Love and Dating 🫶

Three friends discuss their ideas about love. They believe that love should start with friendship and trust. They also discuss the importance of green flag behaviors in a relationship, such as reassurance and communication. They share their experiences of mistaking love for lust and talk about the possibility that love may not work out or be reciprocated. They believe that love can come unexpectedly and there is no right time to find it. They also discuss the negative effects of lust and the importance of recognizing when love is not meant for you. So who am I sharing this space with? I have two dynamic ladies with me, my very close friends since day one of college. Introduce yourselves please. I'm Srinidhi. And I'm Mandia. And I love cats. I love animals and spiders. I don't love cats guys, disclaimer. It's her who loves cats, not me. Speaking of love, what is your idea of love? Love? I believe that love has to be, for me first, the stage of love has to go through friendship. I cannot love a person directly without going through stages of my life. Like, I have to be friends with, I have to be comfortable with, then I'll go to a step where I can trust that guy and then I can fall in love. You say being friends is very important. If I'm not his good friend, I cannot love him in simple. I have to know him right, and I will know him if I am close to him. I hear a lot of people say that, you know best friends make great lovers. Do you agree Mandia? I do, and personally I think love is such a beautiful thing. Oh my god, it's like space. Okay, we're not jumping off the science now. No, I mean, space is fascinating right, because you don't know much about it. Space and ocean, it's so high and so deep at the same time. You are literally spoiling the rapper which she has by giving her those rules, which I'm going to mention in your podcast. I mean, it's very philosophical. Yes, it is. It's so beautiful and interesting. For me, I think love is about having somebody that you can always rely on, and also being the person they can rely on, they can, on you. And it's so beautiful to love, and it's so easy to love the right person. And you have someone who you can always be there for, or you will have someone who is always with you. You know you can fall back to them anytime, like your happiest moments, saddest moments, you know they're there. Maybe not physically also, you can just think of them, they exist, and you're always grateful that they exist. I think that's one thing you should be. Sometimes when people start loving somebody, they kind of get ungrateful, because you're so used to having them around. You're not grateful anymore, you're not acknowledging their efforts anymore. I think that is a bit problematic, because come on, they're there. And if that's the best thing that's happened to you, then you should be grateful about them. So speaking about love between partners, do you think it takes a long time to go from like to love? Depends. Depends on who it is. With the right person, you can fall in love so quick, and it won't even feel like a mistake. Transition. It won't feel like a mistake. It'll feel normal, real, safe. But then if it's with a complicated situation, then you'll go through a lot of phases of like, maybe like, maybe not. What about you, Sheena? I think there are people who literally take that phase from like to love for a longer time. For them to understand someone, or for them to see how that person is. You can't just jump onto some person just knowing the first part of how they are. You just have to look at it. You have to see if the compatibility is there or not in that relationship with that person. So I think it's fine if you take time. See, if you know that that person will love you or like you, if you're with them for a longer time, it makes a lot of sense. For example, if I like a person, and I tell him that I need a little bit of my time to understand you, or after some time I'll get back to you, if he's like okay with that, that's more than important for me. I think that's a green flag. Speaking of green flag, what are some green flag behaviors that are a must in a person, in a boy, in your situation? Reassurance. Elaborate. See, everybody has different love languages. Some partners might not be good at speaking and reassuring, like, you know, in words. But there is something that they like to use to express their love, and that can come in various forms. But reassurance, I think, is very important, especially with communicative skills also. Right. Doesn't necessarily have to be with words all the time. Communication can happen through so many ways. Yeah. Actions. Yeah. Gestures and actions. I think my love language might be touch. Mine is also touch, but mostly... Mine is gifts, expensive gifts. No. That's not going to come under green flag, I'm pretty sure. I think eye contact. That's beautiful. I think mine is, I don't know, there's too many. Bro, when it's girls, and it's guys also, typically if you want to tell, flowers, bro. I love flowers, but I also think that I don't have... I'm allergic, so I don't have it. So we're going to get such flowers next birthday. Yeah, sure. Or a cat. Yeah. Well, I love dogs. Oh, I think one of the main green flag is somebody loving animals. Because if you can be empathetic towards creatures that don't talk in your language, I think that's a green forest. So in that way, I'm a red flag, brother. I'm a red carpet. I feel like we are red flags. We're red carpets, because we cannot play with cats. No, we are, to be honest, we both are attached to cats because of Mandera. I am attached to cats because of Mandera. I like Chikki, I like... Brownie, Kattappa. Yeah, Brownie, Kattappa. I literally, see, the first day I went to her place, and those cats are a little annoying, but now I'm used to. That's a lie. That is a lie, because she starts saying, hey, go away, go away, and she starts kicking them. Okay, let's stick to love, love, not cats. Yeah, cats and love also come together, right? Yes, if you love a cat, that means you are okay with things that you can't control. You love an animal, you're a true lover. Have you had experiences of being in situations where you thought it was love, but it wasn't? Oh, yeah. I mean, now that I know more things, I know it was love itself, but it just didn't work out. Right. So love doesn't work out sometimes? Sometimes, yeah. For the better? Yes, that's for the better. And it's just not