What I learnt about marriage

 There are many assumptions we make about the world or take for granted until we realise otherwise. Growing up, I engaged in dinner conversations, eavesdropped or just openly listened-in and sometimes participated in numerous casual conversations and similar communication models throughout the days. These conversations varied in all forms, commentary, transactional, open-ended, unfiltered, biased, unbiased … etc. Never did I once classify parents’ marriage to be of the gold standard or was inspired enough to want it for myself.

 

For me, that was what a marriage was. To be with someone you trust enough to critique their thought processes, to be with someone you respect enough to brain storm ideas that may or may not go anywhere, to be with someone who admires you enough to be eager to be hear your perspectives, to be with someone who shares your humour and fascination of the mundane events in a day. Of course, there were disagreements. To make up for it, there were compromises and growth. Overall, it has been the greatest marriage that I ever had the privilege to witness. Little was I made aware that I would forever be comparing my own “marriage” to this by default.

 

I have heard of Ester Perel, I do not expect my partner to fulfil the role of an entire village. That would be unreasonable and impossible for any one person. But I have seen my parents’ marriage and know for a fact that it is possible and attainable without feeling like work. Have I been exposed to the gold standard and setup for failure? Or should this be my relationship goal? Would it not be great if I could role model this to my offspring, so they do not settle for less? Or do I want this standard - definition of marriage - to be forever lost with me?

 

As I reflect on how I got here, I realised that much of the focus in our world has been focused on searching for the right partner - qualities and characteristics that resembles a checklist. Nothing wrong with a checklist, if it was thoroughly thought through. But how do you know what you don’t know? At what point do you assume humans differs from each other? The very idea of a checklist for a partner centers around the Partner, yet the end goal is a way of life. A wiser way of approaching the problem would be to focus on the relationship. To think about: what kind of relationship I want? What do I hope to get out of the relationship?

 

The idea of speed dating, again, focuses on the person. Maybe times have changed, relationships are no longer as transactional as they used to be. If the aim of a contemporary relationship is happiness, the focus should be on organic interactions. 

A Greedy Sort of Ache

I looked him in the eyes, all I managed to say was “nothing”. “Nothing,” I repeated unconvincingly before I burst into tears.

“You can tell me if something is wrong,” he persisted, “we are still friends.”

He, who once told me that he couldn’t live without me, has just made me feel like a friend. It was I, who taught him with full confidence that life goes on, without a second thought that I would need him like this.

All I wanted in that moment was my place back. All those times, he would make me believe that I sat on the top of the world with a throne on my head and I had his undivided attention.

I didn’t want to tell him to come back when I had doubts, but it pains to know that time will tick us further apart.

He went on to tell me that he must have a child before he leaves this world. Once upon a time, he told that he didn’t care about anything else as long as I was happy. If it meant not having children, he was willing to accept.

I knew I have lost my place. There are other priorities in his life now. Every action there is a reaction. Even if we were to return to what we were, I have caused too much drama for us to have what we had.

Importance of breaking out from comfort zone

Generalisation is a human nature. Often in life it is somewhat convenient to categorise others and put them inside a box. But it becomes dangerous when you start categorising yourself, resulting to limitations in your own life experiences.

I never thought I would find myself in middle of a pole dancing workshop. That is not to say, I had anything against pole dancing. But you know... I had no special interest in pole dancing, why would I take time out of my week and fit pole dancing between work, family time, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, down time for myself, catching up with friends, exercising... (the list goes on)?

Yesterday, an awesome friend of my, N (single) invites me to share the celebration of her 27th birthday and her recent passion for pole dancing. Little did I know what I signed up to, I went expecting an end of semester performance by her pole dancing class. Rereading the invitation again would help in the future. When I showed up, my first hint was there are no seats for audiences. Still, I did not expect myself to be doing any dancing. For one, I am out of tune when I sing, if I dance I will be most definitely be out of rhythm. For two, I initially told Nikki that I would like to watch, and Nikki said watching is fine. See? There is no reason that I should be involved with dancing.

