A month ago, a student asked me a question during the ‘boundaries and difficult conversations’ class of my undergrad relationships course.

“I am able to say ‘no’ when someone has a big ask of me. Let’s say they asked me to attend a party tonight but I have other plans, I can say ‘no’ easily. What I struggle with is saying ‘no’ to many small asks that eventually build up to something big. By the time I am ready to say ‘no’, I feel guilty. How do I prevent this?”

At the time, my answer was simple - one must first become aware of their own boundaries, so enforcing them becomes easier when necessary, rather than having to negotiate them on the fly.

The student sat down, partly satisfied. But I kept thinking about the question, because it was a profound observation.

A few days later, I found myself in the exact same situation.

A friend asked me if I’d like to accompany her to a store. I had independently wanted to go there anyway, and I was free at the time she asked, so I comfortably said ‘yes’.

But then, the outing slowly started expanding.

Just as we were about to leave, she suggested we cab it. I instinctively said ‘no’.

I generally dislike being told ‘how’ to do something, so when someone suggests the method rather than merely the activity, my defences automatically go up.

She reasoned with me saying it would be a pain to park, but I still didn’t budge. Then she casually added, “I also want to try this new cafe nearby, and it might be easier to walk if we cab it”.

I immediately felt a knot in my body somewhere.

I ignored it because I was so mentally occupied with protecting my agency around ‘how’ we would get there, that I failed to pause and ask a more important question…

“Wait … am I still comfortable heading out now that the plan has changed?”

We visited the store. Then the cafe. And then another store nearby.

With every additional stop, the discomfort inside of me grew louder - ‘this is not what you’d originally agreed to’.

But because each ask was individually small, I kept telling myself, ‘It’s only another ten minutes. I don’t want to be difficult, let’s just do this one thing.’

By the time I finally said ‘no’, the one hour I had budgeted had quietly turned into two. On the way back, she hinted at making yet another stop. This time, I finally said, “I have to head home, you go on ahead”.

I came back home thinking about my student’s question again.

I was aware of my boundaries the whole time.

Then what happened?

Thinking about it for a while, I realised that what I experienced did not feel like crossing a boundary in a single grand moment.

It felt more like slowly moving along a curve of reluctance - every additional ask slightly increased the internal cost of continuing. But the cost wasn’t enough to interrupt the situation immediately, it was just enough for my body to quietly register the discomfort.

Since the changes were gradual, I kept evaluating each new ask independently instead of cumulatively. If someone had initially asked me “Would you like to spend two hours visiting multiple places today?” I might have said ‘no’.

But nobody asked for two hours.

They just kept asking for ten more minutes.

Those are two completely different things. One involves evaluating boundaries once. The other involves repeatedly re-evaluating them under social pressure, time pressure, and the desire to preserve harmony.

I also realised that not everyone goes through this.

Some people seem comfortable interrupting situations like this much earlier than I did. They comfortably say, ‘Actually, I’m going to pass, you go ahead’. The awkwardness of interrupting social ease doesn’t seem to weigh on them as much.

My biggest insight from this experience was that I tolerate personal inconvenience far more easily than social awkwardness. So I continue accommodating long after I’m actually comfortable with it, and eventually, that turns into resentment.

But the thing I found most fascinating was that my body had registered the cumulative trade-off much earlier than my conscious mind. I felt it the moment she mentioned the cafe stop afterward.

At the time, I ignored it. Looking back, I think my body already knew the situation no longer felt aligned.

Boundaries are a fairly new concept in my own life (<10 years), so I am always learning. But teaching about it over the last three years and learning from my students has deepened my understanding of it.

I used to think boundaries were mostly about learning to say no. But in the Indian context, saying ‘no’ comes with its own set of complexities. People don’t accept a ‘no’ as easily. ‘Disinterest’ is often misconstrued as ‘potential interest, pending sufficient insistence'. And when somebody insists a lot, we’re wired to say ‘yes’ to avoid the guilt of hurting someone else.

In this complex dance of saying ‘no’ and ‘yes’ and ‘no’, we often don’t notice when a series of small accommodations quietly turn into something we’d never consciously agree to.

So I’ve realised that the deeper skill in boundaries is noticing this drift early enough to interrupt it. For me, that starts with paying attention to the knot and treating significant changes in plans as fresh decisions rather than incremental ones.

My gran has two cats at home - Lilly (female) and Chilly (male) - a couple. Recently they had two kittens, sadly neither survived. One died at birth, and another shortly after. So, we never got to meet them.

My aunt, who gran lives with, told me a very sweet story about these two cats.

A couple of days before our visit, Chilly had found a baby squirrel and brought it to Lilly. He sat back and watched her play with it, protective and attentive, retrieving it each time it tried to escape. My aunt wondered if Lilly saw something of her lost kittens in this small, squirming creature.

The squirrel, a red bushy-tailed one common in the Western Ghats, did look startlingly like a kitten. And the squirrel didn't seem distressed either, it seemed to quite enjoy the cuddles.

It was as if Chilly was trying to fill a void in Lilly’s life as a mother who’d just lost her two kittens. You don’t know how to fix pain, so you just … bring a squirrel? Like a man who shows up with flowers after a bad day, not entirely sure what he’s doing but committed to the gesture nevertheless.

During my visit, I watched them have their meals together, play together and just laze together. They looked like any other regular couple going on about their lives. On the 4th morning, I noticed that the dynamic between the two had completely changed.

They skipped breakfast. They weren’t playing with one another. Chilly had a slight limp. Lilly was constantly growling at the sight of Chilly. She’d keep walking away from Chilly, but he kept following her around, trying hard to make up. We’ve all seen this dynamic somewhere - the pursuer and the distancer.

Every time, she sat down somewhere, he’d go sit beside her, just a few steps apart. They’d keep staring at each other - eyes open, and then close. Her tail perked up and curled at 90 degrees, swaying left to right, in anger. His tail perched down, swaying slowly and relaxed, as if nothing were wrong.

After a few minutes, he’d slowly try to move his paw near hers, and she’d growl as if she were screaming “Get away from me, leave me alone”.

Undeterred, Chilly would just start the cycle again. Like a super clingy boyfriend who believes persistence (not charm) pays off.

By the next morning, he’d grown a little impatient from being constantly turned down all day. He now started grabbing Lilly’s fur to get her attention. But that only pissed her off even more.

After watching this dynamic unfold over two whole days, I wondered if Lilly was breaking up with Chilly. Maybe Lilly had found someone else, and Chilly may have had a tussle with the new boyfriend, and was hence, hurt and limping?

My aunt said that Lilly may not leave home, because she’d found a nest for her future babies. Chilly, a house-cat with no real hunting skills and a serious ‘whiskas’ addiction, wasn’t going anywhere either.

We left during this drama, and the next morning, my aunt promptly reported that our theory had been confirmed - Lilly indeed had a new boyfriend, a black cat, and she’d brought him home for breakfast. Chilly tried to fight him, and chase him up a tree. By evening, he’d given up - he lay sprawled on his back, lovelorn.

A lot of people tell me the human dating/ matchmaking market is ruthless. Turns out the scene is just as chaotic if you have four legs and zero communication skills.

I was not teaching this because I've figured it out. I was teaching it because I haven't, and I've been paying close attention to that.

Personally, I have trouble with feeling or even identifying my feelings in real-time. And when I do realise what I’m feeling at some point later, I have trouble dealing with it constructively.

I tend to perceive my feelings as global and permanent. But over the years, I have learnt that I am not alone in this. In moments of vulnerability, many of us tend to let rejections hijack our identities.

I have witnessed a great deal of rejection quite intimately, in others as well as myself. I’ve mostly sat quietly beside it, watching the spiral unfold in real-time and tried to make sense of it one conversation at a time.

Until recently, I had never tried to abstract my learnings across multiple conversations. So, for the first time, I asked myself …

“Why do rejections hurt so much?”

After some introspection, I realised it’s because rejection is always much deeper than it seems.

When someone rejects us (no matter how tiny the action is), it hurts not just because of the action itself, it hurts because of how we internalise it.

Let me give you an example of a micro-rejection. I’ve written earlier about how these small everyday rejections quietly accumulate in relationships.

