JC SiLent:You cant be that far away from me ; if we're looking on the same side of the moon
Saturday, August 14, 2004
Are we a couple or not? - article
The notion of 'going steady' seems to be heading the way of the dodo. Today, a couple may do couple things, yet commitment is not part of the game. YOU'VE held hands, kissed and maybe even spent the night with her. Yet, when someone asks if she is your girlfriend, you would stop dead in your tracks.
'Girlfriend?' you repeat, like a parrot.
'Well, we are dating, but I can't quite say she is,' you hear yourself say. At least not yet, you qualify, as if the possibility of her becoming one excuses you from answering further questions about her current status.
The fact that both of you spend an inordinate amount of time together on weekends and display coupling tendencies further compounds the confusion. By 'coupling tendencies', or what some call symptoms of coupledom, I mean a behavioural shift from a previous 'single' mindset to a collective we-two-are-one mentality. You know, doing things like attending dinners, parties and dos with other couples and thinking or expressing yourself in terms of 'we' and 'us' instead of 'I' and 'me'.
The bottomline is, you are behaving as if she were your girlfriend.
Yet, when people bump into both of you, you still refer to her as 'my friend'. This begs the question whether there really is a need to formalise the relationship and, if so, when.
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as just adding the 'girl' prefix onto 'friend'.
Is this situation reflective of the modern dating dynamic, where, increasingly, more people are slipping and sliding into relationships without realising it?
You meet someone, you chat, you banter, and if you hit it off, you see her again. And again. During this time, you would, more likely than not, have got physical with her. And before you know it, you would be seeing her fairly regularly. But when asked about the relationship, you still mutter about being 'just friends'.
Things were different in the not-too-distant past.
It used to be that a guy would only hold a girl's hand or kiss her after they had 'gone steady'. This usually happened after he asked her if they could do so. Going steady also came after the pair had gone for a sizeable number of dates to get to know each other.
These days, the notion of going steady seems to be heading the way of the dodo bird and the Tasmanian Tiger.
In fact, Ah Beng chat-up lines - surely a good barometer of the times - reflect this.
'Oi, Miss ah, ai kia steady mai?' ('Would you like to go steady with me?') is the norm these days, I'm told.
So, you may have the trappings of a relationship, but somehow don't seem to have the appropriate label for it. That you are 'seeing each other' is the usual catchphrase of choice. And though it carries with it a connotation of commitment, it is not necessarily the case.
Technically, you could be dating 10 different people at one time and still not flout the rules of the game.
After all, you could justify your actions by simply saying 'But we didn't spell out that we were seeing each other exclusively.' Which is why, I think, it is important for dating couples to set the boundaries and, in a sense, formalise things.
If you really like her and are prepared to commit by seeing her on an exclusive basis, why not spell it out and lay your cards on the table?Ask her if she would like to go steady with you and be your girlfriend from this day forth.
If she is unable to accept or reciprocate with the same level of commitment or understanding, it's a good indication that what has been going on was unequally-yoked. It's a recipe for disaster because after a while, one party is going to feel that he or she is getting the shorter end of the straw.
If, however, all you want is just a 'friend' with whom you can enjoy some intimacy with from time to time, then keep the waters muddied for as long as both of you can take it.
Just be prepared to be told one day that your 'friend' has decided to move on to another 'friend'. Oh, and that it was good while it lasted.
It's your game. You decide how you want to play it.
& 4:10 pm
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