It was not long till I realised everyone who turned up is Nikki’s friend, and not part of her pole
dancing class. Some like me showed up expecting to watch, while other showed in gym wear ready for pole dancing. Due to the small number of people who came to dance, the teacher encouraged us all to pick a pick and dance along.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed watching the promiscuous side of everyone, and laughing at people when they make a fool of themselves. It was just nice to exercise and mentally loosen up. At the same time, the experience has bought to my attention the amount of muscle that I have neglecting in my everyday living.

 It got me thinking about all the different classes out there that I can be signing up to, and new people I can meet. Why have I not yet? Why is it that Nikki can make the time and I can’t?

Well, there is something I do not want to admit: when I am free, I spend time to my boyfriend. So do I spend too much time with Mr Boyfriend? Certainly not according to him, and I do not think so either. We only see each other on the weekends, and call in the evenings during the week. There is no standard for how much time one should spend with their significant other, therefore there is no such thing as too much or too less time that you spend together. But regardless how much time you spend together, it is still time. It is still time out of a lifetime, time out of a limited span of time.

 People in relationship will have less time to explore whether it is to a slight extent or enormous extent. It makes me wonder why I have not ever appreciated it when I was single. It seems that you need to have been in a relationship in order to know how to be single. You need to know where all the relationship constraints are, in order to take full advantage of all your single privileges.

Perhaps this is where the 80/20 rules comes in. The rule states that approximately 80% of the production comes from 20% of the activity. Maybe I only need to be a girlfriend 20% of the times. 80% of the time should be spent on me. Because there are so many things I want to expose myself to before I die. There is so much I have not seen, yet alone done in this whole wide world. I refuse to let my youth go just like that.

Merry Christmas~

Is it cliché of me to start an entry with “The older I get…”? It seems that the older I get, the more often my reflection comes down to “The older I get, the more I come to realise XYZ”. So here we go for today…

The older I get, the more important it is for me to spend days such as Christmas, New Year, Easter… etc. with people I love. Maybe I have reached an age where I come to realise that there is really not much else to life, there is really not much else to a year, and there is really not much else in the world. Nothing material lasts, not that anything intangible lasts either. These days nothing of anything lasts forever. We live in this open-ended space-in-time where nothing is for certain. The only thing that makes life worth living is those moments we live. They are moments of happiness, anger, fear, gratitude… etc. – they are an end on its own. Being a Buddhist I value the happy and the sad, because they make life what it is.

Humans, we are not self-creation. We sustain in a social setting with complex interactions that are beyond systematic theories of ‘cause and effect’, because we are intelligent enough to seek for that kind of luxury.

This Christmas I just want to say:

Treat your loved ones well

Appreciate every moment you have together

Enjoy and be safe

Have a merry Christmas =) 

 

A choice away

Reading on some of the notes, I have made in the past about V. Feels like I am reading it for the first time as the words contain an unfamiliar ring. It is as if they were clichés used in the lyrics of a song. I hoped that I would never be in the state again.

It is true that I have never been in the same state again.

Be careful what you wish for, they have said.

A new question begins to ponder: If given another opportunity to be in love, would it worth the pain?

If only it was love

Lord, how I hoped to see him, and lord, did I not look for him? I thought I wanted to see him, I thought I would have liked to see him. I did not see him. But he was there, when I saw him it was too late.

On one level, it almost seems that reality is buried too deep under conventional grounds. I wanted him because I believed so. The conclusion was drawn from the fact that I could be in love. More than anything else, I wanted to be in love as oppose to living in isolation – alienation. To hold on… to life, hold onto chance and possibilities as I hopped off my last stepping stone. I held on. Because I feared I’ll never love again; because he seemed like a nice person who cared for the well-being of others; because I felt safe trusting him. Even now, I don’t know where if there really was love I held onto. For all I can say is “we sustain”. Only if… if only.

This ill comfort was made sense that we are fated not. In the time to come, by chance we are so close in centimetres, millimetres or even nanometres, chances are we will have so smoothly gone our separate ways. Spiritually wise, when our minds are together, our souls will forever stand apart.

