Most relationships are transactions dressed as love.
Not cynically. The people involved are not aware of this. But the structure is: I will give you this — attention, approval, presence, time — in exchange for your not threatening my sense of who I am. The moment the exchange becomes unfavourable, the relationship becomes difficult.
This is not love. It is an arrangement made between two incomplete selves, each hoping the other will supply what is missing.
The Vedantic understanding of relationship begins somewhere else entirely. Two human beings who have, to some degree, recognised their own completeness. Who come to the relationship not to be filled but to be present. Who love the other person not because of what they provide but because, in the presence of that person, one's own depth becomes more accessible.
The person you can be most silent with is the person who most sees you. Not the one you perform for. Not the one whose approval you need. The one in whose presence you stop performing.
Rumi's teaching on love is not comfortable. He speaks of the Beloved as the force that dismantles the false self — the reed cries because it is separated, yes, but the separation is what generates the music. The most transformative relationships are not the comfortable ones. They are the ones that require you to become more fully yourself in order to remain in them.
The Bhagavad Gita's contribution to relationship: Prema — unconditional love — is distinguished from Kama — desire-love, which wants the other to remain as they are because change threatens the arrangement. Prema makes space for the other to grow, even when that growth is uncomfortable, even when it changes the form of the relationship.
Conscious relationship requires, first, a conscious self. You cannot be fully present with another if you are not present with yourself.
The work begins there.