Have you ever wondered how sometimes even the best of plans can fall apart? Labels: marriage, relationships
I recently had this revelation because I was wondering about many things, my relationship, family, studies...
I realised that a lot of my thoughts focused on relationship. Especially my relationship with the boyfriend, whom I had been with for the last 3 years.
3 years isn't a long time, but it cannot be considered short. To many people, 3 years would have been enough to decide whether one can get married, plans for a marriage...things like that.
To me, 3 years is all but frustrations, disappointments, heartbreaks, all together at a go.
To be fair, everything wasn't that BAD. We have had our good times too, romance, hotel stays, travels, things like that. The good times were there, but bad times followed soon after.
When I started with the boyfriend, all I thought was, if I could get through 6 months together. At that time, I was counting every mon-niversary diligently and hoping that we could get through. It was because I didn't think we would last and this was a sort of test to see whether I can actually stay in a relationship. Haha.
And soon, 6 months became a quest for 1 year, and 1 year became 2 years...and suddenly we were celebrating our 3rd year together already.
I didn't know how the time flew past us without my knowledge, and the fact that I was approaching graduation put me on a grind to think of my future without school. My very first thought was since we didn't kill each other during our 3 years together, it would have been fit to see us getting married already.
And then everything came at one go, the frustration, tears, disappointments, and lastly the heartbreak. 2006 was a bad bad year if I may so say, even though I got to go Korea and enjoyed the travelling with him a lot.
Isn't it so ironical? To think my resolution for 2006 for that year was to be a better girlfriend without the silly tantrums to him, have better communication between us and most importantly, to reaffirm our relationship and bring it to a new level.
And bringing it to a new level we did, going down instead of going up. I guess I ought to be more specific if I want to make resolutions next time. Hur hur.
I realised in the past I was envious of couples who had long-term relationships (spanning more than 2 years) and I often wondered if I could last that long with anyone. However now that I am finally in a long-term relationship, I finally understood why people get married.
This is another ironical thing in life huh? I guess it's always nice to be married simply because you are in happily/desperately/hopelessly in love. And this sort of "in love" feeling, is always felt very rampantly in the first 2 years of the relationship. Because we have the "honeymoon" period, petty quarrels (which leads to great making-up sessions), and discovering things as a couple (even checking out a new shopping centre is fun) activities. And so, the next best step after doing all the above-mentioned, is to discover something new together: Getting married.
Besides having sex without fear of pregnancy (married, what!), there's another whole lot of things to discover, new house, living habits, coping with in-laws, and the likes. But it's okay. Just married, must still stay in the "honeymoon" status. Anyway, so to say there's a lot to keep you occupied for the next 2 years at least, because you will adapt to each other, learn to tolerate each other's habits, fight a lot (and still make up after that) and the like. How to get bored?
And eventually 2-3 years after the wedding will come babies, because it's a natural progression (if no babies, relatives will start asking anyway!). So come the babies, and for the rest of your life you will just have your kids to look after and be in wonder of them.
You know ah, this was the kind of perfect relationship I had in mind. Especially when I just started one.
Okay la, not so much, but somehow after 1 year (plus) I started wondering if life will be like that for me. Will I get married by my dream age (before 25)? Get a house when I am married? Will I be able to have kids by 27? And then a second one by 29? These were like, milestones I created, under the illusion that my relationship was still perfect.
Anyway, back to the long-term relationship thing. I said I finally understood why people got married is because, well, somehow after 2 years being together, expectations shift. At least on my part. Talk of the future should be a dominating subject, and in my opinion any responsible man should be thinking of that after being with his girlfriend for 2 years.
At any rate, there's nothing left for you to discover (how many Vivocities can Singapore have anyway?) and if there's anything to quarrel about, it's probably one of the last unfinished battles that you guys had (aka outstanding issues). And let's not even talk about the love.
So I am making it sound like 2 years is the maximum anyone should have in a relationship huh. Of course it is not. It's just by MY standards. It's a whole lot different if after 4 years the couple is still oh-so-in love and it just feels like that they just started pak-tor yesterday. That, I believe, can continue for all I care. But I still believe any responsible guy will want to think of the future with his girlfriend if they had been together for long.
My good friend and I were chatting one day, whether we will eventually get married or not. I told her, when a couple in a long-term relationship has got nothing else to do, they get married. And then when after the whole wedding thing is over (planning and executing), they get pregnant. And then for the rest of their life, they will have something to fret over. Wonderful.
My good friend wrinkled her nose at this. She said it's so mundane! Mundane reason for getting married. Mundane reason for having a kid. Then she said that both of us have no hope, since we are already on the fast road to mundane-ness. So sad.
Right now I kinda envy couples who just got together. Haha. At the very least they will get married when they are in the full bloom of love, which I believe is more romantic than ever.
I wonder when my full bloom of love will come, or has it wilted already?
Oh ya I do want to be married off one day. As much as my mom paints a very bleak picture of married life, I still wanna be married. LoL. The reason being because I want to have at least one kid, so that I can avoid having menstrual cramps for the rest of my life. Hehehehe.
Stunningly Gorgeous Y 3:27 PM