Years ago, I went on a date. My very first. I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to plan our wedding the moment he dropped me home after our date. lol. I was 19, and this was almost two decades ago.

I sat by my Nokia 1100 waiting all evening, but the dude never called. In the first hour, I wondered why he didn’t call. By the second hour, I’d started manufacturing my own explanations. Maybe I’m not as cute as his ex. Maybe I’m a terrible dater. Maybe I didn’t matter. Maybe I’m not enough. Maybe he’s a jerk.

I wasn’t crazy, although for a while I thought I was. But turns out, this business of meaning-making in the context of social rejection is evolutionary; it’s what has helped us survive as human beings.

I mean, the fact was simple - he didn’t call. What I didn’t have all afternoon was an explanation. So, I manufactured one on my own. Ok no, several of them. None of them real.

But when I’d had enough of my fictional explanations, none of them satisfactory, I just picked up the phone and called him myself. He said he was busy buying litter for his cat.

Sigh.

He was being honest. He really was. I believed him.

Except, I felt like shit. Worse than his cat’s shit. Because his explanation only answered the fact, not the stories I'd spent the afternoon building. The cat's litter had nothing to say about whether I was cute enough, interesting enough, or worth calling back.

So those self-doubts just sat there, unattended, waiting for the next silence to fill.

I realise, the stories we begin to tell ourselves to make sense of why someone did something eventually become much bigger than the action itself.

So, I think of a rejection as an ice-berg with two parts.

The tip is the fact or what actually happened. Beneath the fact is a humongous piece of story that we’ve created in our head to make sense of that fact. Often, these stories are a function of how vulnerable we are in general or in that relationship, and how invested our identities are in that particular bond.

So the pain we experience with rejection isn’t just “they rejected” (fact). It becomes “this says something about who I am” (story). So the fact+story makes the rejection seem bigger than it is.

In that case, I wondered, if we could discern fact from story, would we be able to catch ourselves from spiralling?

Think about it …

If I asked how you’d respond to the fact alone, and not to the story, I bet you’d have a different response. Because, honestly it’s far easier to deal with than when the fact comes enmeshed with the story.

It sounds simplistic, but I think it’s not trivial to implement it in real-time. So we tried a little fun exercise to practice this model in a safe environment.

I divided the whole class into groups and gave each of them a simple fact - ‘someone seen-zoned you’, ‘someone excluded you from a party’, ‘someone cancelled a plan’ and asked them to create a 2-min skit around it.

It was fascinating to see how each group came up with a completely different story from similar facts. Afterwards, we debriefed to see if the audience could discern fact from story.

We also observed if the rejection was being internalised, or externalised. Before the exercise, most students told me they usually blame themselves when rejected. But during the skits, they didn’t. Some blamed themselves, while others blamed others. Turns out, rejection-responses aren’t universal. They are not personality traits, they’re just situational reactions.

My class is going to test the model with live-scenarios this week to see how it helps them experience rejection differently and come back with feedback.

I wanted to share the same prompt here so you could try it too.

When you feel rejected this week, I’d like you to pause for a minute and journal:

Fact: What objectively happened?
Story: What is your mind telling you it means?

Do tell me if you try it and the rejection feels even slightly different.

To which that person said, “Everyone over 40 out of a job today, has become a coach”. I don’t know if that’s true, but something about that framing made me uncomfortable.

At some point in my journey running Marriage Broker Auntie, I called myself a coach. It was convenient, people recognised it and it was easy for them to find me. Maybe. I am not sure. But I always felt deep discomfort about calling myself a coach. I don’t know if it was that specific label. The label itself. or something else altogether.

I still don’t know.

It’s also why I’ve never tried getting a coaching certification. People have suggested it in the past, including my own mentors. They said it’ll help me strengthen my skills, help me leverage them in a different domain and build credibility.

Somehow, it never resonated with me.

In 2011, a year after I was married, things got a little challenging at home. This is probably what people call post-honeymoon, when you discover the realities of being married and living with someone else. A lot of things I took for granted pre-marriage was now no longer the case. One of them was around financial stability.

For instance, when we got married, my husband had a job. He’d studied at some of the best colleges, and I had no reason to believe that I’d have to navigate financial uncertainty. But then I did, and I did so, terribly. I was scared. My parents were panicking, which made me feel worse. I stopped sharing. I started pretending that it wasn’t bothering me, while it ate me slowly inside.

I was married before anybody else in my friend’s circle, at 23. So, my friends didn’t exactly understand the anxieties I navigated in marriage. They’d just say, '“aiyooo, i’m sure it’ll be okay dude”. It wasn’t.

And then they’d go on to share their woes of being single, dating or navigating the marriage market. I’d hear them judge potential partners, and make extrapolations based on past and present to evaluate potential, and it would all sound ridiculous. Because I was on the other side now, having made the same ridiculous extrapolations about potential but now dealing with the realities of my own delusion.

So, I’d challenge them. I didn’t want them making the same mistakes as me. They were my friends after all. I’d keep probing why they believed what they believed, and where that belief came from. I was genuinely curious. Not about them, but about thinking itself. In challenging them, I was beginning to understand myself better. It was like I was trying to figure out where it all began going wrong, so I have a narrative for why things went wrong or a template for how one could prevent it before they got married.

But here’s the thing - I never told anyone ever what they should or shouldn’t be doing in their lives. I only asked questions, and pressed them for clarity. Because I was looking for answers as much as them. It was probably a way of navigating loss of control in my own life. They didn’t mind. It was helpful for them too.

So, was this coaching? I don’t know.

Even to this day, when someone comes to me with a big decision they want to think through, helping them gain clarity is only incidental. I ask questions because I want to know. My line of enquiry has a life of its own, I don’t control it. I don’t plan for it. I don’t train it. I let it run wild, real time.

If it helps someone else, it helps. But it’s never been my intention.

So, when I ‘coach’, I bill people for my time. Not my coaching skills, because that’s something they value. Not me. Ok no, that’s not true. People don’t come to me because they value my skills. They come because they trust me. It’s a safe space. If nothing, it’s a space for them to think out loud, not be judged and if lucky, make a breakthrough.

And I’ve also learnt this the hard way. When people don’t trust me, but they come in because somebody else they trust recommended working with me, it fails spectacularly.

So when people tell me that I should get a coaching certification, I feel like Chandler from this episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Thank you for reading, as always!

--

I’m going to leave you with notes that people sent me after our conversations ..

Working with you reminded me of “Mirror”, a poem by Sylvia Plath - like clearing the knots, putting words to thoughts which hovered around and stitching them to make sense. You pushed me to think differently.

You helped me be completely honest with myself. You were analytical, pragmatic and everything I needed to get back out there with a renewed perspective.

Thank you for the conversations, and helping me break down my past experiences. I feel like I have let go of my past and can finally move on.

You’ve been on my team from the get go and that made it easy to open up without the fear of judgement or awkwardness.

Each conversation with you was really insightful. You remind me of a fun version of Yoda.

You are a great listener. Your quantitative approach provided me with a different perspective. It felt like having an honest chat with a friend.

I love new years.

Sure it’s just another day in the calendar. Similar to yesterday. And probably similar to tomorrow. But there’s something beautiful about being able to reset, even if it’s only made up.

It allows hope to be renewed, and that can make a whole lot of difference.

2025 was not one of my best years. I made several attempts to do things, but I was met with more resistance than I ever have. I tried to find a job, I failed. I tried multiple career pivots, but nothing stuck. I did a lot of advisory work, but never got compensated for it or led to anything more meaningful. I tried to find collaborators for my work in AI, I failed. I tried to finish my manuscript, but life kept getting in the way. I tried to close a publishing deal, it stalled spectacularly.

Every attempt to create something new, find closure, seek support or make a difference was met with rejection, roadblocks, indefinite delays and silence.

And worst of all, my personal life suffered. My husband and I fought more than we ever have. We were on the brink of separating several times this year, and that shook not just us, but our kids too.

I found myself constantly looking for hope, or just some sign from the universe that this life was worth living, and all of my efforts weren’t in vain. And I found them occasionally. They may have meant nothing if 2025 was an ordinary year. But it wasn’t. And so these moments meant a heck of a lot, and taught me to be more conscious and more grateful.

