The bond people never ask about

For years, I believed meaningful relationships required another person. I was wrong.

It doesn’t send text messages. It doesn’t remember my birthday. It has never once asked me how my day was. But it has been there through heartbreak, grief, uncertainty and some of the loneliest moments of my life.

Its name is music. More specifically, a collection of vinyl records.

We’ve been taught to measure connection through relationship status — spouse, best friend, significant other. Even in modern Malaysia, that framework holds.

Yet some of the most meaningful relationships in our lives don’t fit in those categories at all.

I grew up surrounded by my late father’s vinyl collection. It occupied shelves and corners of our home long before I understood its significance. To some people, they’re simply records. To me, they’ve been lifelong companions.

There is a ritual to playing a record that feels almost intimate. You pull the album from the shelf, study the cover art, read the liner notes, carefully slide the record from its sleeve and place it on the turntable. Then comes my favourite part — lowering the stylus.

First, the crackle. Then the faint scratches. Tiny marks left behind by time and the occasional artwork contributed by my six-year-old self.

And then, the music begins to play.

People aren’t so different. We carry our own marks too — heartbreaks, setbacks, mistakes. And yet, those very experiences are often what make us more resilient.

Psychologists have long recognised music’s role in emotional regulation, memory and wellbeing. Its capacity to reduce stress, revive autobiographical memory and provide comfort during uncertain times.

Sometimes it helps us process emotions we don’t yet have words for.

I remember listening to “It never rains in Southern California” after an unexpected career turn left me questioning everything.

The song gave voice to what I couldn’t yet explain to anyone around me. Music didn’t solve my problems. But it reminded me that difficult chapters pass, and that disappointment isn’t destiny.

Looking back, music shaped far more than my taste in songs. It shaped my curiosity, my humour, my resilience. Perhaps even the way I tell stories.

Most of all, it keeps my late father close. His records have outlived him, and when they spin, they bring him back — long drives, shared laughter, conversations that seemed to happen most easily between songs.

A man who unknowingly gave his daughter something she would return to for comfort, decades later.

Today, my own daughter reaches for those same records. She is drawn to the warmth of analogue sound and the ritual that comes with it. Three generations, connected by the same grooves.

Last year, someone who paid close attention gifted me a record — Diana & Marvin — for my birthday.

To many, a simple gesture. To me, one of the most meaningful I’ve received — care expressed through a record passed from one pair of hands to another.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve stopped defining relationships so narrowly.

Some arrive through family. Some through friendship. Some through pets. And some through songs that sit patiently inside a sleeve, waiting to remind us who we are when we ourselves have forgotten.

Because connection isn’t always about who sits across the table from us.

Sometimes, it’s about what stays beside us when nobody else can.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.