JC SiLent:You cant be that far away from me ; if we're looking on the same side of the moon
Sunday, August 08, 2004
modern relationship - article
Breaking up appears to be an easy option these days. Is the independence of modern women or intolerance for less-than-perfect relationships to blame?
By Nicholas Fang
BREAKING up is hard to do, or so the old country song goes.
But if the experience of my friends and family in recent weeks is anything to go by, it seems that breaking up is the easiest thing to do these days.
When I recently went out with two younger friends who are serving national service, they told me that they had just ended relationships of several years. A female friend in her mid-20s told me a few weeks ago that she had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years.
Two female former schoolmates whom I caught up with two weeks ago also found themselves single recently. One was married and the other was in a relationship of a few years. The parents of my closest cousins in Canada are getting divorced. The list seems to go on and is not just limited to my immediate circle of family, friends and acquaintances.
A recent article in an American men's magazine claimed that divorce has become as common as the blind date.
It quotes figures from the United States Center for Disease Control which studies divorce rates as an indicator of national health.
They show that nearly 20 per cent of first marriages involving brides between the ages of 20 and 24 are over within five years.
Should I really be surprised by this phenomenon?
After all, my parents split up when I was much younger. Over the years, the proportion of my friends whose parents got divorced became larger than those whose parents did not.
The recent call by the Government to have more babies to stem the declining birth rate made me wonder whether we shouldn't be first addressing the issue of how to get couples to stay together.
You would think that, since so many of us are supposed to be Sexy, Desirable and Unique, we wouldn't be having this problem.
But that's another story.
So what is it about the world today that makes it hard for people to stay together?
Most of the friends I spoke to point the finger at societal factors such as the importance of careers and the rat race in general. They brought up the 'McDonald's' syndrome which seems to have infected so many people, as seen in their obsession and dependence on fast food, fast cars and fast living.
Everyone I know or knew growing up seems to be fixated on getting ahead faster, graduating earlier and making more money speedily.
So much so that when a relationship begins to go awry, it's become the natural reaction to look for the fastest resolution, and more often than not, that means bailing out.
All this made me wonder what had happened to the much-extolled virtues of old - like consistency, staying the course, determination to see things through, and working at things even when the going gets tough.
But I am not immune to the winds of change either. My previous relationship ended because we were both focused on our own goals.
I have my career and sporting ambitions in Singapore, she has her career overseas.
Neither was prepared to give in and, in our defence, I suppose the fact that it was a long-distance relationship goes some way in mitigating our decision to let go.
But a part of me still wonders what might have happened if we had decided to stick it out.
When I mentioned this to friends, some said this brought up another probable cause for so many short-lived relationships: the burgeoning independence of the modern-day woman. I have to make it clear at this point that I consider this a good thing. And my friends who were making this point are in fact all independent, intelligent and very well-educated females. They pointed out that the emancipation of women since the middle of the last century means that they are just not very likely to put up with an unhappy relationship as they previously did.
A friend, a successful actress, said she saw an even more significant factor.
'We're all so used to demanding excellence from ourselves in all aspects of life, be it school or work, that people are becoming less and less tolerant of less-than-perfect situations. This means that we are more prepared to give up what we may have now in order to have a chance of finding something even better. 'When these factors are combined with the usual suspects of boredom, the dreaded 'seven-year itch', growing apart from each other and the other traditional reasons for breaking up, what chance does love have?
After thinking about this, I realise I don't really know myself.
Being a bit of a romantic at heart, all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that when the real deal comes along, I will be smart enough to recognise it and stubborn enough to fight for it. And trust me, with the odds stacked up against us, we'll need to fight to make it work.
& 1:57 pm