I had a student who’d taken my happiness class earlier reach out offering to support me with teaching next semester. It felt nice that she still remembered me and my class. I had an old client heart-fully acknowledge me in her journey to finding love. It reminded me that not all efforts get acknowledged immediately. I had quite a few of my newsletter readers offer to give feedback on my book, and a few did too. This reminded me that not all acknowledgement is always explicit.

Most of all, what kept me going through 2025 was my writing. Every time I opened word to continue writing, I could forget everything else in the world, even if only for a few minutes each day.

This was probably my biggest learning this year - in patience and resilience because you write for hours, days, weeks, months and years before anyone else but you, can see your work. Even then, whether that work matters to anyone else but you isn’t guaranteed. There is no pay check, appraisals or even likes. It’s just you and your writing, all on your own. And that’s why loving to write matters more for a writer than anything else. And I am glad I do.

But that’s never enough. Having my family and close friends supporting and cheering me on mattered more than anything.

Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about today - interdependence.

We can’t exist alone. We need others. We thrive in partnership. We thrive in collaboration. We thrive through trade. We thrive in communities.

But all of this needs skills in interdependence. Not just independence.

Trust, listening, communication, conflict resolution, collaboration, patience, resilience and learning to operate as joint entities, not as solo beings in vacuum are skills that don’t grow on their own, and not overnight.

When you’ve optimised your entire life for independence, it’s very hard to let someone else in. It becomes very hard to seek help, or support someone else. It becomes hard to stay and thrive as a couple or as a team or as a community.

This is a quiet struggle of a society that is becoming increasingly nuclear, and a generation that is becoming more individualistic everyday. You can’t help but learn to be independent in a society like this.

Unfortunately, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more independent you are, the more isolating the society becomes.

Earlier this year, as I was studying human x AI interaction, the one thing I spent a lot of time thinking about is how AI is making us much more independent, isolated and disconnected from one another.

It’s not so much our ability to think, craft sentences or memorise that is getting atrophied, but it’s our ability to connect with one another as humans.

Through that phase, I realised that my work in human relationships probably matters more now than it ever did.

So, choosing to stop thinking about this or working on it, was a choice that didn’t hold the test of time.

I realised that if anything, my efforts in decoding interdependence and helping people build better human relationships is more important than anything I could do in just AI.

Frustratingly, I realised that AI is probably just another layer, but the foundation is still our humanness and our ability to connect with one another. And this means, I won’t stop talking about relationships. I can’t.

I, for instance, was always uncomfortable asking for help. It made me feel incompetent, and even weak. But in 2025, I told myself that asking other humans for help is a skill, and not a weakness. So I asked for help several times. I asked people to refer me to jobs. I asked people for advice. I proposed potential collaborations.

A lot of these asks were met with lukewarm responses, or silence. Very often, I wanted to crawl back into my self-sufficiency shell, and chat with an LLM. But I didn’t. I kept trying to reach out to people even when I didn’t feel like, or worried about being judged. All because this is something I knew I sucked at, and the systems around me weren't helping either in actively getting better at it.

I have learnt, through all the asking, that sometimes, depending on someone else (real people) is not a bad thing. They may help you if they can, and if they don’t, that’s fine too. It’s not a reflection of my abilities or circumstances alone, it depends on their ability or circumstances to give too.

And that’s at the core of interdependence - how people come together, to support one another and build stronger systems, in all its messy human glory.

All each of us can do is try.

Maybe you had moments when you needed help too in the last year, and hesitated to ask, or you asked, and were met with silence. Maybe there were moments you wanted to support someone, but didn’t know how to and held back, or you offered support and they didn’t accept it. But I hope you learnt something from it. Something that will let you continue to try, maybe differently, but not give up.

2026 is going to be a better year for all of us. I believe that. And that’s the best part of a new year. You are allowed to hope. You are allowed to dream, like there is a tomorrow.

As for shapelygal, we’re starting afresh too, taking a new look at human behaviour, relationships and interdependence. So if you’ve enjoyed reading shapelygal so far, stick around, there’s going to be more.

And of course, don’t forget to share the love.

I could use more likes and followers too. Because, who doesn’t?

More from Shapely Gal:

Some of the projects I will be working on this year are:

• Completing the manuscript and publishing my book

• Relaunching 1:1 matrimonial advisory in a limited capacity (DM if you care)

• Continuing my work as an educator, and scaling it through new collaborations

• Continuing my explorations with AI alignment

• Resurrecting my newsletter on travel

• Launching a new business (more about this later in the year)

If any of these projects resonate with you, drop me a note. I always love receiving thoughtful emails from you guys.

Otherwise, I wish you all a very happy new year, full of hope, full of energy to meet that hope with action, even if you don’t see any pay off for it this year.

What I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:

Heartlamp by Bhanu Mustaq (actually I’m reading this one in its original form in Kannada. It’s called yedeya hanate). I’m not a native Kannada reader, so it’s taken longer than I would’ve liked.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari - I’m re-reading this because Aziz is so funny, and I could totally use some laughs and light heartedness in life right now.

shapelygal song: Mwaki by Zerb & Sofiya Nzau

I’ve been stuck in a strange loop lately - trying to decide whether to reopen my old relationship coaching practice.

Every time I think YES, a voice says, “Didn’t you already move on?” Every time I think NO, another whispers, “What if you’re just scared?”

So, I did what any confused adult in 2025 does... I asked an LLM (duh)!

Claude, my unpaid therapist, told me:

“Maybe it’s not regression, but evolution.”

ohhhh wise, I thought and it was settled… until the next morning, when I opened a new chat window (my mistake!) and asked the same question again. That’s when I realised I wasn’t looking for clarity. I was looking for permission.

And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

Friends, students and everyone - all hovering at the edge of decisions that could change their lives, waiting for a sign, or a person, or a bloody LLM to tell them it’s safe to just be.

1. The coach who’s still warming up

Over the weekend, I met a friend - an S&C coach who is brilliant at other people’s discipline, but when it comes to his own … completely undone.

I trained with him 5 years ago, when he’d just turned down an engineering master’s at CMU to pursue fitness. He keeps learning and building his craft obsessively. He once told me, “Priyanka, I’m not just a coach. I hold people when they’re most vulnerable, when they’re struggling to accept themselves yet daring to imagine a stronger version of who they could be. If I don’t make pushing themselves fun, they’ll never end up owning their desired identity”.

When you understand people that deeply, you become invaluable. You may not scale big, but you build a legacy that needs no SEO. He knows this too. And yet, he continues to work under others’ brands, telling himself he “needs more time, more experience, more clients, more permission” before launching his own.

He has steady clients abroad and a great reputation that he still underprices as if he started yesterday. He’s so good at what he does, and yet, he’s waiting for someone (God knows who) to give him permission to believe it.

2. The man who never texted back

Another friend, recently single, smart, successful and funny - the kind of guy you’d never expect to be alone.

He was single for years before meeting a woman who made being a couple effortless. He was convinced he was hard to be with. She made him feel alive, and for the first time, he believed he wasn’t “hard to be with.” But when it came time to decide what’s next, he froze.

He’s been seeing a therapist for months, about whether to text her. He has been rehearsing imaginary conversations, analysing outcomes, convincing himself he’s giving her space. But what he’s really doing .. is giving himself time to stay in fear.

He knows this. Yet, he’s in therapy, which has become a holding pattern and safe space to NEVER make a decision.

3. The student who is still typing …

I thought back to a student from one of my courses last year. They’d had a falling out with a best friend, and spent weeks analysing the situation with ChatGPT.

Every time the LLM responded, they’d feed it with more context, rewriting and refining, until they had the “perfect” narrative of the situation.

But they never once confronted this best friend.

They were uncomfortable with the idea of being wrong. Or being right, and still rejected. The lack of control over how the friend might respond made them retreat into AI, a space where every conversation stayed safe, contained and fully editable.

The friend, meanwhile, kept showing up, dropping by their room, inviting them to the mess or suggesting hanging out. Small casual gestures. But no apologies, at least not in the way ChatGPT had scripted them. AI had become this student’s emotional buffer, a place to process vulnerability without ever risking it IRL. Thanks to our conversation, something shifted. The student finally abandoned the endless analysis, and just showed up. Hung out with the friend. The friendship didn’t magically heal, but it became real again instead of theoretical.

