With my current state of mind occupied 24/7 by thoughts of my relationship with my boyfriend, this is the only topic I could write about at the moment. Wait, boyfriend? Ex. Repeat, Ex. In a few weeks’ time, our status fluctuated from “In a relationship” to “Single” to “It’s Complicated” to “In a relationship” again, and now it’s back to “It’s Complicated”. As an accountant, I’m predisposed on prudence and conservatism, which is why I’m more likely to label our relationship as Off rather then On. Why the complicated status (pardon the pun), you might ask? Mainly because of the geographical distance between us.
I was an NBSB (No Boyfriend Since Birth) for a good 23 years, when I met my first boyfriend in Hanoi 3 months ago. Initially, I thought a relationship is either a Yes or a No, and nothing in between…until now. Well, it’s one of those things a person has a hard time understanding until he/she personally experienced it. So I won’t bother explaining it to those who haven’t.
A year ago, I fell in love with a book. It’s a collection of 14 short stories – “The Stories of Edith Wharton”, Volume 1, Selected and Introduced by Anita Brookner. Five of them are my favorites, and they delve into the hearts, minds, and souls of the protagonists about the three matters I stated above. I will borrow excerpts from these stories, as I couldn’t express my thoughts better than the authoress herself.
The Letters
As her husband advanced up the path she had a sudden vision of their three years together. Those years were her whole life; everything before them had been colorless and unconscious, like the blind life of the plant before it reaches the surface of the soil. The years had not been exactly what she had dreamed; but if they had taken away certain illusions they had left richer realities in their stead. She understood now that she had gradually adjusted herself to the new image of her husband as he was, as he would always be. He was not the hero of her dreams, but he was the man she loved, and who had loved her. For she saw now, in this last wide flash of pity and initiation, that, as a comely marble may be made out of worthless scraps of mortar, glass, and pebbles, so out of mean mixed substances may be fashioned a love that will bear the stress of life.
Charm, Incorporated
‘But, Katinka, if Bellamy’s so gone on you, he ought to marry you,’ he said severely.
Katinka nodded her assent. ‘Certainly he ought. And I think he will, after I have lived with him a few months.’
This upset every single theory of Targatt’s with regard to his own sex. ‘But, my poor girl – if you go and live with a man first like…like any woman he could have for money, why on earth should he want to marry you afterward?’
Katinka looked at him calmly. Her eyelashes were not as long as Nadeja’s, but her eyes were as full of wisdom. ‘Habit,’ she said simply, and in an instant Targatt’s conventional world was in fragments at his feet. Who knew better than he did that if you once had the Kouradjine habit you couldn’t be cured of it? He said nothing more, and sat back to watch what happened to Mr. Bellamy.
Again, what is Love? Is it initial attraction thereafter sustained by Habit?
The Other Two
And then, gradually, habit formed a protecting surface for his sensibilities. If he paid for each day’s comfort with the small change of his illusions, he grew daily to value the comfort more and set less store upon the coin. He had drifted into a dulling propinquity with Haskett and Varick and he took refuge in the cheap revenge of satirizing the situation. He even began to reckon up the advantages which accrued from it, to ask himself if it were not better to own a third of a wife who knew how to make a man happy than a whole man who had lacked the opportunity to acquire the art. For it was an art, and made up, like all others, of concessions, eliminations, and embellishments; of light judiciously thrown and shadows skillfully softened. His wife knew exactly how to manage the lights and he knew exactly to what training she owed her skill. He even tried to trace the source of his obligations, to discriminate between the influences which had combined to produce his domestic happiness: he perceived that Haskett’s commonness had made Alice worship good breeding, while Varick’s liberal construction of the marriage bond had taught her to value the conjugal virtues; so that he was directly indebted to his predecessors for the devotion which made his life easy if not inspiring.
Friends are always asking me how many girlfriends my boyfriend had before me. I never asked, and never bothered. If it made him a sweeter person than before, then I’m fine with it. To how many girls do I owe such favor? Were they thinking that maybe our relationship was based on lies? I always felt his sincerity and genuineness, and he’s thoughtful in ways I would only realize afterward. He’s a gentleman in the most traditional sense, a warm person, and he knows how to treat people in the most endearing way appropriate.
