Wives saying goodbye to their loved ones in the Navy, 1963. The reality of love and marriage continues to ruin my life.
When it comes to matters of the heart, it seems that I’m not
just old-fashioned. Apparently, I’m very nearly prehistoric. I’ve always
depended on my parents’ enduring marriage as the barometer of true love. On one
hand, I feel extremely blessed to have such a solid example of love and
marriage existing under the same roof as myself to aspire after. But as I venture further out
into the wilderness, the fog is beginning to lift. And it is scary, you guys.
According to data published in 2011, the average length of
an American marriage is 8.8 years and more than 5,000 couples were getting
divorced each day in China that same year. Professor David Popenoe of Rutgers
University mentions in an article that some 40% of American children are living
apart from their biological fathers, and majority of these children aren’t in
the habit of seeing their fathers regularly or often, if at all. Worse still, a
third of children are now born out-of-wedlock, many of who grow up without ever
knowing their fathers.
It’s become painstakingly clear to me, marrying your
childhood sweetheart at a young age and staying by each other’s side even after
40 years, is not a common occurrence in the real world even if I may be coming home to it every single day. I repeat; it’s a complete fluke. Back then, if you
found someone you could stand who could stand you, you’d hold on to him or her
for dear life because meeting someone new wasn’t so easy.
Today, we’re just a swipe, like, retweet or click away from
someone better because any social media app or website can be used as
Tinder/OkCupid if you’re good looking. It’s distressing how similar the
Internet algorithms for ordering mini skirts on ASOS and finding a life partner
are. By trying to emulate my parents’ relationship all these years, I’ve basically
set myself up for failure and condemned myself to envisioning life as a hopeless
romantic.
Mind you, it isn’t just the concept of love that this
wonderful bubble I’ve been living in has sugarcoated – it’s the concept of
life. Allegedly, dresses aren’t just pressed, foie gras at brunch isn’t just
served, and gallivanting around Europe for several months doesn’t just happen. How
far removed from reality have I been all this while? That deserves an essay all
to itself.
Dating is just trial and error after all, isn’t it? We
actively seek out people we’re interested in, we try these people out for a bit
and see how they fit into our lives, we learn about ourselves and grow from the
relationship, we bounce once we’ve had enough or discovered it’s not for us, and
then we start over again and slowly figure out what it is we do and do not
want. This operation does get tiring and disheartening at times, but I’ve found
that by just appreciating the honesty and simply moving on, we can avoid
becoming blasé. As the Japanese proverb goes, "fall down seven times, stand up eight."
