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Browsing tag: relationships

  • February 11, 2013

    Why I hate Valentine’s Day

    Why I hate Valentine's Day

    Seriously. I don’t care about Valentine’s Day at all.

    As a singleton, it’s a surefire way to feel terrible about your aloneness.

    As a couple, it’s about stupid societal pressure to validate your love through grand, sweeping gestures.

    Me, I’m not one for overdone romantic schtick. (But then again, I’m not engaged to a millionaire. Maybe things would be different if we played in the world of private yachts, holiday homes and personal chefs. We exist in a much more humble and down-to-earth dimension.) The best thing I could possibly imagine (on Valentine’s Day or any other day) would be to come home to dinner and a freshly scrubbed house. Literally.

    Valentine’s Day is about expecting guys in particular to go all out and to plan insanely amazing days for their partners. And as girls, are we supposed to feel let down or as though missing out – or as if our BFs are lacking – if they don’t come up with extravagant gifts and gestures?

    Thursday will be just another day, as we more or less ignore it. Maybe we’ll go out to eat, and maybe I’ll go watch The Princess Bride down at Silo Park with some friends.

    Tell me, how do you feel about Valentine’s Day? What’s the most/least romantic gesture anyone ever made towards you?

  • February 9, 2013

    Same old same old money arguments

    Ever feel like you’ve having the same arguments in your relationships? Over and over and over again?
    fighting about money, same old money arguments
    While we can all learn better habits and sometimes refine certain characteristics, at the core I don’t think people really change. I know which of my quirks that get up T’s nose, and I (sort of) try to minimise them. I’ve resigned myself to his, though I still try to ‘improve’ him from time to time.

    What is it they say – relationships usually split over religion, sex, or money? For us, it’s the latter that’s most contentious.

    This week has not been a good one. It dragged up an old debate that underpins our biggest conflict. Namely, that T is a lot better with money than he used to be, but ultimately he’s a spender, and he’s not into delayed gratification.

    Financially, I’m on the losing end of this relationship. I also accept that I always have to be the CFO, and yes, the mean one. It is a struggle, but I’m okay with being the one responsible for maintaining balance.

    But every so often, when I put down the stern/depressing word after we/he are slipping, he goes into a funk of the ‘I’m not good enough/I hold you back and it never changes’ variety. Of course – if you keep doing things the same way, you’re going to get the same results.

    I know what I’m working with here and I am willing to work around it. But from where I’m standing, I need him to help me out and do his part.

    What’s your eternal relationship conflict, if you’re willing to share?

  • January 21, 2013

    Sometimes we push people away when we need them the most

    Sometimes we push people away when we need them the most

    Sometimes we push people away when we need them most

    I never cease to be amused when others call me wise and/or mature. I’m in fact pretty socially awkward and about as far from a people person as you can get, but I have rare moments of clarity when I can understand someone’s motivations by dint of being removed and impartial.

    Without going into too many details, one friendship circle has recently been rocked by the equivalent of the BP oil spill. Sudden, devastating, things-may-never-be-the-same-again. This is strange for me, because I have never really experienced much in the way of overt friend conflict. (Some covert conflict, yes, leading me to keep my distance from the people in question. But out and out fights/arguments/strife? Nope.)

    T says it’s because I’m a coward who hates conflict and does anything possible to avoid it. (Harsh, but true.)

    I think it would be more accurate to say it’s because of the nature of my relationships, however.

    It’s true that I tend to be a people pleaser. It’s also true that while I do have friends I can get deep and existential with, by and large our friendships are generally pretty easy going and fun. We may occasionally debate issues, but not in a personal or bitter way. Also, I’d like to think my friends are GOOD TYPES, as a rule, which makes getting along far easier than not. Although surely that’s true for most people?

    It’s hard to keep making an effort when you think another party isn’t pulling their weight. But sometimes, when we’re hurting, we withdraw. We push people away when we most need them. It’s counterintuitive, I know. I’m not sure why we do this (I’ve done it myself, and I suppose it’s a petty test, really. Push them away and see if they will push back; do they care enough to keep trying?) – only I fear in this case it’s gone much too far.

    Friendship seemed a lot easier back in high school. As life gets more complicated, so too do relationships. How do you handle it when dear friends are making terrible decisions? How about when they KNOW they’re making stupid choices, but continue to do so nonetheless? Do you offer support without judgement? Do you offer unsolicited advice? Is there a point at which you throw your hands up and step back from it all? What is helping, vs what is judging, vs what is enabling? My understanding of human psychology only goes so far.




