Girl and City

On our second day in Chicago, BI and I had originally planned to walk around Millennium Park. However, it was raining that morning, so we drove around aimlessly in our car, letting ourselves get lost in the city. As we were driving, we had an interesting conversation about relationships and marriage.
Her parents have never married, despite being in a committed relationship for over 25 years. My parents were married soon after they started dating, not out of love but out of a need to settle down into a committed relationship¹. So it’s no surprise that we had very different perspectives on marriage.

My perspective was that I had to get married. I would not be happy without marriage. In fact, I wanted to get engaged by the time I was 26 and married by the time I was 27. BI is already 26, so this sort of talk no doubt alarmed her. She was ready for a serious relationship now, but she certainly wasn’t sold on marriage. In fact, if she had a committed relationship that never led to marriage, she would be just as content.

Although we could not agree on the “need” for marriage, there was one thing we could agree on: relationships² are not what they used to be. And we believe this is mostly because women’s roles in society have changed.
In the past, women were financially dependent on their male counterparts. Thus, finding a husband was absolutely necessary for survival. Nowadays, women are financially independent, which means finding a husband (or a life partner) is no longer about need, but about want.

I’ve talked about this before but I had another realization this time. The tricky thing with “want”, and the reason for all these failed marriages nowadays, is that “want” changes much more quickly and easily than “need.” A need for a breadwinner exists perpetually, unless you win the lottery or a huge inheritance falls into your lap out of nowhere. However, without that need, what you want becomes rather capricious. What you want can change several times a week, much less a lifetime. For example, right now, you may want someone who can make you laugh and cheer you up no matter what, around whom you are more impulsive and fun. But in five or ten years, maybe you’ll want someone who can take things seriously, who won’t make light of things that are important, and who can be a steady rock, no matter how boring and predictable. As a result of these changing “wants”, not only does your life partner feel superfluous for not being able to satisfy a need, but they feel uneasy because they are at risk of being kicked aside on a whim.

Of course, I exaggerate the effect of this problem, but it is indeed a real problem. Unless our need for human companionship³ is as strong as our need for survival, a marriage for a lifetime no longer seems plausible.

The rain stopped just as we were about to buy tickets to see Blue Man’s Group, since we decided that doing something indoors was the best course of action on a rainy day. Seeing that the rain stopped, we decided to go to Millennium Park after all. If we can change our mind three times during the course of one day, how will I be sure what I want for the rest of my life?

1. In China, when you near the age of 30, people around you start frantically setting you up on dates, with the idea that if you like what you see, you’ll get married. This is very similar to practices in Korea and India. [↩]
2. Marriage being the ultimate form of a relationship. [↩]
3. But I question the strength of a marriage if the philosophy behind is companionship for companionship’s sake. [↩]

A blog friend of mine recently got married. She met her hubby through her blog, and they were married within three months. Her story is crazy, especially because I’ve been reading her blog since before she met this Blog Boy. She tells the story better than I can.

Her story got me thinking. What is the point of a long engagement? I mean, if you love someone, and they love you, why wait a year, or two, to get married? Why date for three or five or eight years? What are you waiting for?

If you never want to get married, then fine, I will put you in the “never getting married” box and ignore you. But what about the rest of you? Are you testing the waters? Do you want “to be sure”?

I’ve always thought that I’d date at least two years before my engagement, and then another one year before the wedding. But now that I think about it, why do I need those three years “to be sure”? I know there are people who have been married for over 20 years, and they say that they were always sure about their feelings for each other. Good for them. Me, I don’t think I’ll ever be sure. I don’t think I’ll be sure after dating someone for two years, I don’t think I’ll be sure if we lived together for four years, and I don’t think any length of engagement will make me “sure”.

Maybe being sure isn’t about the other person but about myself. Maybe I am just somebody who can’t be sure of how I feel. That doesn’t make it any less real.

I’ve always admired how quickly marriages were decided in the old days. You’d court for a little while, and if you found each other to be pleasant, the man would propose, and a wedding would take place soon after. In those circumstances, you would only see each other a few times before the engagement, always in public settings. Now we have all these checkpoints in place like anniversaries and co-habitation and long engagements, and still we have people (like myself) who never seem to be sure. When will it ever be enough? It’s like the show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, every time the host asks “Is that your final answer?” you re-evaluate yourself one more time. He could ask you a million times, and you would still hesitate. At some point, you just have to bite the bullet and say, “Yes, that is my final answer.”

So Erika, you have inspired me to re-evaluate my position on long lead times for marriage. Perhaps in a few months, I will be married too. (Ok, probably not, but anything could happen.)

This is a post by the lovely imerika. She is one of the most refreshingly honest bloggers I’ve ever followed, and am thrilled that she agreed to write a blog post for me. Enjoy!

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My boss told me he is heading toward a divorce.

Where is the hope?

I don’t understand. My boss is AWESOME. Seriously, best boss I’ve ever had. He’s a cool guy. I know I don’t know everything, but what I ask myself is: where is the hope?

Is there anything left to hope for? Another story, another separation, another divorce. It’s not even surprising anymore, but it’s always heartbreaking.

When someone tells you they’re divorcing, your reaction is no longer “how could that possibly be?” but rather “there goes another one….”

Is there even reason for me to hope anymore?

Please, married people, give us single people some hope here. I’m out here in the dating jungle, and I’m trekking through murky waters and turning away perfectly good prospects because I keep hoping that just around the river bend there’ll be some guy that I’ll actually want to marry and not just settle for.

