Defects and Influencing

Originally written in Dec 1990 in personal diaries

“I love you not only for your virtues but also for your defects” or “I love you for your virtues inspite of your defects” – which would you choose to say to your beloved? And which of you would you like to be said to you by your beloved?

There is an inherent difference between the two, which can be perceived from several points of view. One way to look at it is to say that the latter is a rational evaluation while the former is blind, irrational attraction. Another way is to say that while the former is passion, the latter is love.

An opposing way says that when you love a person, you love him/her completely, as a whole, not to be broken down into certain aspects of personality. Hence the first statement is more valid than the second.

Quite a romantic viewpoint. It leads us to the idea of influencing. Even if you say that you love a person as a whole, there must be many large/small nuances in him/her which you don’t like. You may choose to ignore these because of other, very likable aspects of his/her being, nevertheless these irritating nuances are still there. What is your solution to them? You may start adjusting to the fact that you have to live with these, effectively you go into the mode “love you inspite of your defects”. The other alternative is that you get influenced by your beloved and begin liking those things which were earlier irritants. Else, you may try to influencing your beloved into changing and removing these irritants. In either case, you are changing the defects into virtues, either by removing those defects or by changing your definition of defects and virtues. Again, unconsciously, you are in the mode “love you for virtues inspite of defects”, having seen to it that there are no defects.

Too unromantic, too dry, isn’t it? Let us go a bit further. Can there really be influencing? If you are entering a relationship with the idea of influencing the other person, the whole relationship is meaningless. You may as well search a person who already has qualities you want. If not that, at least realize that you are accepting this relation with this to-be-influenced person with a catch – your influence may not work.

A much more realistic idea is to change together, to move forward together. This would mean that each of you is entering the relationship due to each other’s virtues, inspite of each other’s defects and with the knowledge that such and such traits are defects in other’s perception. Further, as the relationship develops, there will be a lot of structural and definitional adjustments so that this changing together helps both of you in reducing the net defects by changing them into virtues.