Recently, a friend of mine is embroiled in a love triangle. The ex-boyfriend of his girlfriend has come into the picture and asked her to go back to be with him. For the sake of anonymity, allow me to use pseudo names to address my friend as John, his girlfriend as Jane and the ex-boyfriend as Frank in this column.

Now, Frank has known Jane for nearly ten years but they had parted some years back. My friend John has only got to know Jane for a year before he proposed recently. Before the proposal, everything was, in his words, “perfect”. They saw each other almost every day and have so much to share that they sometimes chatted overnight in 24 hours café. To friends, they were very close and almost the ideal couple. John mentioned that they have so much similarity in their lives; I have no doubts they are soul mates.

After all, if he cannot love himself, how can he truly love another?

After the proposal however, things seemed to change for the worse. John could not help but noticed a difference in his girlfriend’s attitude. Jane was becoming more distant and upon further pressing, she pointed out that they were seeing each other too much and she was losing a life of her own. John did recognize the problem and he was determined to improve the situation but the relationship deteriorated further.

It was after this time that John first revealed the situation to me. Thinking that this is a very common problem among relationships, I suggested that he should try to love himself more. I felt then that he might have come to base his own happiness on his girlfriend. After all, if he cannot love himself, how can he truly love another?

Similarly, many relationships today are unbalanced, including my own past relationships.

Another friend of mine is so “controlled” by his wife that he has to ask permission to meet his friends. It sounds absurd but this seems to be much more common than we have probably realized. In this case, his wife has a dependency issue. She has come to base and weigh her happiness around her husband. “What do I do when you are not around?” She retorts and "declares" that her husband is responsible for ensuring her happiness.

This is such a misunderstood notion in our society today. 

Firstly, many people firmly believed that a marriage must last forever. And my parents struggle till today in an abusive roller-coaster relationship because they try to conform to society’s expectation that marriage must continue no matter what. Yet, marriage is a man-made institution and there are couples who are never married but live more happily than many married couples ever were.

When we are done with our lessons and experiences or when relationships no longer serve us, we move on.

Besides, we are really genderless souls who have reincarnated hundreds to thousands of lifetimes on planet Earth alone. We have been male, female, gay and lesbians. We also have had countless boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, flings, affairs and other lovers. There is simply no such thing as living happily ever after, in the most literal sense.