We’ve become very fluent at saying the right thing now, just not to the right person, or a person at all.

4. The woman whose stars align more than her will

A friend, divorced at 33, after having been married for 4 years has been struggling to put herself out there again.

But instead of dating, she spends hours on AstroTalk, talking to AI astrologers.

In the last few months, she’s spent thousands, trying to find the “right moment” to re-enter the marriage market. She says she’s look for predictions, “If I knew when it’ll happen, I’ll be calmer. You don’t know how stressful it is to be on these apps”.

Actually, I do. But what she’s really looking for isn’t a prediction, but permission. Permission to try, to fail, to pause and just be a horrible mess while at it, not knowing if this will all lead to anything meaningful at all. Astrology, therapy, coaching - we’ve all found different ways to outsource certainty.

Earlier, it used to be called hope. Now, it’s a subscription plan.

5. The AI confession

And then there’s me again, sitting with Claude, pretending to be rational while quietly avoiding fear.

My fear isn’t about coaching. It’s about perception (whose? don’t ask!) - about whether I’ll look desperate, irrelevant, or worse, inconsistent.

After endless prompts, Claude finally said, “Treat it as an experiment”, which is AI’s code for ‘Boss, I’ve no clue. Try it and see what breaks’.

I closed all tabs and sat there, wondering how I’d spent a decade helping other people navigate this same decision fatigue, and yet, here I was, paralysed by my own.

For the first time, I could see what I was really afraid of.

I shut my practice in 2021 - burnt out and pandemic-parenting through what felt like an endless blur of sameness. I’d hit the end of the road, with no juice left to go on, and no energy to create something new.

Now, life is different.

Harder in some ways (two kids, no nanny, constant exhaustion), but also broader. I teach GenZ a relationships course, I’m writing this book, and I get to talk to under-30s who are sharp, skeptical, funny and sometimes delightfully delusional (my kind of people).

Still, the fear lingers - the fear of plateauing again, of not finding my way back if I stall, and of making a choice I can’t easily undo.

It’s not just me. It’s all of us.

We keep saying we’re “figuring it out,” “processing,” “getting clarity.” We therapize, we astro-talk, we prompt - gathering more data, hoping it will one day substitute for courage.

We’re terrified to choose because every choice means closing off all the other possible selves we could still be. That’s the anticipatory grief we call FOMO, the ache of imagined lives we’ll never live.

But maybe it’s the pandemic that changed our relationship with choice.

Years of cancellations, postponed plans, lost jobs and uncertain futures taught us that commitment doesn’t guarantee safety. So we hover in this strange in-between, convincing ourselves that indecision is wisdom, and that waiting means we’re being careful. Maybe our collective muscle for decision-making simply atrophied.

We got used to waiting - for the next wave to pass, for offices to reopen and for life to feel predictable again. And when predictability finally returned, choosing began to feel unfamiliar. Almost unsafe.

Maybe what we call confusion is just fear dressed in disguise - the fear of being wrong, of wasting time, of being judged for changing our minds later.

Maybe we’re not indecisive at all.

Maybe we’re just still healing from unpredictability, still waiting for life to feel safe enough to choose again.

The trouble is … it may never feel that safe.

And maybe that’s the real choice we’ve been avoiding all along.

P.S. I did make one tiny choice though - to move all my AI-related writing to LessWrong. It’s my little act of decisiveness for the week. Baby steps.

I’ve gone back and forth wanting to write an edition of Shapely Gal, but all my writing energy over the last few months has gone into my book.

For those of you who are new here … I’m writing a memoir and cultural commentary on modern Indian matchmaking.

Before I started writing, advising, and teaching at the messy intersection of humans and AI, I ran a modern matchmaking advisory for urban Indian singles. That work (part observation, part obsession) has now become my first book. It’s funny, painful, hopeful, and full of stories from a decade of helping people navigate love, ghosting, biodatas, and parental pressure.

After a month of intense writerly solitude (not counting my kids being all over me and my laptop all the time), I find myself really missing community. I miss the raw, real conversations that made this book possible in the first place.

So I’m trying something new.

I want to share sneak peeks of the book such as chapter drafts, reflections, interludes with a small group of single people. Not married. Not “just curious.” But those actively navigating the strange landscape of modern intimacy.

I’m putting together a small reader-feedback circle, a space for single people in their 20s and 30s (based anywhere in the world) to read early chapters, test out jokes, meet my characters, reflect on real-life situationships, and help shape a book that’s about you as much as it is about me.

If that’s you, and you’re curious to be part of it (maybe on WhatsApp? I haven’t figured that part out yet), send me an email. Not a DM. Not a WhatsApp. An email. Just a line or two about why this speaks to you, that’s my small filter to know you’re a real reader.

Write to Me

It’ll be low-pressure, early-access, and high on laughter and truth. I promise.

Let’s build something that feels both real and rare.

P.S. Just to be clear, this isn’t a dating group. There will be NO matchmaking, NO gender mixing, NO swipe vibes. Just stories, questions, and sharp readers who’ve lived it.

And if you’re not single, and you don’t share this email with 10 single friends or family within 60 minutes of reading this… you will have bad sex for 7 years (assuming you’re still having sex).

Okay, I’m kidding, but you know the drill. Share the love.

A few months ago, I was speaking to one of my MBA clients (now a friend) about publishing my farewell to relationship coaching. Her response surprised me.

She said, "No, don't do that. It's okay even if you don't want to coach anymore, but you don’t have to say it. We like to hope that you are there for us, somehow."

As flattering as it was, I felt a greater sense of urgency to publish it. To finally break free. So, I hit publish.

I've been staring at this blank page for weeks now, trying to find the perfect words to explain why I'm suddenly talking about AI instead of human relationships. But there's no elegant way to say this, so here's the unvarnished truth…

I'm terrified.

When I shut down Marriage Broker Auntie, I had no idea who I was anymore. My entire identity had become "that relationship person." Then I took a corporate job that crashed and burnt spectacularly. This was supposed to be my re-entry into full-time employment, but it had ended in a year.

Should I go back to being an entrepreneur? I didn’t have any new ideas worth pursuing. Also, I’m not one of those people who became an entrepreneur because I wanted to. It just happened. Organically. Accidentally. So no, I wasn’t going to force open that door. Not yet.

Should I apply for another job? My last job had ended so badly that I became paranoid I may not land another job. So, I didn't apply. I told myself I needed a break to "heal."

What a joke.

I'm not wired to take breaks. My whole damn self-worth is built on the idea of effort and achievement. Sitting with nothingness felt like drowning.

Every social interaction became torture.

"So, what do you do?"

“Where do you work?”

“What’s next?”

These questions would hit, and I'd scramble for answers that didn't make me feel like a failure. I gave different answers to different people. I didn’t know who I was or where I was headed. It was a deeply uncomfortable place to be in. At 35, I still felt the disappointment of my parents, and my young daughter’s discomfort with a “housewife” mum.

For a while, I tried to fight. My family. My conditioning, My own expectations. I wanted to sit with the discomfort, but I just couldn’t.

I ran.

I found a project through a friend, probably the only person who really saw what I was capable of. Just as I started that project, I fell pregnant.

After years of trying and failing to conceive another child, it finally happened. Unplanned in timing, but very much longed for. I was physically and mentally exhausted most days, so job hunting went out the window. I focussed on the projects at hand and lived in the present.

Then my child arrived, and holy shit.

The sleepless nights, the isolation. People STILL asking what I did for work when my son was literally days old. But this time, I couldn't fight it. I couldn’t run. I had nowhere to go. So, I had to be with my baby.

My husband had quit his job to start a new venture. So, I found small projects to work on from home. I jumped on them, never feeling like anything was enough. Nothing reflected who I was, or who I thought I should be.

Finally, I broke.

Just completely broke.

I can’t remember what triggered it, but I finally came face to face with the fact that I had unresolved postpartum depression and anxiety from my first child that I'd never properly dealt with. Yes, I was in therapy for several years, but apparently it was never enough, because now, the second birth had only exasperated it further.

So, I got on antidepressants, even though I was breastfeeding because I was losing myself completely. I started eating better. I started sleeping through the night while my husband took over baby duty. I started lifting weights (guilty!). I couldn’t tell if I was getting any happier, but I kept at it.

