What’s your problem??

My close friend Charlie spoke to me the other day, regarding his marriage with his long-time girlfriend Rosy. He was seemingly happy and contended. His story has been a tough one, and credit goes to both for pulling this off after such a long time. Being one of his old friends, he used to share some of his feelings with me (the reason for which I have still not recognized). I clearly remember one night, when he spoke for almost 20 min, regarding his day.

That was the day when Charlie had taken his girlfriend out for lunch followed by a movie. Later, these people went to a botanical garden, and the serene skies made it more pleasant for them to spend time. Charlie generally describes such moments as the most dangerous ones, because – these are the times when girls become cozy and you never know what is there at the other end of the tunnel. As expected, Rosy started to share her inane feelings, about some topic which Charlie could hardly connect himself with. However, just running out of choice, he listened to her and started giving some suggestions regarding the issues which she was sharing. After some time, they started to walk down the beautiful lanes of the garden. By that time, Rosy was a bit floundering, and Charlie knew that he had told something wrong and screwed up somewhere. Charlie asked Rosy to walk properly, and the immediate response was – "What's your problem?". Charlie had little choice but to shut his mouth. Later, even the skies lost its serenity and they both went to their respective places.

That night Charlie was a somewhat more upset than normal and called me, to share this experience. As he shared his experience, I hardly found any reason for anyone to get upset. Since Charlie was accessible at that time, I asked him what made him upset. Charlie told - "What's your problem?" is the last thing he would like to hear from Rosy. He mentioned that, almost every alternate meeting, he gets to hear that from Rosy, which turns him off. He is hurt, when the person he cares so much, gets to say – "What's your problem?" without giving heed to the concerns, based on which he would have said something.

As a novice in such sentimental matters, the best I generally do is to give a patient hearing – but my greatest fear is the question he generally asks me – "What do you think I should do?". But this time, I think he was convinced that I am a bit apathetic (thanks to some overly logical analysis, I had given before), and didn't ask me anything.

However, this time, interestingly I was a bit puzzled about the problem of "What's your problem?" with both the guy and the gal. I discussed this with some of my confidants, and tried to understand what makes girls say such things whenever they are upset. I must admit that none could give me a convincing answer. Technically, one of my psychiatrist friend told about the play of hormones in the female's brain, which generally lead to impulsive reactions, during certain times. That was pretty logical ones, but not strong enough.

However, in totality, I tried to connect the dots (brought out by my friends) and draw a considerably clear picture of it. I could make out one thing pretty clear – The culprit is not the gender but the way nature has imposed their respective duties.

The biggest challenge here is when roles created by nature are reversed. I am not sure about the reason, but as days pass by, the events have generally re-instated the belief that nature wins over nurture. Love stories generally have these elements of role reversal and considerable clashes are prone to occur. Thanks to creativity, that nature possesses - the combination of genes for a female or male need not necessarily instill their respective hard-core qualities. This adds to the complex equation.

One of my close friends admitted that when girls share their concern, they require everything, but a solution. And that's where Charlie flunked – he tried to solve, when it is not required to. On the other hand, Charlie hardly shared anything, even in situations where it was expected. He generally used to swallow such things and tried to start afresh, eventually accumulating unwanted stuff in his mind. My friend mentioned this type of mentality is called cave-syndrome.

I am personally not sure, if this is the case in every story or not, but somewhere in some form, most of us would have an analogous encounter with our various partners (may be work/ study/ confidant/ friend etc). This brings about one more important aspect for me again and again – Learn from others experience also... But we all realize that it is a tough task...!!

Let's see how Charlie n Rosy cope with "What's your problem?" syndrome post marriage… Offcourse there isn't much option then... :)