He pains me not, yet he disappoints me in every way.

Worth the pain

So, girl meets boy, they fall in love and lived happily ever after.
How cliché?
What's more is that all good must come to an end. Part II of the myth is that guy leaves girl, she gets hurt and he moves on.
Is it not convenient Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella all got their happy endings? Where does it leave Part II? Does it still get told, or rather indirectly instead?

Some people only hear the Part Two.
Here is the problem. Part Two doesn’t work without Part One. The girl needs to fall in love first in order to be heart broken; Part Two prevents the girl from doing that which is why it never gets told. It is a spoiler for both stories.
But reality is: sometimes girl does meet boy, they do fall in love, and they do live happily ever after. So where is the problem? The ones who have heard Part Two do not get this chance. They have given up hope to the risk of pain. They have given up happiness for a pain-free guaranteed life. Is it worth it?

Is happiness worth the pain? No pain, no gain? Or is it, no pain, no pain?

Let us imagine this very scenario for a second: She lived her life in the shadows of Part Two. She is in awe by these who are able to believe. But she is haunted by her fears at every point where she turns. So she waits for love to find her. Maybe… One day… she will overcome her insecurities.
Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the story of my life.

Maybe doubts will always be there. Perhaps it is not about making them disappear, but embracing them. Accepting them as part of who we are, as we make decisions into the near future.

Is there always a reason?

He has a girlfriend.
I once needed him like air is to life. What part of him does it belong to me, now? Who am I to have a say? He had every right. We have gone our separate ways. Why haven’t I let go? How did he let go?

How does it work? Why didn’t it work?

If things were different, could it have worked? Or were we fated to part?

How do we leave a piece of memory out? How does a feeling, a sound, stay on for so long?

As I sat outside the library, all I wanted to do was numb it out. Indulge into it, like never before. Maybe I never truly wanted to let go. Let it be tamed and domesticated as Gramsci would put it.
Does it work?

Maintain our existence

Really? Is love really all that emotion orientated as we thought? Do we have no control at all what so ever?

During my year 12 exam the question has never really occurred to me directly, or should I say personally, intimately. But as time goes by, it seems that maybe there is some form of control, rationally absurd sort of control. The essay question was on ‘Nineteen eighty-four,’ about the love which was demonstrated. Did it suddenly occur to me, or was that the most convenient answer at the time, that the so called love between Winston and Julia was completely a choice of will. They were able to love and hate which ever is needed the most in the circumstance of the time. Coming to think about it again, have they been that dehumanised?
Is dehumanisation possible? Taking the life out of a person by building up on the ideas of oppression and suppression, can we squeeze the human-ness out of a person? What is human-ness? What makes a person a person? What set him apart from a living corpse or machine? Could it be his commitment to life? His will to act? His sense control has over how the world sees him? Now, is it a bit conceited to state it down like this? Would it be this sense of dignity that holds strength within him? Do some human make better human than others? Is morality part of human responsibility, or is that merely social perception to how we should be? [My friend, let me ask you how human are you?]

In seeking that special someone, we create boundaries for ourselves, and we always choose within our boundaries. We only ever take what is within these borderlines into consideration. With each failure we meet, every time we feel a lack of choice that we have been bounded too tight, we open up our selection by just a little more. [Is this cause and effect?] Baby, there always is a choice. Can I handle this; is he too good for me; are we too different? We choose to let go, we choose to hold on. We choose by asking: are they good for us? [That is human-ness (in accordance to morality). The human-ness mentioned above is in accordance with life/ death/ soul.]

Charles Darwin makes the point that life strives for existence. He implies that we all want to live. Sure we all agree to some extend, but for some of us we are here because we are already here. [In philosophy an argument is valid when it is logical, when all premises lead to the conclusion. When an argument is sound it means it is logical and premises are true, unquestionable.] It was also claimed that individual survival is advantaged by the survival of a group of the same or similar species as it gives an individual more access over other forms of life. If life strives for survival, is it valid to say people strive for a partner of strength (human-ness)? I might not agree with the premise, but I certainly do agree with the argument. When we think about it, don’t we choose the ones who are full of will, committed to life, and unafraid to consequent the actions of others? Maybe to maintain existence is born into each one of us. Maybe that is what life is.