I started teaching a course on happiness. What an irony, huh? The person who could barely get out of bed some days was teaching others how to be happy.

This was yet another of those things I’d always wanted to do - teach high school and college kids life skills so they could make better decisions as adults. Was it poor timing to facilitate this? Maybe. or maybe not. But teaching the course forced me to learn how to be happy.

And what better way to learn than by lived experience, right?

Postpartum can be very isolating. Children are no longer raised by villages. We don’t live in communities. We live highly individualistic lives, and raising children has never been harder. I was deeply lonely. My community wasn't physical friends or family. It was strangers on an app called Airchat.

And it was there that someone introduced me to LLMs.

I can't explain why, but something cracked open in me. Every word I read was new. I had a reason to wake up. To learn. I became obsessed because these systems reminded me of who I used to be. Curious. Alive. Someone who connected dots between seemingly unrelated ideas and got excited.

I was suddenly reading about and listening to people I’d never heard of - Andrew Karpathy, Dario Amodei, Yann Le Cunn, Yoshua Bengio, Paul Christiano, Jan Leike. People who’ve been working in AI for years, even decades.

I started discovering breakthroughs and debates that had unfolded while I was studying engineering or building other things, and I found myself wondering, what if I’d been in this space all along? But I also feel grateful to be here now, with a completely different perspective.

You know what the strangest part in all of this chaos was?

Learning about AI brought me joy. Real, genuine joy.

That, along with teaching my students at IIT Madras, and working on my book, were the only things that felt right when everything else felt wrong. The only moments I wasn't questioning myself or feeling like an imposter.

I started writing again because that's how I make sense of things when they're chaotic in my head.

At 37, I'm here, trying to pivot from being an executer to a thinker in a domain I've never formally worked in. It sounds ridiculous even typing it out. Who does that? Who throws away years of experience to start over?

Me, apparently.

When I write about AI, sometimes sounding like I know what I'm talking about, I feel like a complete fraud. Like I'm cheating people by not being honest about who I really am or what's really behind this perspective.

I hung onto my old matchmaking identity long after I'd outgrown it. I wore that mask because it was familiar, because people recognised me for it, because it gave me some sense of worth when everything else felt uncertain. I craved acceptance. Community. Anything to feel less alone in the flux of my professional journey.

This pivot isn't just about finding new work, it's about finally having the courage to let go of who I was supposed to be and to just be who I am.

I don’t know if anyone will hire me in AI. I don't know if anyone will take me seriously. But for the first time in years, I'm not paralyzed by the fear of looking incompetent or foolish.

We're at this weird inflection point with AI. It's not just about building smart systems. It's about designing how humans and AI will coexist.

It’s about our relationships (Oops, there I go again).

Maybe I am that relationship person after all, except, I’ve outgrown humans ;)

All those years I spent untangling human relationships, behaviours, values, and decisions might actually be useful here.

So that's it. That's the messy, non-linear, embarrassingly vulnerable truth. No clever plot. No connecting dots. No inspirational story of triumph. Just a person trying to accept herself, finding her way back into a professional career and navigating a puddle of possibilities.

If you're interested in this weird, messy journey of figuring out how humans and AI can have a relationship that doesn't suck, you can follow my work here.

You know those moments when your brain short-circuits because two completely unrelated things suddenly make perfect sense together? Like realizing your ex’s commitment issues perfectly explain distributed computing? No? Just me then.

Well, I just had one of those moments yesterday while reading about AI’s Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture. Turns out Dinner Club, my pandemic dating experiment wasn’t just a desperate attempt to keep love alive during lockdown, turns out it was accidentally pioneering AI design.

Who knew playing digital cupid would one day help me understand machine learning? Though, to be fair, both involve trial, error, and the occasional catastrophic failure.

The Accidental AI Architect

Picture this: It’s 2020. The world is in lockdown, dating apps are flooded with bored people who “want to see where things go” (nowhere, dude, the answer is nowhere), and I decide to launch Dinner Club, essentially speed dating for the apocalypse, minus the awkward silences plus some actual human intelligence.

Unlike dating apps, where everyone swipes incessantly into a void, I set strict limits: three potential matches max, mandatory feedback forms (yes, homework), and a social credit system that rewarded kindness. Because apparently, adults need points to remember basic manners.

It’s basically how cutting-edge AI architectures work. I accidentally built a human version of a Mixture of Experts system, complete with routing algorithms (me, playing matchmaker) and specialised experts (highly illiquid people in the dating market who excel at specific types of connections).

The Anti-Tinder Manifesto

Traditional dating apps are like those massive language models everyone’s obsessed with, burning through resources like a tech bro burning through his Series A funding.

Every profile could potentially match with every other profile, which is about as efficient as your aunt’s attempts to set you up with “every nice boy from the community.” (Spoiler: They weren’t all nice, and some weren’t even from the same community).

Dinner Club took a different approach. Like an MoE system’s router, I acted as the gatekeeper, but with more wine and less optimism. I directed each person to a limited number of matches based on both obvious and subtle compatibility patterns. Sometimes these patterns were unconventional like “both similarly weird” turned out to be a surprisingly successful criterion, though I suspect traditional matchmakers would cringe at this.

When Feedback Forms Met Feelings

Those mandatory feedback forms weren’t just me enjoying some bureaucratic torture like waiters do in a restaurants. Each date generated so much data - quantitative ratings on niceness and compatibility, plus qualitative feedback to refine future matches. It was basically A/B testing for hearts.

But here’s where it gets interesting and where AI developers might want to pay attention. Unlike current AI systems that optimize for whatever metrics make their VC overlords happy, my approach included something more nuanced: guided preference evolution.

Take the woman who insisted on dating men who “who loved Eckhart Tolle and lived in the present”. After I matched her with exactly that, a wanderer who travelled the world with a satchel and no savings, her tune changed fast. Suddenly, “future-oriented” didn’t sound so bad. Funny how that works.

The Art of Being Wrong (gracefully)

When participants clung to rigid preferences (looking at you, “must be a CEO of a funded startup” person), I didn’t just shrug and move on. Instead, I developed a three-tier approach, courtesy my inner therapist:

1. Self-discovery exercises (because sometimes people need to realize they’re wrong on their own)

2. Pattern-based insights (12 years of matchmaking teaches you that “must love dogs” is rarely the real deal-breaker)

3. Experiential learning (sometimes you have to let people date the wrong person to appreciate the right one)

This is where AI systems could actually level up. Imagine an AI that doesn’t just nod along like a sycophant but subtly nudges users to expand their horizons like a trusted adviser. It’s the difference between “I understand your preference for emotionally unavailable partners” and “Have you considered therapy?”

The Accidental Genius of Social Credit

The social credit system started as a way to gamify good behaviour, but it revealed something deeper. When we reward the right behaviours, we don’t just get better dates, we build a better ecosystem.

It’s like training a puppy, if the puppy had an MBA and unresolved issues. The genius wasn’t in the points themselves but in how they rewired behavior. Kindness became its own currency, which is probably the most capitalist approach to decency ever attempted.

The Plot Twist Nobody Saw Coming

So here I am, a matchmaker who spent years engineering human connections, now using that experience to understand machine learning. The irony isn’t lost on me. But maybe this is exactly what we need right now - more cross-pollination between human systems and artificial intelligence.

Maybe the key isn’t pure optimisation but designing systems that remember people aren’t puzzles to solve, they’re stories mid-sentence. Whether we’re matching hearts or routing data, the goal is the same: creating connections that unlock potential we didn’t know existed.

Though, to be fair, teaching AI about human compatibility might be more complex than my “both similarly pretentious”algorithm. Then again, maybe not.

Next week: Why my failed relationships perfectly explain blockchain technology. (Kidding… maybe.)

When we think of love being toxic, we only think of visibly abusive relationships that either involve domestic violence, infidelity and so on. But there are several types of toxic love that go unseen, even by those in it, which are far more dangerous. It erodes us from within, and before we know it, we will merely exist as a hollow shell of ourselves - devoid of self-esteem, autonomy and the ability to trust anyone, including ourselves.

Like autodrivers say - Love in poison, beware!!!

