Hold your trump card.

A friend usually argues with his spouse of 25 year marriage that even after spending quarter of a century with him, she could not understand him.  It is an everyday scene and, very honestly speaking he now feels, his children may have started despising him for this nasty behaviour. His wife calls it male-nagging!

Now there are two aspects of this matter :

1.  My friend's argument over this misunderstanding factor is that it really hurts you deeply when a person whom you adore so much and who has spent  25 years with you, does not sometimes understand your thinking pattern, your behaviour, your habits, your intellectual level, your visions, your feelings, likes, dislikes and your states of mind under special circumstances.

And when it occurs frequently, it severely slaughters your faith, conviction and the feelings of oneness causing invisible cracks in relationship.

With this angle, it is certainly agonizing and painful and could result in undesirable situation with hypertension and depression as the case is with my friend these days.  He confided to me one day recently that he felt as if he was losing his sanity like a slow-poisoning effect.

He is becoming more and more irritant now and seems to be extremely sensitive to matters of no value and importance.

2.  Yesterday, we discussed the situation at length.  After listening to and tolerating his explosive outbursts, I told him that it is not possible for every person to completely understand even the dearest and most loved one and vice versa.  One can just try to expand the limits of understanding with the passage of time.

I told him to imagine as if marriage, like any other relationship, is a friendly game of playing cards.  What is the purpose of any game?  Merely to demonstrate your skills to the opponent by using legitimate tactics and following the set rules.  There are situations in certain games where just one card, the trump card, becomes the deciding factor of the game.  Before throwing down this trump card, all other players, one, two or three keep juggling with their imagination to guess just what that card is.  And the moment a player shows that trump card, the game comes to an end to be started again.

Unlike the Western societies, most of the marriages in our region last till the death of one life-partner.  In that case, the process of understanding each other continues till one partner leaves the table and joins the majority.  Now, if someone says that I completely understand my spouse and vice versa, then what is left in a relationship to explore, to discover and to satiate the curiosity.

You feel hungry, look around for meal, have it and the process ends with no more quest for more meal.  Yes, quest is the real thing in life.  People with positive thinking enjoys it more than the fulfillment of dreams and achievement of goals.

So, what I have derived is that being completely understood should not be the ultimate goal.

Life is a one-time game and you cannot show your trump card to restart another game.