  • November 24, 2012

    Guest post: The day after the big one – what spouses should expect from each other

    Goldie Spivey is a full time staffer at a wedding invitations company and a freelance bridal make-up artist.

    Today, flash mob weddings are becoming more and more common among couples. They say that this type of expression is one of the grandest ways to tell the world how people love each other. One of the most famous and memorable flash mob wedding proposals happened on April 21, 2012, in Westlake, Seattle, where almost 1000 flash mobbers gathered to celebrate the third
    Annual Glee Flash Mob. It was the biggest Glee fan event in the US and spectators were surprised when, in the middle of the mob, there was a marriage proposal.

    The show lasted for 7 minutes and 30 seconds where the guy, Tim, proposed to Emily, his girlfriend during the half part of the show. Everyone was quite happy and inspired with the event as it depicts affection and diversity as the couple announced their love with people from different parts of the world.

    Most people think that the proposal itself is the happy ending. What they fail to realise is that real life happens after the big day. After the wedding, a couple is no longer how they were before. They have to go through several changes and adapt to different scenarios in life. There are things that people should keep in mind when getting married. Expectations should be established prior to tying the knot as most marriages fail when they set the wrong expectations.

    First of all, marriage is not a magic pill that can resolve anyone’s problems in life. When you marry someone, you need to face the odds and other things that may happen in the future. This includes tough times such as losing a job or incurring an illness. It is not about thinking negative thoughts about the relationship but rather being emotionally prepared as a couple.

    Another important thing to keep in mind is that change is constant. Many things can change through time and this includes sex life, career, health condition, and other things that are subject to age. It is vital to understand that changes can happen through time and as a couple, you are expected to accept your partner’s vagaries when certain situations arise.

    Marrying someone can be something that most many dream of as people are naturally moved by love and romance. On the other hand, what people should focus on are the responsibilities that lie ahead after the ceremony such as the likelihood of being parents, the ups and downs and everything else that can happen as a couple.

    Overall, what spouses should expect from their partners is very simple. For instance, if you want your partner to be a responsible person, you should ask yourself if you are the same. Always set realistic goals so you are not frustrated with the things that you want to see in your partner. If you cannot be the type of person that you want your partner to be, then it is not healthy to expect him or her to be that ideal person.

    Have you ever struggled with mismatched expectations in a relationship? What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced as part of a couple?

  • November 12, 2012

    My friends are living out Pride and Prejudice

    Except with an Indian twist, that is.

    The unattached ones find their love lives open to public scrutiny. Family, friends, etc are all invested in finding a match (a thought at which intensely private me recoils in revulsion). None are set for arranged marriages, as such, but finding a partner is definitely a collective rather than an individual effort. It’s not quite carriages and balls and waiting for the gentlemen to call by in the afternoon, but more speakerphone calls while family members listen with bated breath.

    I find the matchmaking process endlessly fascinating. Parents talking up their children to other parents. Blatantly pushing the kids together and hoping they hit it off. The subtle (and not-so-subtle) allusions on the part of grandparents and elder relatives.

    And most of all, the compressed timeline. We’re still so young, but marriage is serious business. And when it comes to nuptials, time is short. We’re looking at a year – maybe – from meeting to marriage. That means where you or I might give things a try and see if they work out with someone, for my friends that means doing some serious forecasting and projecting, deciding straight off the bat based on the scant information hand whether potential hurdles are surmountable, or whether they mean that prospect is not worth pursuing. Risk is scorned, as it can be when you have the luxury of choice before emotions enter the equation.

    I listen to the lively conversations, and participate as best as I can. But I simply can’t fathom their reality. I’ve been with T… seven years? I still feel barely ready to tie the knot. (And yes, I can hear you already. What if we’d met at the age we are now? Maybe things would be different. And maybe you’re right, but I am almost positive a year would still be far too short. I’m indecisive; a second-guesser; a slow mover and heel-dragger.)

  • June 21, 2012

    Of couples and shared activities

    T and I have been through a few life milestones to date. We’ve done the long-distance thing. We’ve been through a layoff. Moved more times than I care to count. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is that we’re opposites in myriad ways.

    The two things we share, really, are a love of movies and  TV (there are a few shows we watch religiously, like Game of Thrones and Bones, plus I’ve converted him to Glee and New Girl) and food (we’ve started to eat healthier over the years and I’m grateful he’s come along for the ride. We’re eating less pasta and meat, more veggies and experimenting more. While he still eats a buttload of burgers, I have to give it to him: he can, equally, binge on fruit. It’s strange).