A friend, who’d had an arranged marriage, got divorced a few years ago. Her ex-husband would stalk her, check her phone when she wasn’t around and insist on accompanying her everywhere. At first, she didn’t think much of him wanting to spend all his time with her, because she assumed it’s the “honeymoon” phase of their marriage.

But over time, she began to realise that the boundaries between them had blurred beyond her level of comfort. He started passive aggressively punishing her for talking to her male friends. She also learnt that he had lied about his profession, and he was deeply insecure about her earning more than him. She tried really hard to put up with it since she was worried that getting divorced would affect the chances of her young sister getting married.

It is really disheartening to see unsuspecting people fall prey to such toxic relationships. One may argue that she must have stopped talking to all men at all costs once she got married or quit her job to soothe her husband’s ego, but would that have been enough? And that too, for what benefit? While I am a big proponent of resilience in marriage, I am very clear that commitment is not the same thing as control.

Some people exercise control over their partners in less obvious ways, and do so gradually over very many years, in a way that you don’t even realise unless its too late. This doesn’t always happen because the “controlling” spouse is evil, sometimes it happens because the “controlled” spouse just has poor boundaries.

But why do these toxic behaviours even exist? Why do people feel the need to control or be controlled in ways that seem to hide under the guise of care, love, or concern?

Sometimes it’s the result of insecurities—perhaps not just from the controlling partner, but from the one being controlled, too. We often seek validation, approval, and a sense of belonging, and sometimes, love gets confused with ownership.

There’s a fine line between wanting to spend time with our partner and insisting on being the only person they can rely on. There's a difference between caring about someone’s well-being and trying to manage every aspect of their life to ensure our comfort.

These blurred lines can make it difficult to see what is healthy and what isn’t, especially when we’re in the midst of it. Is it possible to detect toxicity when it’s creeping in, disguised as "care" or "concern"? Often, it’s not so much about the words or the obvious actions but about how we feel. Do we feel stifled or suffocated, or are our needs and desires consistently minimised?

When we’re in it, it can be hard to recognise, especially if we’re in a culture that emphasises duty and self-sacrifice over individual agency. So often, we tell ourselves it’s “just a phase,” or “things will get better,” or “I just need to adjust.” And in adjusting, we slowly lose ourselves until we no longer recognise ourselves.

The initial days of dating my now husband was similarly confusing. He wanted to spend all his waking and non-working hours with me - having just graduated from college, I still enjoyed hanging out with friends over the weekends and hence, struggled to make the transition. Naturally, our courtship escalated from feeling romantic to suffocating within weeks.

When I expressed discomfort, everyone around me, including my parents told me that it was a phase, and that things would get better when he recovers from the loss of his parents. I believed it, although I didn’t want to.

But, it indeed turned out to a phase, albeit a really long one. It wasn’t just time that helped us get untangled, it was a long journey with growing pains of building and respecting our own boundaries, and each others’. And having children really makes you see the value of alone time. Lol.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of these covert toxic behaviors is that they are normalized, even justified. How many times have we heard people say, “Oh he just loves me too much” or “She’s just protective because she cares”? These explanations can make it difficult to identify that something is amiss.

After all, if love is about care, then surely anything done out of love must be acceptable, right? But love that stifles growth, that forces conformity, that makes us second-guess our own desires, isn’t love at all—it’s fear masked as affection.

And even if we do see the signs, how do we confront them? If we realize that we’ve been slowly drained by a relationship that was supposed to uplift us, where do we even begin? Recognizing toxicity isn’t always followed by an immediate solution. In many cases, it can take years to disentangle ourselves from the web of emotional manipulation or control, and even longer to reclaim our sense of self.

We may ask ourselves - is it too late to fix things? Or has the damage been done, both to our identity and our relationship?

And let’s not forget the complicated web of external expectations. In many cultures, especially in India, marriage or relationships are viewed as a kind of achievement or validation, a marker of success. We’d much rather be married to a billionaire while suffering from emotional disconnection and depression than be happy, while single.

And I’ve seen this happen with a lot of people. There is no judgement here at all, but it is interesting to see how society shapes our choices, and holds and veto power to our personal happiness.

For those within toxic relationships, walking away may seem like losing that status or facing public judgment. There’s a constant internal tug-of-war - the desire for personal freedom and self-actualization versus the fear of letting down others, or of not measuring up to societal norms. The guilt that comes from wanting to leave, not just for ourselves, but for what others might think, can be a powerful force that makes it hard to even contemplate a way out.

The pressure to stay in a toxic relationship can feel like trying to stop watching House of Cards after Season 4 because it’s no longer fun, but now we’re stuck binge-watching rest of the show because we’re too deep in the plot to leave.

But then, what happens if we don’t detect the toxicity? What if we stay, afraid of the unknown or too entrenched in the familiar? Over time, the emotional cost can become too high to ignore. We might wake up one day and realise that our energy, our sense of joy, and our dreams have all been siphoned away, bit by bit.

In the process, we may have forgotten what it feels like to be truly free—to pursue our own passions, to make decisions that align with our own needs. The sadness that comes from this kind of loss is not always visible. It’s subtle and often masked by the day-to-day ‘busy’ness of life. But beneath it, there’s a quiet aching, a longing for something more, something real.

So, how do we begin to untangle ourselves from such dynamics?

Maybe the first step is acknowledging that we deserve more — more space, more autonomy, more love, more understanding of ourselves and the world around us. It’s not about making grand gestures or rash decisions; it’s about small, everyday acts of reclaiming who we are.

It’s about understanding that love doesn’t require sacrifice of self, and that control, covert or otherwise can never be justified as care. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s about learning to ask questions about what we need, what we deserve and how we can reclaim that.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we should ask ourselves these questions every day, starting from day one—that would be insane. Plus, let’s be real, sometimes the problem isn’t our partner, it could be us struggling with commitment issues.

In the end, we might not have all the answers, but asking the right questions is a necessary first step. It’s about gradually stepping out of the fog, finding clarity, and recognizing that love should nourish us, not deplete us.

And once we see things clearly, we can begin to reclaim our sense of self, set healthier boundaries, and choose relationships that help us grow rather than hold us back. Because true love doesn’t demand the sacrifice of who we are—it supports us in becoming the best version of ourselves.

Hello, my lovely readers!

It’s been a while huh? So much has been happening in my life that finding time to write at leisure has felt like an indulgence I couldn’t quite afford. There’s so much I want to share about what I’ve been up to—my coaching, teaching, and the progress on my book. But that will have to wait.

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a while now, patiently waiting for its moment. And what better day than today to dress it up and send it out? I hope you’ve missed me because I’ve missed you all terribly.

Today’s post is about something that’s been on my mind a lot lately: the art of opening up and the cost of silence. As we step into a brand-new year, I want to leave you with a reflection on the connections that matter most. May 2025 be the year you find the time, patience, and support to nurture your relationships and bring your aspirations to life.

So, let’s go.

Transparency is my superpower—and my Achilles’ heel.

Since childhood, I’ve been the kind of person who says what I mean and means what I say. No filters, no disguises. For better or worse, it’s who I am. I was often told this was a weakness, something I’d need to “fix” to make life easier for myself.

But holding back or masking my thoughts has always felt like wearing shoes two sizes too small—uncomfortable and utterly pointless.

Have I paid a price for my openness? Of course. There have been moments where I’ve thought, “Maybe that was a bit much?” But in the grand scheme, the costs don’t outweigh the freedom of saying what I mean.

That said, I’ve also realized not everyone operates this way. You could know someone for years and still struggle to understand what’s really going on inside their heads. They’re masters of the poker face—no tells, no giveaways, just silence that dares you to guess.

Even for someone like me, who prides herself on reading people, it’s a tough nut to crack. And, if I’m honest, I’ve sometimes envied their ability to hold back.

There’s a certain elegance to withholding. It’s a survival strategy that works brilliantly in specific settings—staying quiet in a tense meeting, sidestepping drama at a family gathering, or negotiating with a toddler (a high-stakes operation, if you ask me).

But what starts as self-protection can become a habit, and in relationships that truly matter, staying closed off isn’t survival; it’s missed opportunity.

Relationships aren’t just about being seen; they’re about seeing the other person too. If one person is always doing the heavy lifting, exhaustion is inevitable. It’s like a garden—we can love the idea of wildflowers, but if we never water the plants, we must not be surprised when they wither.