The Reckoning
‘The law?’ she echoed ironically. ‘When he asks for his freedom?’
‘You are not obliged to give it.’
‘You were not obliged to give me mine – but you did.’
He made a protesting gesture.
‘You saw that the law couldn’t help you – didn’t you?’ she went on. ‘That is what I see now. The law represents material rights – it can’t go beyond. If we don’t recognize an inner law…the obligation that love creates…being loved as well as loving…there is nothing to prevent our spreading ruin unhindered…is there?’ She raised her head plaintively, with the look of a bewildered child. ‘That is what I see now…what I wanted to tell you. He leaves me because he’s tired…but I was not tired; and I don’t understand why he is. That’s the dreadful part of it – the not understanding: I hadn’t realized what it meant. But I’ve been thinking of it all day, and things have come back to me – things I hadn’t noticed…when you and I…’ She moved closer to him, and fixed her eyes on his with the gaze which tries to reach beyond words. ‘I see now that you didn’t understand – did you?’
With a predominantly Catholic society, we tend to look with disapproval the people who are publicly known as separated or divorced. Sometimes, it is ignored that an obviously unhappy-for-a-long-time married couple are such. It is seen as an obligation, and that the law is unbreakable. Even if they seem like they were suffering and had no hope of marital happiness, and their children as their only excuses for staying together, as they fervently placed all their reason of happiness on their children. We judge by official announcements, and external actions. We ignore the obvious, albeit not declared, declarations. How about the private thoughts, as well as the actions they exchanged as a couple? Do those not count as being unfaithful? These are details privy to the persons involved, but are they not treated as actions of unfaithfulness? Shouldn’t happiness be the first priority, as long as there is neither harm nor offense being inflicted on other people?
The Long Run
‘She summed it all up, you know, when she said that one way of finding out whether a risk is worth taking is not to take it, and then to see what one becomes in the long run, and draw one’s inferences. The long run - well, we’ve run it, she and I. I know what I’ve become, but that’s nothing to the misery of knowing what she’s become. She had to have some kind of life, and she married Reardon. Reardon’s a very good fellow in his way; but the worst of it is that it’s not her way…’
FYI: My boyfriend is Caucasian, 16 years my senior, currently lives in another country other than his hometown (and mine), and has no religion. With differences in age, language, culture, religion (or lack thereof), and yes, height too, we face all the stares and the glares, the smirks and the vicious comments about any of those aspects. We do not look like the conventional couple, but we are in love. And do we care about these critics? No, we don’t. I don’t think we offend them in any real way, anyway. Are we interested to learn more about each other’s background and make the necessary adjustments? Yes. And I’m thankful that the stars blessed us with an open-minded family and friends. We lived in our own little world, and we learned that sometimes, a little Ignorance is Bliss. There will be more challenges to come. But if we can weather the remaining 9 months with long-distance relationship until our first anniversary, then I suppose we can face any obstacle head-on after that. Will our 2-month actual romance fuel us with passion to last the trial period? Are we willing to finally decide for ourselves (vs. letting ourselves go where life takes us) and take risks that will affect us for the rest of our lives? We had plans even before we met. Our meeting together was not a part of our respective plans.
Is Love a game, then? Did I lose? Or was it a game where both parties may win? We created a love story regardless of other people’s definition of love, sweetness, and thoughtfulness. We took it to a whole new level, as we dealt with it as it is on our own time and in our own ways. It was without basis on a chick-lit’s drama, Nicholas Spark’s movies, and societal assumption of gender-based roles. So what if you knew more of domestic and household work than I do?
As I was getting all emotional with our then up-coming separation as we were both leaving the city where we met, and flying to different countries after:
Him: We had a great time, didn’t we?
Me: Yes!
Him: So, it’s nothing to be sad about. It’s something that we should be happy about.
All these stories were stuck in my head for months. And by the Law of Attraction, I might have attracted circumstances that are similar to my thoughts. If I knew that a few of the tragic scenes from these stories will happen in my life, I should have read all the fairy tales and all the happily-ever-after ones.
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