. (Pardon me, kindly) But the most painful thing unfortunately is still not the so called end of a relation. It is the PowerPoint Presentation of Memories that flashes in front of your eyes every now and then making you feel guilty or the victim depending on your position in the relationship.

Fear of Abandonment is common! Nobody wants to be left alone. No matter what. Remember Vinay Pathak in 'Rab ne Bana Di Jodi'? He rightly said to his best friend Surinder Sahni aka Shah Rukh Khan that every person is hungry for love and if he continues to wrap up his affections for his wife, Tanni, like food stuffed in his lunch box then she might as well ignore him forever....'cause the husband's other-flamboyant-self Raj showered upon her the attention and care what he couldn't provide being the docile Suri. More than the film perhaps, I connected to the dialogues. It's so true indeed. All of us are so thirsty for someone else's appreciation that more often than not we become oblivious to provide the same. But my question, however, is....why do we effect our lives with the ones who no more exists? What is it about the 'Ex' that threatens our very existence?

If I say that nearly 15 people out of 40 move out of an existing relation solely due to their wish, you'll be amazed to know that almost half of them still secretly stalk their ex-es (earlier it was physically going from one place to another and nowadays its solely virtual, thanks to Googles and Facebooks) and feel a tinge of guilt every time the very mention or sight of their previous lovers come to the foreground., and not only that, almost six out of them approximately wish to go back and nearly three of them fulfill their sexual desires by recalling their previous encounters. It is still very shocking to think that people are ready to rebuild what they previously thought was hackneyed and useless but are not ready to be single and "alone".... Why do we feel so vulnerable when alone? Are we scared that a sword( in the form of our Ex-es present ) will slaughter our hearts into pieces? But if we have really moved on...why do we 'still' feel that little heartbreak moment? It's almost like watching your best-friend getting into a relationship,you dont love them yet you cant share them, sadly here it's more complicated though.

The most damaging after-effect of a break up is to face your friends and the so-called society. You are looked upon as somebody who had some sort of 'divorce'! And the even worse part is to answer their innumerable questions and justify them, why you couldn't build yet another 'ship' of yours....and no matter which side you fall or whose fault it has been....they always respond with the same old sympathetic nod, that it's gonna be okay someday(the usual tilting of head on one side) and you can't help but nod yours, agreeing helplessly to their falsification. However in-spite of the continuous interference in your privacy by the world and by that certain weak spot in your heart....the power of the Ex is dominated by the presence of those creatures who continue to exist in your life and equally in theirs whom you just cant eliminate for any sort of reason. It is the presence of these cannibals(well, I couldn't come up with a better epithet) that ruins our single-hood and even our new relationships 'cause the past comes ticking every now and then holding their hands and hiding behind their words....'You know I saw him last night over there...', 'She seemed so happy to me...', 'He was holding the hand of someone else...' etc etc...The constant updates that we get from them or maybe from a friend of that friend perturbs every nerve in our body and causes havoc till that thought is somewhat erased. And even if we happen to be the person who held the hand of someone new....we are perfectly fine to wrap our newly found happiness from our Ex-es, sometimes due to fear of losing happiness or sometimes due to plain-shame.....guilt and well, a sense of failure. Yeah, I know sometimes we do like to flaunt the new species in our life to the extinct ones....but the ratio is way too small and it only happens when the new one is "way better" than the old lover establishing our pride and dignity....and definitely not when the opposite happens....

The only thing that shakes our very ego is the shame that we carry after a break up. Every person no matter what has done at least one thing that makes him believe that the relationship was affected by it. Lack(or excessive) of time/fidelity/trust/sexuality/obsession/jealousy etc...no matter what the reason, after two people part ways, both of them carry a bit of load till he/she finds somebody else with whom he/she can share it. However, the past continues to haunt them....us...all of us. Our minds don't forget things easily and until we perform a lobotomy we are not capable of forgetting the memories deliberately or voluntarily! The times spent together, the touch that we felt, the money that we spent, the gifts we received...every damn thing remains within our loneliness' easy reach. Perhaps that's why we are so threatened by our Ex-es.... They directly or indirectly continue to make impressions on all of us as we do the same and every relationship  henceforth becomes an amalgamation of what we were/did before plus what we have become(due to them)....it scares me to think, how much does it effect a person who marries for the second time? If a non-legal stuff between two can wreck lives completely...how much can it destroy the ones who got married and failed??? Why do people exercise so much control on our lives, specially those who are not even physically present? Is it because of the memories that we share or is it because once they raided our lives and now that they aren't there we simply crave for the same kind of dominance no matter good or bad? What is it?

A friend once asked, "Will you tell the new guy everything about your previous relationship???" I answered..."yes I would". But I couldn't say that only if he is important to me....he shall be entitled to know and I would demand the same from him! After all, I don't live in my past anymore and neither does he or any of us....so why brag or cry about the things that has already happened. No matter how much we curse or abuse ourselves we went into something with our own consent and now that we don't have it anymore, we cannot break our heads....or our hearts for that matter! Our Ex-es will be in our lives as long as we allow them to be....as long as we allow ourselves to linger around their facebook/twitter profiles and their habitat. The sooner we migrate from the place the better is our chance for survival....and the greater is our chance for falling in love, once again! Our ex-es don't haunt us...we do! We scare ourselves into the belief that its our fault..that our lives have become miserable and it's our sense of judgement that promptly hides all their previous faults and showcases only ours....Thanks to the very educated civilization that we live in, for pushing us always into the deepest part of the pit.

Today after writing the blog, I'm certain that we are scared of ourselves much more than anybody else. The strict teacher in our class might not be that strict....our brains conjured up that fact and anything he does, will be some Nazi-like act in our eyes. When two people part ways...nobody exercises control on the other. We let some of our grey cells do that! A myth we create to protect ourselves that destroy us gradually in the name of someone whom we once loved and somehow lost. . .   

-Rini Ghosh.