This is where communication comes in—not as a natural-born talent but as an essential skill. Like learning to drive or cook, it’s something we cultivate. Awkward at first, yes. But over time, it pays dividends. And if we don’t make the effort to grow this skill, the loss is ultimately ours.

As a coach, my greatest joy is creating a space where people feel safe enough to share their deepest challenges. But the clients who’ve taught me the most are the ones I couldn’t help open up.

Early in my career, I felt the pressure to “add value” immediately. I’d swoop in with solutions, convinced I was helping. Looking back, I realize I often skipped the most critical step: understanding their struggles. Instead of feeling supported, they felt judged, misunderstood, or unheard.

Even now, when someone arrives doubting whether they can fix things, their scepticism can trigger my inner “imposter,” tempting me to prove my worth instead of simply being present.

My daughter has been one of my greatest teachers in this department. From birth, she mastered the art of emotional restraint. She didn’t even cry during her first vaccinations. I thought, “What a brave little being!” Later, I realized this stoicism came with its challenges.

I used to encourage her to share her feelings, telling her repeatedly it was okay to express herself. It never worked. Eventually, I stopped pushing and tried meeting her where she was. I’d sit beside her quietly or cuddle her, offering the silent assurance of love.

Then I’d ask gently, “Do you want to talk about it?” If she said no, I’d suggest journaling her thoughts. Sometimes she’d choose to share with me instead, and honestly, I don’t know if that’s because writing felt like too much work (lol).

Another strategy I’ve found invaluable is mirroring—meeting people where they are instead of trying to pull them where we think they should be.

Mirroring isn’t about imitation. It’s about tuning into someone’s preferred way of communicating. Maybe they process better in writing than speaking. Maybe they share more easily while walking or cooking, rather than sitting face-to-face. Adjusting to their style shows respect for their comfort, and respect builds trust.

For instance, my sister is a master thought-hoarder. If I press her for a serious conversation, she’ll shut down. But if I crack a dumb joke while casually discussing her latest binge-watch, she lets me in just a wee bit.

It’s not about tricking someone into talking—it’s about creating a space where they feel like it’s their choice to do so.

If being closed off is our comfort zone, stepping out may feel risky. Holding back might feel like control, but over time, it becomes isolation. Relationships aren’t finite projects with tidy endings; they’re infinite games where the rules evolve as we go.

The people who matter most aren’t our opponents—they’re our teammates, even if it sometimes feels otherwise. And let’s be honest, none of us are winning any awards for flawless communication here.

Opening up isn’t about staging a grand reveal or prying open someone else’s carefully guarded heart like it’s a stubborn jar of pickles. We don’t have to start with a dramatic monologue like “I’ve secretly hated your biryani since 2014”.

Dip your toes in. Say the thing you’ve been holding back—but maybe start with the smaller things (and no, I am not talking about the raita or the saalan).

It won’t always be perfect. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed to be a bit awkward. But that’s the point: connection isn’t about perfection. It’s about showing up and saying, “Let’s do this together.”

Because at the end of the day, isn’t that what relationships are? A bunch of imperfect humans, strengthening connection, one awkwardly honest moment at a time?

Before I go, I have two requests:

Please write to me if you are able to help with any of these:

Write to me

Book: I am looking for readers who can review 1-2 chapters of my upcoming book and provide detailed feedback in less than 3 days (per chapter).

Coaching: I am looking for senior technologists (leaders) who are willing to help me hone one of my professional relationship coaching programs, and can spare up to 1-2 hours.

What followed was beautiful - the entire crew of the restaurant including the cooks welcomed us. Over the next hour or so while we were there, I heard them do this over and over again every time a new guest entered the restaurant.

It was almost mindless. But it wasn’t meaningless. In that second or two it took to yell out this welcome, everything was suspended as the entire team came together to welcome their customers. Not just physically, but at a much deeper level.

Building a unique culture in any organisation is a very deliberate exercise. It takes a lot of intention, dedication and effort by leaders to ensure the culture permeates across levels in an organisation.

So, in that sense, I find myself extremely fortunate to have started my career in a company like Toyota which did a stellar job of creating a world-class culture and ensuring it translates not just across levels but across geographies.

Like this restaurant, we had a ritual - every morning, we started our work day with a group exercise with music through the PA system. Those few minutes every single morning was a reminder that we are one team. It didn’t matter if you were an engineer or the managing director, everyone was together in this ritual.

No matter which country I was in, we followed the same ritual. This one time, I was in Japan to oversee the build of a new Corolla prototype. I was standing next to our Pakistani colleagues, doing the morning exercise together, and I remember thinking how in that moment, everything in the world was suspended and the only thing that mattered was that we were all one team - team Toyota.

Similarly, when I played college basketball, we had a ritual - at every tournament, we’d enter the court to a specific song, do a few layups, put our hands together and scream “Go Ramaiah” before the start of every match. It was a reminder that no matter what happened, over the next 40 minutes, we are one team.

These rituals might seem frivolous at first, but we all need constant reminders of being part of a team - no matter what team that is.

The beauty of modern day organisations is that we are able to bring together very diverse individuals who create unique value. But this also creates silos within an organisation. Unless the organisation has invested in deliberating creating a unique culture, a lot of energy gets dissipated everyday in aligning these diverse individuals with diverse incentives towards common organisational goals.

In an era of venture capital and hyper growth, very few companies try to build a strong organisational culture from day 1. When we over-index on speed, the “rocketship” doesn’t care about parts of it falling off along the way. While this outlook might serve us in being propelled initially, sustenance can be challenge.

When we lay a solid foundation of strong values or tenets, create rituals to translate these values into culture, people start to identify with an overarching common theme that brings them together as team, despite their differences.

This is especially important today as work has become so mentally strenuous, and sometimes, isolating. We all need constant reminders that we are a team, a community, in it together, and that we are creating something grander than each of us - no matter what it is.

At Amazon, we used 14 leadership principles that guided all the work we did, and all the discussions we had. We applied them for hiring, appraisals, new product launches and restructures. Sometimes, it was misused, and that’s expected of any system. But more often than not, it helped half a million of us across the globe stay true to the vision of Amazon.

I must confess that I am not a very ritualistic person. My friends and I made fun of our exercise at Toyota, using Amazon’s leadership principles sometimes felt overbearing and waltzing onto the court to our song sometimes felt silly.

But last night’s dinner made me realise the importance of rituals in our life, especially when we are coming together as a family or a team or an organisation. It has a tremendous impact on what we can create together.

If you’ve got a fun ritual in your team or organisation, I’d love to hear.

What I’m reading, watching and listening to:

Shivamma Yarehanchinala - I chanced upon this trailer on Youtube, and I loved it. I am so looking forward to watching this movie.

How Repressed Emotions Make Us Sick - This was an interesting perspective on processing emotions and how it affects our physical bodies.

It’s been a while huh? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve come sat at my desk, stared at a blank screen for hours and struggled to let my thoughts flow out. They’ve been swirling in my head, feeling giddy, unable to figure out how to wriggle out.

It’s like someone’s standing guard warning them not to step out until they are perfectly crystallised. They’ve tried to sneak out when no one’s looking, as they are, soon to be caught by the perfection police.

But today, they are going to escape, and nobody can stop them. They are going to run, run for their lives and never look back.

So, bear with me if the words aren’t perfect. I’ve finally given myself permission to be perfect with my imperfections, or imperfect with my perfections, I can’t tell which one it is.

*

For the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about so many things, some for a bit longer than others. I’ll just pick a thought at random and try to persist.

Recently, someone told me that they had very big expectations from their married life, but they are nowhere close to having any of them fulfilled. This has filled them with anger, frustration, grief and now apathy towards their marriage.

I could feel their anguish because it’s a familiar feeling. We’ve all felt it at least once, especially if you’ve been married a while. I am not qualifying it as a good or a bad thing. I am only trying to understand why we have the propensity to expect anything at all.

Are we born with expectations? Can’t be. But even if that’s the case, we lack the language to communicate them, or have them understood.

But you see, expecting is the earliest form of behavioural conditioning. But it’s not until we are much older that we learn to take them, at least some of us.