    One thing I doubt I’ll ever bring him around to is reading. But lately I’ve been trying to rope him in on a couple of things.

    One is running. He was a serious athlete growing up and has talked about getting back into rugby league (though it’s likely all talk – I don’t see any real motivation there). He’s also in need of some kind of exercise routine since he stopped hanging out with his wrestling mates and going to the gym (we picked up a cheap membership off one of those daily deal sites). While I just venture out on random routes around our neighbourhood, though, he likes to actually go somewhere different – scenic, flat, a bit more of an experience.

    And the other is music. A friend came over and fiddled with T’s bass amp a little while ago, and managed to get it going again. And my guitar amp, which randomly lost overdrive some months ago, got its distortion channel back just as randomly. So we’ve had a couple of evenings of trying to learn a few tunes together. May there be more.

    I’ll admit that my motivations may also be somewhat selfish.

    Reading requires very little of me and is my first love. These other two? They take work. I usually need some prodding along, and I’m kind of hoping T would help keep me on the straight and narrow track. Accountability, and all that.

    Couples: what do you like to do together?

     

  • May 29, 2012

    Complete disclosure is unnecessary

    Honesty is not always the best policy.

    Or at least, full disclosure is not always the best way to go.

    I watched a recent Big Bang Theory episode with mixed emotions – hilarity and horror – the one where Penny and Leonard get all scientific at his suggestion and decide to treat their relationship like a technical experiment. Check for bugs, list bugs, fix bugs. All very cool, calm and logical.

    But logic has nothing to do with emotion. And human relations are all about emotion.

    Nagging and ribbing is one thing –  we all do it from time to time.

    But listing your partner’s every fault on paper? Deliberately retrieving them from a dark corner of your mind and cataloguing them in the harsh light of the physical world for your beloved’s eyes? That is not kosher.

    Complete honesty is overrated. Really, it’s up there with scorekeeping and grudge-holding in the ranks of very bad ideas.

    I can imagine what T’s list for me would look like. Awful morning breath. Queen of hangriness. Never closes the curtains properly. Can’t cook a steak. And that’s just for starters.

    And of course, I could go to town on him. Works a physical job, so never takes my end-of-day fatigue seriously. Doesn’t take cleaning seriously (we’re always quibbling about the state of the house). Has lame friends who always need rides/crash on our couch/park their cars on our driveway, which then leak oil and fluids (that’s happened at three separate houses now)/constantly text to see what he’s doing, because they have nothing else in their lives…

    You get my point. I know my flaws. He knows his. I feel confident in saying we’ve both pointed out each other’s faults out multiple times over the years, usually one or two at a time. In my grumpier moments I run through most of them in my head and then stalk off to take a calming shower. But rattling off a comprehensive master list of personal bugbears, say, in the middle of a heated fight, would be nothing short of ugly and destructive. Yes, sometimes I’m petty, and mean, and bitchy, but thankfully I can clamp down on those fruitless thoughts before they’re followed by an urge to be verbalised.

    Are you secretly petty? How long do you reckon your list might run to?
  • May 24, 2012

    Cows and milk, birds and bees, living in sin

    Never say this to your daughter

    A few months ago, my mother asked me if I was pregnant.

    This is precisely why I do not wear ANYTHING empire waisted. That particular dress, I normally wear belted. But good to know it can double as maternity wear when the time comes, huh?

    I can’t remember a more awkward moment in this vein since, back in high school, she persuaded my cousin to email me a long diatribe about boys, girls, and getting the milk for free. Or however that goes. (I know Mum was behind this. Trust me.)

    Seriously. I was probably 15 at the time. Guess she hoped to get me early.

    That whole thing about cows and milk? Words can’t express how much I despise this trope. It essentially implies that men only want women for sex. Like there’s no other reason a guy would ever want to marry a woman. (While no doubt this is true for some, it would be a huge mistake to tar all mankind with the same brush. Those are definitely not the kind of dudes you want to be marrying.)

    While the intent is all well and good – protecting the honour of your sisters and daughters – this is incredibly demeaning to women. And actually, it’s rather harsh on men, too. Let’s give them some credit. Not all of them think with their junk 24/7.

    It’s also obviously patently untrue. How many couples do you know that have lived together then gone on to tie the knot?

