Life cycle of a relationship !

I remember all the sleepless nights spent during my college days listening to the great poets. They range from Marathi poets like Mangesh Padgaonkar, Kusumagraj , Hindi poets like Harvansharay Bachchan to English poets like Eliot among many others. Poems are very refreshing in this 'prose world'. Today only I found the recording of poems recited by Late Mangesh Padgaonkar in my college. He has written number of poems on topic of love and I just like the way he tackles this most talked of topic. 

These poems triggered me to think about relationships and love in this 'whatsapp' world. Earlier people used to take much longer to get into the relationships. This is because the interaction of people was largely constrained due to limited means of connectivity. Thus people would take longer to know each other. But in a way it was good because the interaction was direct and not virtual as it is today.  Whatsapp, Facebook etc. have made this interaction so pervasive that I have seen some examples of couples getting into relationship within a week or so. you can know the virtual personality of someone on Whatsapp but reality may differ.

There is nothing wrong in it. But I believe that knowing a person demands much more time than this. You cannot decide within a week whether you can spend years with some person as a life-partner. One of my friends has very nicely stated that there are four important stages in any relationship-

1.Knowing and liking each other - This is very initial stage but very fundamental stage which will be the foundation for future relationship. But unfortunately this is the most neglected stage today. 

2.Falling in love and commitment- This is probably the most beautiful stage and the couple enjoys a lot here. 

3.Boredom of each other - Meeting a person just for 4-5 hours, going for a movie together, shopping, hotelling,picnics are just the rosy sides of relationships. The real test is when you have to live with a person for days together and you can daily see all the hooks-and-nooks of his/her personality. Then you get irritated, bored and even angry. This is kind of real 'knowing' of each other.

4.Rejuvenation/ death of relationship - depending upon the earlier experience of a person, either it survives or else gets broken. 

Thus I think that if you have properly worked on 1st stage, further process gets smoothed. Accepting a person in totality with all the grudges and all the sharp points in the personality is really very challenging task and is possible only if one sweats more in initial fundamental stages.