Monday, January 16, 2006
To Love or not To Love? - 4:25 PM
I'm bored... BORED bored BORED bored BORED. Its Martin Luther King's Day today which means we get a rare public holiday off school (YAY), and that I should be catching up on last week's readings (BOO). I'm sitting here listening to Lihong's songs and rotting...WHAT AN INCONSTRUCTIVE LIFE!!!!Andrea and I got talking just now. (Its currently 5.30am SG time and she's just gone off to bed.) I always enjoy my long MSN conversations with Andrea. We seem to be able to touch on alot of topics such as friendship, love&marriage, society and of cos more recently, since we're both the distant daughters of Singapore....realising the value of home only after we left it. Today, it was about love and marriage.
It all started with her exclaiming 'OMG RUOYING... I WANT TO GET MARRIED!'... Umm... yes I know, I also want to get married (eventually) but what if no one wants to marry me leh? Then she said one of her closest friends is already SAVING UP FOR HER WEDDING. hahaahha. We both agree that that friend thinks wayyyyy too much. Then we talked about how crucial support from our and partner's network is on our relationship. What happens if your friends don't like your boyfriend? Listen to your friends (who have been with you thru thick and thin) about why he is not that such a good choice, or choose to follow your heart?
You know how some people always say 'I don't care whether you like him or not... I am the one marrying him and as long as I like him, its none of your business.' But come to think of it, your family and friends are the ones who know you best. After all, they've known you long enough to pass 80% accurate judgement.
Last summer when I went home, I was told of 2 real-pple extra-marital affairs. MY GAWD. 2 different stories in the short 9 mths when I was away? Both involved middle aged people with children. MY GAWD. Those 2 stories totally rocked my afternoon. As I rode the bus home, I couldn't stop thinking about them, about their children, and how my respect for them had pummelled to an incredible low within what? 5 mins? I felt angry (that they betrayed their families), hurt (for their children), and above all, disappointed.
Then I remember watching the talkshow with Quan Yifeng and Desmond Koh as hosts on Channel U. Every week, they will invite a panel of young people and a panel of older folks and they face off on a topic. The topic for that week was... hmm... something about the views of young people on relationships. After that show, I was befuddled. The way young people undervalue relationships is disrespectful and immature. How is someone able to put their raw feelings and emotions on a platter when they don't mean it? So they probably don't mean it... And how do you call a relationship a RELATIONSHIP when you don't do that?
Andrea and I recalled telling our parents about my friends' relationships in Secondary School.. you know the ones that they dismissed as 'puppy love'. I remeber I was livid at them for not being able to accept youngsters like myself to be in 'love'. They would say 'aiyah... that guy is not BOYFRIEND la. He is just a friend! Maybe closer friend, but NOT a BOYFRIEND.' I would respond 'NO! they're BOYFRIEND and GIRLFRIEND why can't you accept that?' But now I think back at that, wah! Almost all of the relationships -duh- dissolved soon after. Puppy love it was. So our parents' words were words of wisdom after all huh?
I remember having an ex colleague who had asked Shiyun and I to guess the number of ex-boyfriends she's had. She was 21 and so we guessed 5? Nope. erh... 10? Nope. huh more than that? She had a whopping 25 exes by the time she was 21! Andrea said she had this ex-friend who had 40 exes by 15! MY GOD. Can they even remember their names? I remember Shiyun and I analysing.. 'we don't even have 25 GUY FRIENDS AND YOU HAVE 25 EXES?!' She said the longest relationship was a few months and the shortest, 3 days. OK lets see.. that gives you enough time to go out for a cycling sesion at East Coast Park on Day 1 feeling all happy and blessed; a dinner and movie on Day 2 with the relationship becoming a little strained; and a break up on Day 3 cos 'we're not for each other'. THAT, my friends, is RIDICULOUS.
THat is why, children... that when we look for partners, we shouldn't just focus on the MAGIC that surrounds us. Find someone you have deep respect for, and someone, if you weren't together, could be your friend for life. We deduced that most divorces occur (save for the midlife crisis affairs) because most people are too enveloped in the MAGIC of love that makes them dive into marriages. What if you wake up one day after 3 yrs of marriage, realise that the MAGIC is *poof* GONE! And horrors of horrors, you discover that the man lying next to you is rude, unkind, lazy and you ABSOLUTELY cannot find anything to love about him? As a person, he doesn't earn your respect and you cannot remember why you ended up being husband and wife. DEN ZE2 MEH4 BAN4?!!
Andrea and I were talking about how fun it will be to see friends get married one by one... At the same time, it is only fun if you're also marriage-bound urself. Otherwise, to see your friends graduate from singlehood while u're still stuck there is seriously traumatizing. Aiyah, anyway. we have a pact. If by the time we're 35 and not married yet, we're gonna rent gowns and take pics. WHO WANTS TO JOIN US? HAHAHHAA.. how pathetic is that? But this is certainly not as crazy as compared to the other things people do out there.
I was thinking about Chinese New Year. In a few yrs, I will be dreading the holiday and will be attempting to escape during that 2 to 3 days if I don't have a boyfriend. Cos everyone will start asking 'so have boyfriend not... no boyfriend why dun wanna find one..... have boyfriend den get married fast la....married already must have kids....1 not enough must have 2....2 not enough must have 3!!' and the convo goes on and on... DANG! ZE MEH BAN?!! I don't want my favourite festival morphing into my most dreaded nightmare!!! Come to think of it, these people are really weird. Don't they think we would want to have someone special to share our lives with? Siao.
And so now with CNY fastly approaching, I can already see single women making plans to flee the country. Like what Andrea said, its really unfair how Men are like wine that gets better with age, and women? We're like flowers... we wither with age. -_-. BAH!