Broadly the word 'relationship' means 'an association', specifically 'an emotional association between two people'. This association can be based on love, affection, devotion, care, regard, sympathy, need, or greed in some cases, and also sometimes hatred forming the basis of this association.
Throughout our lives, we try hard to manage various emotional associations or relationships that we are surrounded with. We constantly strive to find the golden rule to form a successful rapport with everybody around us. And as someone rightly says– “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships”; so, our success or failure in life is measured by the quality of relationships we maintain with the people around us. However, an added concern is, the more we try to manage these relations, the more we get entangled in them. Sometimes, striking the right cord in a relationship is like a hard nut to crack. And when we are unable to crack this nut, we just say– “I want to be alone, I don't need anyone”. But, the reality-meter indicates that we humans are emotional beings and cannot survive without emotional support in our life. Our predicament is that we don't want to live with them and we can't even live without them. But, we are really smart people. In order to manage these relationships and move things as per our convenience and requirement, we chalk out various ways and tools. One such tool is named 'emotional fraud'. This means 'intentional deception to gain control of other's emotions'. If we look around, we will find many examples of this kind of fraud.
First let's talk about how parents use this tool on their children. If a child is pestering his mother for something that she can't provide and it is getting difficult for her to control him, she admonishes him saying– “Just wait until your father comes home, naughty boy; you're going to get it.” When father comes home, he may choose to ignore the whole thing as the situation was not that grave; but the mother gained what she wanted. The child was held as an emotional hostage for the entire day. This way of toying with other's emotions may result in resentment and destroys relationships.
Let's take another example of that of a coach. In both business and athletics, there are those who take the role of an angry coach, bellowing insults at their trainees or players with the intention of inflaming their passion to win. Such tactics do not work for people of any age as they may not respond positively to personal attack. They may wear a mask of compliance, but underneath they will create ways of sabotaging the coach's goals. People perform best when they are relaxed and are free from all such mental hassles as then the brain makes quick and targeted decisions. When assaulted by a furious coach, their state of efficiency is replaced by mental and physical tension and, ultimately, a clumsy performance.
Not to forget the youth of today who is both assailant as well as victim of this emotional fraud. Our youth prefers speed in this fast paced world. And the same speed they prefer when it comes to making or breaking their relationships. If they like someone, in no time he/she will become the focus of their life; and if due to some reasons they start disliking that person, then they are even quicker in flushing him/her out of their lives. Today, the emotional equation in relationships is very different. Just as a child, who when fascinated by a new toy, plays with it very carefully. He is very caring and possessive about it. But after a few days, when he loses interest in it, the same toy is found lying on the floor unattended. He may even throw away that toy in order to get a new one. Similarly, we also toy with our relations and others' emotions. This kind of behaviour can lead to serious consequences.
As per our great thinkers, the main reason behind such behaviour is, 'we do not have a control over our own emotions'. In today's era, emotions play a very important role in our lives and people are more sensitive than being sentimental. The results of a research conducted by Elle magazine showed that the foremost reason for unsuccessful relationships is 'lack of Emotional Support'. Unguided emotions can lead to emotional break ups, drug addiction, mental depression, and, last but not the least, suicide. Lately there was news in the media, a girl studying in engineering college committed suicide because her boyfriend dumped her on a social networking site 'Facebook'. Almost daily we come across such news in media.
To prevent these situations, we need to channelize our emotions in the right direction. The perfect and all-time source of this guidance can be none other than the master-controller of our existence, i.e. the Inner Self. When tuned to this source, our emotions are guided and channelized by the power of discrimination, whereupon we are saved from all kinds of emotional frauds. Not only this, then we become a strong support system for others as well.