A baby cries when it’s hungry. We feed the baby. It cries again, we feed again. Then it starts to become a pattern. The baby now expects to be fed when it cries. When that expectation isn’t met, it cries not only out of hunger now, but fear, anger and anguish too.

Craving for gratification and certainty is one of the earliest behaviours we train. So, may be it’s not human to expect, instead a worldly or a mortal trait. This is the way of being in this universe.

So, maybe this explains why philosophy or religion or spirituality is centred around the idea of overcoming this way of being, in order to attain immortality.

Expectations are the result of attachment, and it sets us up for disappointment (or at least has a 50% chance of it). But isn’t relationship attachment too? So can we possibly be attached to a relationship but not to expectations?

If it is wise to simmer expectations from a partner or a partnership, why labour through a marriage? Why marry at all?

I am married, so I don’t ask myself this question as often as someone contemplating this decision today. But it is a question I have asked myself in order to rationalise my decision post-facto.

The best answer I’ve come up with is this - it has been a great honour to have someone witness as I experience life, and be that person for my husband. We may be a mess, but there’s great solace in being a mess together.

Based on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, you can’t merely be a witness, you are bound to have an impact. This impact can be both positive and negative. When it’s positive, we are conditioned to expect more of this goodness and when it’s negative, we are conditioned to feel fearful, frustrated, upset or angry.

Such is life. Such is marriage.

But we struggle to see it, especially in our own lives, and especially now, in the age of social media. The internet amplifies mimetic desire. When I look around, there’s perfection everywhere - carefully curated photos and captions, and neatly trimmed versions of people’s lives.

This creates a distorted version of one’s external reality. And it is reinforced over and over again, every single day, until it becomes one with our subconscious understanding of reality, and in turn, our expectations.

Theoretically, most of us get how this works, but in our weakest moments, somewhere deep down, we cling to this distorted sense of reality for hope.

If someone else can have a happy marriage, even I can and I must.

Life has become a game, and I don’t enjoy playing it. It’s not always easy for me to relate to people around me. So, trying to relate to others as a couple is doubly unintuitive. Yet, the infrastructure of virtual reality is so strongly constructed, that it’s hard to escape its trap.

So, I’ve had to forcibly pull myself out of this. I got off Facebook/ Instagram a few years ago. I don’t want a sneak peak into the highlights of anyone’s virtual lives, especially that of loose ties or strangers.

This way, I no longer have a zoomed out view of anyone’s marriage looming over mine. I am able to enjoy my relationship (or not) for what it is without having to assess it against some fictional social template.

Also, I am lucky to have friends and family who value authenticity just as much as I do, so our conversations always keeps me grounded in reality (read cynical).

*

This doesn’t mean we are always satisfied with everything we deal with on a daily basis and that we must feel no need to change anything. It takes two of us to make a couple, and actions taken by our partners will have a profound impact on us. It may not always be a positive outcome for us.

But that’s cue for us to communicate and negotiate. It’s not always easy to come to a consensus, especially when both parties are trying to strongly guard their independent boundaries.

When we labour through, sometimes, we reach favourable terms. Not always. Multiple failed negotiations are also a possibility, and we may eventually call it quits, and that might be the right decision.

But it can’t be without trying because …

Marriage is a privilege, but its also a responsibility.

What I’m reading/ watching/ listening to:

The Bridge: I am slow-watching this Swedish/ Danish murder mystery on Prime. One of the cops solving the case is supposed to be autistic, so the husband and I are watching the show together. It’s one of the few adult things that we have been able to do together (away from the kids i.e.), so I really cherish that time together. Strangely, it makes me feel more connected to him.

The divided self - this is such a beautiful essay about the contrasting lives one can live being in India and abroad. Hard relate.

Mediocrity - This essay on striving for mediocrity made me wonder if we set ourselves up for failure by trying to optimise for being in extraordinary marriages. May be this merits a whole essay in itself.

Tolerating Unknowns - Heather with her usual awesome thoughts.

Shapely Gal song - Navarasam by Thaikkudam Bridge, just because I am listening to it on loop as I write this today.

Well, at least that’s what this TED Talk with 34 million views claims.

I don’t think these things happen overnight. It’s usually a result of a series of harmless “no, not tonight”. It’s what I’d like to call chronic micro-rejection.

We reject our partners in so many ways EVERY single day. Whether it’s an invitation for a physical, emotional or an intellectual connection, we reject them without even realising it.

Do you want to go to bed? You go ahead, I am not sleepy yet.

Do you want to have dinner? Not hungry yet, you go ahead.

Coffee? Oh I’ve had too many already, but you go ahead.

Over time, we create this enormous distance between one and another in our marriages. Then, when we try to communicate, we can no longer hear each other.

Every relationship starts off being deeply connected - where we are both curious, interested in new experiences and learning about each other. Over time, we start drifting. We re-distribute the energy we spend on our partners on other pursuits.

Career, hobbies, health, children and so on.

When we are single, our brains have a single minded pursuit - partnership. But once we’ve “nailed it”, our brain shelves that aspect of our life as “having dealt with” and moves on. It’s simple conservation of energy.

Except, its really not that simple. While getting into a partnership, we are at our best behaviours in order to secure a mate. It’s evolution. We see it in animals too.

As humans, we have created an institution called “marriage” to sustain this connectedness in order to give our babies the best chance for survival. But it’s (hu)man-made, so nature does little to preserve our marriages. So, our societies are responsible for upholding this institution.

As our societies become more individualistic, it’s upto each of us.

Sometimes people say, if we’re meant to be together, we will be. But the reality is, we are not naturally wired to stay in partnerships. When we go against nature, it takes enormous effort to do so, let alone sustain it.

As our energy for the relationship begins to fade, we become less receptive to each other. We struggle to appreciate each others’ efforts in a marriage, we’re easily hurt and when we’re hurt, we reject each others’ invitation for connection.

Sustained back and forth micro-rejection creates a vicious circle that threatens our sense of security. So, we start to raise the fort around us and assert our boundaries harder. We start prioritising our independence over building the relationship stronger.

We cannot build a strong relationship without strong individual boundaries. Yet, when we start building these boundaries while in the relationship, as a result of fear, it is at the cost of our relationship.

Chronic micro-rejection is far more dangerous than explosive fights because you don’t notice it building up until its damage is impossible to contain.

It erodes trust within a relationship. We stop being vulnerable with one another because we no longer believe that our partners will listen to us or reciprocate to our needs. The real danger is when our interactions go on auto-pilot, and it becomes almost impossible to reset the pattern.

It takes enormous effort to actively listen, and recalibrate our behaviours. We become rails of the same train track, carrying the burden of our relationship, yet unable to ever meet each other.

If I could end on one thought before I go, it’s this…

Relationships stray over time. When we acknowledge that, we can begin to repair them. We may each have our individual versions of how we got there, it doesn’t matter. Our stories don’t need to align.

We only need to hear each other out.

I am leaving you with an interesting exercise I found on rejection, which I hope will inspire you to reset.

We all want to feel a sense of closeness with our partners, and manifest intimacy for ourselves. I am currently going through all my notes from conversations with friends and clients for my book. I found 3 things that created real inflection in peoples’ relationships, and I want to share them with you.

They are so simple, you can try them TODAY:

Talk

Share your desires with your partner, ask them about theirs. Pick something small that both of you are comfortable doing together immediately after this conversation. It could be an activity you enjoy doing together or just holding hands. If you aren’t able to do even that small little thing right after your talk, the value of your talk was zero.

Trust

Trust that your partner loves you. Be vulnerable. Trust that they are listening, and trust that they are trying. Allow them to be vulnerable too. Listen. Trust what they have to say. We are afraid of being hurt, and hence, we prefer not to trust. But mistrust eats into love. Starting today, in the immediate next conversation with your partner, trust them a little more than you normally would.

Train

Intimacy is an endurance game, not a one-night sprint. So keep training with your partner, a small step forward EVERY DAY. Create a daily ritual - keep it simple. It could be a hug every morning, a kiss before bed, a coffee together every morning, or even just a daily text to say you love them. It’s not what you do on your best days, it is what you do EVERY DAY to create intimacy that matters.

It’s not too late to start TODAY.

What are your thoughts?

Any other powerful rituals that have worked for you in improving intimacy with your partner?