your soulmate. It doesn't work out. I've never faced that, brother, so I'm not getting that. So let's get through, we are in college. Yes. And a lot of people are out here to find love, not even infatuation and just having fun. Some people are actually out here to have love. Do you think college is the right time to... It could be, but... I think there is nothing like a right time to find love, anything like that. It's just... See, you will not be getting a disclaimer... It'll happen. It'll happen without disclaimers. It's just going to happen in your life. It's not going to be putting a disclaimer in your life that, okay, so right now, at this stage of your life, you're 19, there's a guy entering in your life. No. There's no warning. Love comes like a car accident. Right. It's like, to scare you, to get you in the face. There's nothing like you get to know it. It happens, right? How can you just tell that something is going to be on your way or something is coming? If something is for you, it is for you, right? I believe that if something is meant for you, it is just for you. So, in that basis, I'm trying to tell. You're not going to get a disclaimer that someone is entering your life, someone is going to be your lover. No. And that's the best part about love, because it might come in the most random of times, and it's up to you how... It can also be in the time when you're unexpected, right? When you're not even thinking that someone is going to enter your life. Like, it could also be when you're not even wanting to, you know, you're not even searching for love, and it just comes and it's like, Oh, hello, I am here too. Just ignore it. Yeah, actually. Friends having a podcast is just like a conversation. Yeah, exactly. I don't know why I even chose y'all right now. Anyway, moving on to the next sub-topic. I think a lot of people mistake love with lust. A very huge enemy to love is lust. It's also very inclusive. Love includes lust. Lust is not a wrong thing. It's just that, you know, it disguises itself as love sometimes, and people get trapped. Yep. So what do you think are signs that say that, you know, the person doesn't love you, but actually has lust for you? Bro, can I be very honest? If someone actually doesn't, like, show anything emotionally comfortable with you, or just physical, is everything physical? There's no love, right? There's no love. Can you see love there? No. But I feel that lust can also be manipulative. Like, it doesn't necessarily have to disguise itself as a physical, like, you know... Entity. Yeah, physical entity. It could also be gaslighting, manipulation, just to get to the physical. We're used to the word gaslighting at this point. Yeah. Which could look like love. Right, that's right. Perceived as love. Moving on, I think we also need to consider a factor where love is simply not meant for you. You know, there are, like, personally speaking from my point of view, I have experienced love, one-sided love, right? So many people have experienced it. Yeah. So, where I have given my 100%, but the other person simply, you know... Forbid the fact you exist. Yeah, I don't know how that works, because they too had something for me. But I don't know what made them just move on. So, do you think that sometimes love does not work out at all? Yeah. Like, you know, you love someone and they don't love you back. See, you have given your best. But if you're not getting the same from the opposite side, and if you're backing out, it's good for you. Because how long will you wait for the same guy or the same person in that relationship? You... Only if there's an effort from one side, there's no effort from the other side at all. So, it's better to back out. It will hurt you, but it's way too better than hurting yourself for a longer time. Right. You know the thing about holding on to a rope hurts your hands more than when you let go of it. But also, I feel like when this happens, people lose hope on love instead of that person. Like, I've seen people who have given up on love on its own, like entirely, just because your previous relationship didn't work out or something like that. But I feel like it's more about the person. Your heart will still love people. You can't stop your heart from loving. And if you're somebody who loves hard, you cannot stop it just because you've had one bad experience or several bad experiences. I feel like being afraid to love comes from that. But also, I've seen people brave enough to keep loving again and again despite everything, because that's how much value they give to love rather than running away from it. And who knows? It's not the same experience you have with the first relationship, how it's gone. You cannot expect the same with the second, right? You never know. You never know. That can be your rightful. Right. This was an interesting chat on love itself. So, concluding this particular session, I would like to pose... We have a question for you, Ashish. We have a question for you. That was very unexpected. Okay. So, what do you think love is for you? I don't know. I don't know. It's yet to come. I've never loved anyone before because I feel like I'm unable to at the moment because of a lot of things. Trauma, circumstances, my sexual orientation, a lot of things. But I think someone who cares is someone who you can love. So, if I find someone caring, someone who can, you know, give their time to me, you know, these are love languages. So, basically, you can find love in people who care, people who show interest in you for the long run. So, that, according to me, is love. I might never find it. No, who knows? I might never find it or I may find it very soon. Yeah. Or maybe sometime, you know, I have to wait for some time. But again, Or you might just end up getting a big house and a cat. Yes. Not bad. I can love that cat. I prefer dogs. I prefer dogs. Get both. Get a cat and a dog. A pussy and a cat and a dog. I don't know how that's gonna work. But anyway, during the session, I want to ask you if you can describe love in one word other than the love itself, what would you describe it as? In one word. Mandira. Ethereal. Ethereal. Srinidhi. Emotion. Love is emotion. Thank you so much for your time. This was a lovely chat. Thank you. And moving on, we will talk more about friendships in college. We have never been this formal before actually. Thank you so much for this. I know. But this was lovely. This was actually lovely. Thank you for having me.