Trusting the unknown

To love, to fall… to believe on behalf of someone else, to resemble by assuming they feel the same way. Certain aspects arouse the belief system so much that it emerges into reality. Can it be true?

What is it like to be in love? The answer varies from one context to another. Once upon a time, love was simply to confront. We are all able to love, just flick the switch on, black is black and white is white. When that paradigm collapsed, love was the ultimate psychological torture. Love was pain, full stop. Or so it seemed. Nothing comes for free, nothing is fated to be. Love is a commitment. We sign up to it. We sign out of it. While we are at it, we treat the person right.

Do the majority want to fall in love? Or do the majority want to be in love? Confide in it, secured in it, lost in it. Be defined in it.

Lost in it, lost in it… trust in it. Can we forgive the world for the past heartaches and move on? Or are we much better off living in denial of the past? Blindly trust with again-found youth. Turn off the guards, let ignorance bliss.

But isn’t that all we ever do in life – trust the unknown? Isn’t it the only way to live, the only way to get by – to trust in time, maintain hope?

Something has gotta give

Well, what is it going to be? Him or me?

Do I love him? Do I? Would I give up on everything I have to have him? Would I sacrifice my joy for philosophy, the satisfaction in my writing, and my enthusiasm in reasoning just for… what? My whole background, my history, the language that constructs my thoughts, the culture, everything I perceived I trusted and trust so much that I make the exception to influence my decisions… every drop of my essence which built me up to now, is it all coming to an end because of him? What if, I chose him over all else? To be with him forever, make him the constant of my days… I know I can’t. I don’t know why, why I can’t even mentally put myself into the position as if even that might be a risk.

What is he not? Can he not last me a lifetime?

Would I stand by him? Would he stand by me?

His smile, his choice of words… what wouldn’t I give? The truth is: there is just so much I wouldn’t give.

Is it programed?

In ‘The Matrix,’ it was said that love is merely a word justifying the relationship between two subjects, a connection that links two together. Machines too ‘feel’ love; it is indeed a “link”. At one stage one character – a program – asked Neo, “What would you give to hold onto that connection?” “Anything,” Neo answered. Is love a program? As much as we know how it influences the choices we make in life, is it the rules of a game we like to play? Smith declared that funny how the patterns of love follow the patterns of insanity.

However, the love that was demonstrated in ‘The Matrix’ leads us to think it is somewhat a force that results one to give up anything and everything in the world. What I want to know is: is it? Would you die in pain for the one you love, giving up on every pride you once had? Or do most of us give up on the search in finding love instead? Surely, if the link hasn’t been found then no sacrifices need to be met. Yet our society managed to link the word ‘incomplete’ to the image of a single lad. Here is a thought: do we purposefully make life more difficult for ourselves?

If it is ‘a link’, once we are ‘clicked’ in, is it all fated to be? That is to say like petal falling to the ground. do we ever ‘click’ out? Is it possible to delete a program? In our world today, programs are deleted, upgraded, abandoned on daily bases. In the intellectual world of gods and oracles, are we played like puppets on a string [if not, excuse my offence] whilst the Forms from Plato’s theory are constantly added, altered and abolished?

A code of ethics

Will it last? That is to say can I love his flaws, rather than coming to a compromise? Is this the bottom line? Could the difference between love and liking be that liking comes with criteria while love is unconditional?

If we were to fit love into this definition, then perhaps I never really loved.

Sometimes you think you are in love, and you would love them endlessly but under one condition. That is if they didn’t love you back, you never would have hung on for this long. Is that why we love the ones we love? Do we make love to them to secure our places? 

