Making Mistakes in Love

The rate of divorce is slowly creeping up. You can access the news here.

Sometimes, my own clients glance at me with an appraising eye; wonder whether this chap is able to help them work through their marital issues, considering the fact that I am not married... yet. Well, their concern isn't unfounded, just that perhaps professionally, I don't think that is really an issue at all.

The concept of marriage is but a product of society; fundamentally, all love relationship presents the same amount of risk and benefits accompanied by (may not legally though) the union of the couple.Marriage is the complex equation of the same theory; doing higher order mathematical sums does not mean that all the basic I know become irrelevant just simply because we think that we are on 'different phase' of learning mathematics. In fact, the fundamentals might become even more important because if we fail to grasp them at lower level, it becomes obnoxiously harder as we climb further.

Personally, our education does not really help in the way we develop love relationship effectively. Why would I say that? One plausible clue might leads us to our education system: it shapes us in a way that it leaves little room for students to make mistakes. We are bred in a society of 'A' grade and anything less is in fact less worthy from a grade perspective. We view life in dichotomy - either you make it to the good schools/course or it is probably inferior dumping ground for you. How sad.

Ironically, relationship presents itself in shades of grey and face it: people are imperfect. Even the best of person has their own flaws. Singaporeans can have many 'A' graders in studies, but in love, the masses are often 'B' and 'C' graders. The reason is because we often fail and make mistakes in love through our experience and interaction pattern. There are very very few people I know that are natural 'A' graders in love. However, the critical difference is that failing in relationship does not make us any less worthy as a person than it would be for grades (the Singaporean elitist perspective - in fact inferior grades shouldn't make us feel like a piece of shit too). In fact, losing someone unworthy is indirectly a 'bonus', but we are so caught up harboring a meaningless relationship just because we need to have that perfection of stages. (Express > JC > Uni > Good paying job > married > give birth > retire > death) and couldn't see that clearly.

I remember telling a client 'my job is not to keep your marriage - that's your job'. Honestly, keeping the marriage without the love is like shitting without toilet paper. You will end up making shitty mess out of everything and the experience will gradually become ghastly. 

Cheers

Aunt Agony 200312

Originally posted by redname:

ok, I've met this girl through some friends. We kind of hit it off the 1st time we've met but there was no contact for a few months. After that we kind met up more often through group outings for 2 weeks and everytime the both of us would branch out from the group and have supper or dinner with just the 2 of us. During these 2 weeks, we text each other often and become closer & naturally my affections grew for her.

On one fateful night, after our group outing, i send her back and i decided to confess to her cause I really liked her and she's everything i look for. She rejected me saying that we need to be friends 1st and know each other better.

I took it seriously that she really wanna know me better 1st, thus decided to be just friends with her.

During the next few weeks, I text her around 2-3 days frequency and called her once or twice. Her replies didn't seem to be avoiding me at all and were pretty positive. Thus i really believe that this girl really just want to see how things goes, however, i've tried asking her out for a few times as a friend and many times she just said she's not available.

I was very confused and decided to ask her whether she has something to say and eventually she told me that she was very scared when i confessed to her cause to her, we barely met each other and that i'm like a normal friend to her and she hope it stays this way. That blew my mind cause at 1st, she said it was fine and that we should hang out and know each other better, now she's saying that it's not fine and she doesn't want to go out with me anymore. She even said to some pple that i couldn't face the rejection and have became persistent but i know it's wrong cause i became friendly cause of the way she reacted.

I've stopped contacting her ever since and she didn't contact me too. Unfortunately, we did bump into each other 2 times. She came up to say "Hi" 1st and i tried to initiate a conversation but I could feel that it's never the same again. What makes it worse is that she was with a guy on the 2nd time and I jolly well know that the guy is interested in her as this guy went through a bad patch recently and needed a rebound.

Ever since this incident, i was very depressed and my life changed. I couldn't eat or sleep well, my work is also affected.

I really don't know what to do. on 1 hand, i wish to move on as i really don't wanna be in this state anymore but on the other, i want this friendship to work out and as much as i try to forget her, she still holds an impt part in my heart. I don't know how to start again as it's been so long I've contacted her and i'm not really sure if she's still scared of me.



When you attempt to seal the deal before the product is understood, it often backfires. The rejection appears to be a scheme to know you better, but in reality, it is a rejection because she is not ready for you. Unknowingly and in addition, there is also a subconscious mental reduction of your impression-value because we are psychologically programmed by our environment that hasty/instant/fast things are (usually) bad in the long term.

But there is certain amount of truth is that belief; just that your woman needs to be convinced that you are worth the investment for her to accept the quick proposal. The problem is that when you openly declared that you are dating her, you put her on certain guard that you will never be able to remove permanently. If your position is nowhere near an 'interest' level - whenever comfort measure/position you attempt to build will be nothing but to upkeep a basic friendship that would not advance further than a bff.

Furthermore, since your affection first started from a group date; it can be quite daunting for two people within the same social group to 'change their relationship status', especially when the group is quite knitted. The consideration in whatever minute changes in group dynamics when (1) the relationship is formed and/or (2) the possibility that a formed relationship is dissolved - can be quite tricky.

You might want to back off first and review your terrain; not knowing what leads you and if you insist on marching forward, you might incur greatly causalities.

Cheers

Aunt Agony 190311

Originally posted by ~Owl~:

My gf has moved overseas for her studies not too long ago, I'm happy for her and encouraged her to do so because she's doing what she always wanted to do in life. Initially, we decided to put our relationship to rest because her journey there will take probably 6 years, plus a few more years of bond, probably 9 to 10 years. But her her mother spoke to me and said she was disappointed in me told me to hold on if I really loved her. I thought about it and decided to give it a try. So now we are in a LDR

She's now overseas for about a month plus, but I'm not happy at all. When she's in SG, no matter how tight our schedules were, we'll at least dedicate some time to give each other a call everyday to have some quality catch up. But now, even if free overseas call are available thru viber or skype... we barely even talk in a week. If it's not that she is tired, she'll say she is busy...even during the weekend. It doesn't feel like a relationship at all... Whenever I try to call her to tell her to spare some time for us because I really want to talk to her, it'll turn out to be a fight because she says I'm unreasonable.

I need some advise and pointers, am I really not understanding and unreasonable?

When she has chosen such phenomenally long period of time residing overseas, she has effectively chose to give up the relationship for her aspiration. In addition to having to express her thoughts already, in fact, the reason why this relationship has 'revived' is largely due to her mother's intervention.

Strictly speaking, it seemed more like her mum's choice.

Therefore, with all that circumstances, this relationship can be said to be constructed on foundation challenging to sustain the skyscraper ideals of LDR.

Love becomes an opportunity cost to individualistic pursuit; sometimes, we cannot always have the best of both worlds, especially when it comes to love.

Cheers

Back to Reality

Sorry for the slow update - yunhaier just came back from overseas and buried under tons of work. There are some pending post that I am dying to blog about, so yup! I will post it up as soon as possible. :)

Back to reality! Damn it! I soo love holidays & traveling. :)