Relationships.....

What do we look for in a relationship? Love, passion, commitment, security, benefits or simply happiness? Or is happiness just another combination of the aforesaid factors? Is relationship like a business where we invest something and get returns? Is it possible that sometimes we invest so much in one business and lose that we don’t have anything left to invest in anything else? How do we decide what to give and what not to give? Whom to give and whom not to give? I guess relationships are all see saw balances..we try to balance what we get and receive…if nothing else the happiness or rather the peace we get in giving someone is reward in itself....Relationships…how do I describe this all important word…society….friends….circle..contacts….close pals…there are a thousand divisions ..at the same time shudn’t we be aware of where to draw a line? But dont we cross the line ourselves and let our relationships define us? Are our relationships an indicator of what we are? Do we have no separate existence apart from the way we maintain relationships? I feel we are drained by the commitments we get into…so much so that we are too carried away by the way we fail in one or two relations and as a result mess up our entire thought process….but at the end of the day what we are is not what others, even the best of our friends, think about us but what we think about ourselves…and that brings me to another question? Should we judge our relations and their veracity by the way our opinion about ourselves matches with others. ...as in…is the guy who thinks the same about me as I do about myself, my best friend?