Kings is the romantic, of the two of us. He believes in sunlight, and green grass, blue skies with fluffy clouds, and eternal love. I uh, don’t. Which one of us do you think thought a lot about marriage, growing up?
That would be me.
As a young teen, I begged people I loved who were in painful relationships to get the hell outta there. Because when they got hurt, they hurt everyone else who loved them. I’d known that pain. Other people also love you, you can’t let one person mess you up for all the others.
What if he isn’t the wrong person?
N-uh-uh too risky. Like I used to say about investment products, the return has to be commensurate to the risk.
Potential risk: Screwing up your life. Screwing up the lives of people around you who have to pick up the pieces when someone breaks your heart.
Potential return: Everything. If, that is, you wanted children and a husband and a dog and a home with a bird bath
Eagle in Wan Chai…
(Well in Hong Kong you can settle for too-smart-for-their-own-good big-ass eagles snatching your roast beef Subway with the extra olives and mustard right out of your fingers when you picnic at the Peak – that’s happened to me twice. The eagles roost in many old buildings, you see them soaring casually among the sky scrapers, and they’re seriously smart. They wait til you cellphone rings, or else they hover high above the little kids. All those years picnicking up there, hearing kids go “WOW! BIG bird took my sandwich!” we’ve never seen anyone get hurt. Unless you count sandwiches.
And Hong Kong also has screechy wild cockatoos.)
But I digress. You have to know your investment objectives.
Mine was always to kick-butt at work.
Oh hang on, I don’t really believe in sex before marriage, what am I gonna do about that? Wouldn’t it suck to be an old virgin, like in all that dumbbb tv I watch? Ok fine, if it really comes to it, maybe I could ask a friend for a favor. Just the once, just so I know what it’s like. Which of my friends mentioned he has the most experience again? Besides the gay ones, that is…
Always check the unwind price, the cut-loss price.
Oh, and I better Google what you usually do about the ring and the dog if you end things. For future reference only. Of course.
You see, I was seriously terrified of being one of those women who simply fell head over heels and then cracked their skull open. In the same way insane people eat live monkey brains in some parts of the world – with a spoon, with the rest of the monkey twitching under the table.
I mean, really. I don’t even eat live lobster – despite people saying lobsters feel little pain. (HOW THE FREAK DO THEY KNOW, DID THEY ASK??)
I used the grossest imagery I could think of because putting the fate of your happiness in another human being’s hands seems just that stupid and terrifying. How can you trust someone to not, on a whim, I don’t know, pick up the phone and get a lobotomy or a prostitute one day?
A ship in the harbor is safe… But it’s not what ships are built for…
If everyone decided to be similarly worried about lobotomies and prostitutes mankind would be extinct.
Then there’s the whole risk of the institution of marriage keeping someone with me simply because of That Stupid Thing On Our Ring Fingers. I thought it was just the biggest insult in the world if someone was with me because he thought I would go to pieces finding out he secretly didn’t want to be with me. (Oh, get over yourself and Just Leave Me, Please.)
Then when I first accepted God, I knew very little else beyond my acceptance of Jesus as my savior.
(That had to do with the circumstance in which I became Christian – I wasn’t searching, I didn’t like Christians, it was just something that happened to me completely unexpectedly, literally like a light going on in my head, like someone standing outside the door and knocking, expectantly waiting for an answer. If I never feel it again for as long as I live, I will still know there is a God.)
One of my first prayers as a new Christian was “Please Lord, let me either meet The One, or not meet Anyone. So I can focus on a career. You see, God, I would like to kick serious butt at work.”
So when Kings proposed unexpectedly and less than 6 months after we met (which was a couple months after I said that prayer), I figured Well, I don’t actually have to get married now, do I? We can just be engaged forever. Or break up after. Less messy.
Kings just looked at me and beamed.
Inside, I think what he was really doing was looking at me and beaming. I think every couple needs one person who’s like that, if the other never wants to be married.
There’s a reason marriage is described as one of the toughest Christian ministries. You are required to work potentially explosive-rigged issues out with this whole other person. Children. Finances. Careers. People grow. They change. They get rich. They get poor.
In Sacred Marriage, author Gary Thomas talks about all that tv and cinema romanticizing the first bit – where people find each other and then someone proposes and the other says I do.
How very irresponsible of Hollywood.
That’s like that stupid cartoon of a boy who puts together makeshift wings, climbs up several stories and launches himself off a balcony, gliding gracefully up and around his friends who are cheering him on in admiration from far below.
(Note to self: Send angry email to BBC about their CBeebies program)
Happy Smiling Serendipitously Matched Couple in latest mushy feel-good movie have no right to be smug. They can be smug in another 20 years after they’ve been up all night together with a screaming baby. After their dog throws up all over their new car. The first time one of em thinks of leaving the other.
Kings and I had the fights. We wouldn’t be able to find time to speak after, he might be working abroad.
(I’ve had ex-colleagues ask me if he’s really on business trip, bla bla – apparently 9 out of 10 Hong Kong men are unfaithful. I find this statistic hard to believe and have asked local friends if this is true. They won’t deny, but then nor will they confirm.)
Then when we were almost near the point of no return, Kings…… Did Something Nice For Me.
I’ve been around horrible people before. Horrible and I know each other well. I’m a fast learner, and I learned from some of the best. But one day I noticed the revulsion I felt when I was near them. I didn’t want people to feel that way around me. So I asked myself how someone I respected and loved would act.
It really is a conscious decision to be a certain way. Then after awhile, muscle memory sets in and it becomes less of an act.
When I’m sick, Kings (if he’s conscious haha enough to realize I’m sick) gets out of bed, gives me a warm towel/ raw peeled ginger/ a mug of warm water.
When he’s sick, I wake to an sms. “Didn’t want to wake you. In case you find me gone in the night, I’ve driven myself to the hospital.”
I cannot get Kings to wake me. If I want to get him a mug of warm water, I have to catch him sneaking about at night. Or make him promise to call a cab next time.
Progress.