Yep, it is an age thing. You get there and you refuse to expose yourself to what you may not like about the person. Because you have finally found someone who you feel for, thus you try to protect the feeling for as long as possible even if it means to live in a lie. It seems like there is no time, like answering a question in an exam. You know it is not the right answer, but you write it down anyway for what it is worth it can only gain you marks if not full marks.
To love unconditionally, that is to say can you give more than you take? Can you love someone no matter what?
Do you take them back time after time they betray your trust? Would you love them even if they can’t love you back? Is that the Code of Ethics (for Love).

Never do we give up for anything less

It’s true, the feelings are stronger each time. We never give up or let go on our last affair for anything less. The more in love we are, the more difficult it will be to find one we’ll fall stronger for.

He finally appeared to take V’s place. I was told he has a girlfriend the first day I met him. A long time ago, I never thought that something like that would matter as long as I knew and I came along second. But the truth was it did turn me off by a bit in the same way as knowing we’ll never have a chance. Just like I am incapable of falling for someone 20-years into my senior, but regardless of how attractive they are my mind doesn’t even go there if the person is over 50 or 40. Because when someone is over 40, it just seems like we’ll never have a chance and what is the point?

It’s also true once you get to a certain age you stop dating for fun, you date for marriage. Dating gets tiring. After all the pain that each round brings, you just want to stop and be secured by something that does not end. Just back on that point again, sometimes it’s not really an age thing. After a broken heart, you realise the seriousness of an affair. Hearts are not to be played; hearts are to be cared for. It can only be considered immoral to play hearts in the way anyone did.

As I walked back from my run tonight, a question hit me: Is it harder to care about someone you don’t care about, or is it harder pretending not to care about someone you do?

It's gone, but' it's still not gone

After all this time, it's hard to believe he still has such hold of me. I still find it hard to breathe at the sight of his name on my window live messenger, he is still the thought that starts my day; he is the one I think of in the middle of my thoughts. No one else can replace him; he is the constant in my days.

Though I can't promise forever, right now I need him like a heart that needs a beat.

I wish he needs me as much I need him. I wish there were things we could have done but need not be counted for. I wish we had three strikes before we were out. I wish we lived like the world was going to end. I wish I knew before we said our final goodbye. I wish I could move on, I wish he could see me already moved on.

Don’t we all just want to be held? Don’t we all just want the necessaries of life and the one we love?

In the dark, it was a blur. In the dark, we need not take responsibilities. In the dark, I wish we could start all over again. There are certain things we'd only do in the dark where in the light of day, we fear being judged, we fear we could not rewind. Only in the dark, we live out our last bit of life where we pretend no one else could see.

Let it bleed

It has been so long, my love for him has probably been long gone. But my heart will forever hold onto that thought, the moments we shared, everything I felt. I will wait. I will wait for him to make my day. I locked away my heart and gave him the keys. If it means to give in all I have, there is nothing left of me to give any more. Love and pain, which is which? Seems one can not simultaneously exist without the other. If his affections were meaningless, betrayal could never be. If this pain inside is cursing me not, it mustn’t be love that I had for him. Every day that has gone by is parting the time we had together a little further away. Memories stay in the past, so it states the universal law.

Let it fade, let it loose.

Our future awaits. Let it bleed.

Even on a fresh page the imprints remain

For every new relationship we start, it is followed by the ending of a previous. Our predictions, our judgments follow so closely after our last that we almost always pick it up where we left it off. With each new era we hold on a little tighter, our doubts grow a little stronger, and when the cut rips it stings a little deeper.

Step by step, together we climb the great wall. Are we getting warmer? Is it all going to be worth it in the end?

Will we ever know? It’s like a game we’ll never win.

It's breaking my heart, and it may never mend

When the vase dropped, the ceramic cracked. That was the end of the story. It went on no more. When I dropped out of his life, my heart kept on breaking without a stop. I’ve tried to deny it, but how do you make the past disappear? I’ve tried to accept it, it only made it worse. Waking up each morning only to find out it's another day.

Is it fate, is this how the story is meant to end?