I don’t want to end up in divorce. It’s one of my biggest fears. Which helps explain why I’m so commitment-phobic–what if I make the wrong choice? My parents have been married 25 years, my grandparents 50 years…It’s a lot to live up to. It hasn’t always been easy for them. There were times, I remember, when my mom was thisclose to separating from my dad. But they held on, they struggled through together because isn’t that what marriage is about?

It’s not about being happy all the time. It’s about going through the ups and the downs, sacrificing through those bad times because in the end, the end result is knowing that you’ve stuck through it all together. But at what price?

Why do I value marriage so highly? Why do I believe in till-death-do-us-part? I don’t believe in happily ever afters, it’s ridiculous to believe that you’ll always be happy every day of every month. But I believe in marriage, so very much so. I don’t know why, but I do. I want to believe that there’s something greater out there, that sharing my life with someone, going through all the ups and the downs of life together gives me something to root for.

I want a family, I want a husband, and I want to be a mom and I want to love. Am I fool for still believing in marriage?

This is a guest post by the lovely gem. I have loved every single one of her entries since I discovered her blog and asked her to write a guest entry for me. I love her wit and sarcasm, I hope you do too! I also wrote a guest entry for her: The Truth about Men and Women.

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To introduce myself shortly, online I go by gem, in real life I live in New York City. I have also been single my entire life. So I’m going
to talk about validating men, something that I fail at miserably and which is one of the main reasons for my constantly single status. The most recent example of my failure to validate a man is with my newest paramour, whom I met almost two months ago. I’ve seen him once or twice a week since then, he’s nice, he likes me, I like him, etc. However, when it comes to actually showing him that I like him, I end up unintentionally coming off like a total jerk. Always. This past weekend was a prime example of this…

We’d just spent hours being absurdly cuddly and discussing silly little things in our life. It secretly made me a little nauseous, but the outward happiness was real too. (It’s a paradox, but it’s true.) And then suddenly we noticed how long we’d been lying around for and he realized he had to leave. He asked what I was doing for the day and I mentioned that I was hanging out with my friend and her Italian friend who was visiting her. I concentrated on how I’d be with the Italian, with his cute broken English and his wild Italian hair. My paramour watched me as I talked about this Italian guy, and his response was a simple, “Don’t hook up with the Italian.”

I just smiled at his advice, and moved on to my plans for after that, how I’d been invited to a few parties, none of which I particularly needed or wanted to go to. And he quickly invited me to a party he was going to that night, as any nice paramour would do. But before he’d even finished I said a curt, “No.” And without looking at him, I rambled that I’d told all the parties I was going to go, so I had to at least go to one of them… even if I didn’t really want to. He concentrated on the fact that I didn’t actually want to go to any of the parties and obviously I couldn’t go to all of them, so I might as well just go with him! Didn’t I want to go with him?

I didn’t go with him.

Now, I understand the Italian thing a little. Keep him on his toes, blah blah blah. However, I definitely should have gone with him to the party. I wanted to, even! But… well, once I start meeting more of his friends and he meets mine, then, if we stop spending time together, we have to explain it. I don’t want to explain where he went and I don’t want him talking about me after we’re done. I want our relationship to exist in a bubble and if it pops, I want that pop to have zero effect on anything else in our lives! Slash I am an idiot who lets her fears force her into making poor decisions when it comes to men. Because what if the bubble never pops? Why jump to the negative conclusion instead of hoping for the best and just doing what I know will make me happiest in the moment… Which is why my new plan is to validate him and our relationship from now on and say yes when he wants me to say yes!

Except this weekend. I sort of have a really busy schedule with some old friends and a friend who just moved back to town. And then I’m going out of town for the holidays… so basically I’m not seeing him for awhile and by the time I get back he’ll have forgotten me. Oh well, good thing I kept the bubble small!

“Did you tell MFL yet?” WAF asked me, soon after I told her about my job offer in Singapore.
“No,” I said immediately. I had scarcely given it any thought. I mean, I hadn’t talked to MFL since we had that conversation about not seeing each other anymore.
“Should I?” I asked as an afterthought. “I mean, I haven’t talked to him or thought about him since our conversation,” I said aloud, more for my benefit than hers.
“Well, that’s good,” she said encouragingly.

“Do you think… Tell me honestly, what do you think about MFL and I?”
WAF paused for a second. “I used to think you two would end up together,” she said quietly.
“End up together? Like, as in, married together?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah. Like married. But that was when I thought you two would both be in Toronto after university. Now that you’re going to Singapore, that changes everything…”
I sat back in semi-shock. Did all our friends think we would get married someday? How could they harbour these thoughts when MFL and I haven’t been together in nearly four years? How could they harbour these thoughts and still let me cut him out of my life?

It makes me wonder whether I should tell MFL that I’m leaving. It feels weird to break our no-speaking pact just to make an announcement. And what would be the point? To see his reaction? To get him to finally admit, or even realize, that he still has feelings for me?
Even in my own mind, I think it’s absurd to expect anything. He’s MFL. He’s always been passive and complacent. If he didn’t step up when I made it clear I was giving up on him, he’s not going to step up just because I’m moving halfway around the world. And let’s be honest, I’ve enjoyed these past couple months of not thinking about him. In fact, I can honestly say, “I am not in love with him anymore.”
I am not in love with him anymore.

Maybe I will always feel something when I’m around him – or around any guy that treats me like he does, for that matter – but it doesn’t mean that he can make me happy for life. In spite of what a great boyfriend I know him to be, it is now clear to me why he was not enough. He doesn’t go after what he wants. He won’t fight for the girl he loves, nor the relationship they have. And after the break-up, I wanted to believe that he could, that he just needed a wake-up call. Maybe that’s why I waited so long. But not anymore.

No, not anymore.
SG is officially single and looking.