    Oh, and I was at a comedy show just the other night where another audience in a couple turned out to be newlyweds (2 years) but had been living together for 16 years before that. (I haven’t exactly been lighting a firecracker under our wedding plans, but we won’t be getting to that kind of ballpark, at least.)

    Course, cohabiting is not always all it’s cracked up to be. I wouldn’t swap it for anything, but it’s definitely not a painless thing for us. Our story is much more like this than it is this.

    There’ve been a couple of good pieces in the NY Times recently on this exact topic: this one points out that more and more professional types are maintaining separate dwellings and this one the fact that often we drift into cohabiting rather than making a clear-cut, conscious decision to. And as a result, “couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not”.

    While we kind of slid into moving in together for practical reasons (in fact, before I was really ready), thankfully, it’s worked out (after all, disentangling your relationship is infinitely more difficult when you physically live together and have mingled other aspects of your lives). Given how different we are, I think moving in together for the first time as newlyweds would have been disastrous.

    There’s the argument that cohabiting makes getting married less special. I can understand that. As it relates to us, I don’t buy it, but marriage means different things to different people (to me, it’s a new level of emotional reaffirmation/commitment).

    Was I going somewhere with this?

    Basically: live together or don’t – whatever. It’s not a one size fits all kind of thing. But the sooner that ‘buying the cow’ phrase disappears, the better.

    Do you hate that saying? Or think it stands true? (I have friends who don’t support gay marriage; I can deal with differences of opinion. Outwardly, at least.)

  • March 26, 2012

    Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em

    I’m not a fan of absolute statements.

    So when I read “it is way harder to live without someone, than to live with them“, that got my back up.

    When you don’t see someone day in and day out, when you don’t live together (and that generally corresponds, though not always, with the earlier stages of a relationship) it’s a hell of a lot easier to romanticise them.

    The saying goes that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it’s a classic for a reason. Being away from someone tends to make you miss them (the principle of scarcity, after all, is that you want what you can’t have) as you focus on their good points (similar to why we tend to sugarcoat the past – my high school memories are pretty rose-tinted, although I had a heck of a teenagehood toward the end of it).

    And yes, I know what I’m talking about – T and I did the long distance thing for six months when he had no access to a cell phone or internet, so we communicated via letters and a couple of in person visits. It was lonely sometimes, but on the other hand, we never had any disagreements  or in fact any issues, really. However. I can tell you that if we had spent those six months in the same city, there would have been fights, and there would have been ups and downs.

    We all have faults. Annoying or downright gross habits. T doesn’t rinse the basin properly after he shaves. I moult hair everywhere and am slack about picking it up. Sharing your home with another human being that you’re not used to sharing with can be tough. How they like to clean, socialise, eat or sleep may not mesh with how you do things. And we’re adults. Most of our routine habits are pretty well ingrained. Not saying these are dealbreakers – far from it – and some people may slot perfectly into each other’s lives! But the adjustment period can also be rough.

    If we were to be separated NOW, that’d be a different story. It’d be undoubtedly harder to live apart after having built a life together. But I don’t personally buy the premise that the pre-moving in together stage is so much more painful than the post.
    What do you think?
  • March 23, 2012

    The ring thing: Commitment does not equal bling


    I do not wear any jewellery. I don’t even have my ears pierced. I take 10 minutes to get ready in the morning (low-maintenance WHAT).

    So, I definitely wouldn’t consider myself a girly girl.

    Yet for some reason I insisted T needed a ring to propose to me.

    I didn’t think about what I would actually do with that ring.

    Let me tell you, it took a long time to get remotely used to sporting a new, foreign, object on my hand.

    So I totally identified with RINGPOST, who wrote in to A Practical Wedding about how she wasn’t really down with the whole wearing of the ring.

    How did I solve this?

    Well, I half-ass a few things in life.

    Car parking.

    House cleaning. (But thanks to my new canister vacuums I think I’ve upgraded to quarter-assing it. What? I spend half the time I use to with these.)

    And yes, ring wearing.

    I try to remember to put it on most weekday mornings. But I generally skip it on weekends, when we’re often out and about doing more active things, and cleaning the house, and whatnot.

    (It’s not that I don’t like the thing. I wasn’t sold on it initially, true, but I warmed to its individuality; it’s not your usual one gem on a plain silver band, and it has a family history – and its shape means it can’t inconveniently snag on anything.)

    So yeah, I wear my ring. Just not all the time. It’s probably a 70/30 or so ratio.

    How do you feel about wearing your relationship status on your hand? Or, what will you admit to half-assing?

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