Figuring Things Out

At the age of 24, I was proposed marriage by WrongAtAllLevels, who secretly resented my mother for not using her connections in hiring him for a job he was applying in her office, who made me give up a 10-year friendship with a male bestfriend, who hated my friends from school and berated me for being smarter than him and having my own opinions. Eight months later, we broke up.

At the age of 26, I was offered marriage by a guy with a stable job who was neither ready for marriage as I was but whom people were expecting him to already be in one. A year and a half later, Lasa and I broke up.

At the age of 27, I am being offered once again of a future together with a man, who I call TFO, short for The Forbidden One, who promises me a lifetime that bordered on perfection, if not for the torrent of tears and heartaches that are sure to be interspersed in between. Suffice it to say, even if I kept reiterating it, he refuses to believe that what we have won’t last. And thus, being still inlove, I choose to stay with him.

Jane Doe, my 27-year-old friend, refuses to break up with her boyfriend since time immemorial. This boyfriend who admits to her that she is not the only one in his life, has the nerve to compare her to all his other present girlfriends, belittles her infront of his family, treats her as his personal "Living Asia" and practically doles her with borderline emotional, verbal and physical abuse. Another 28-year-old friend is stuck on a 6-year marriage that was not making him happy anymore, despite his wife being the poster child for motherhood, because of the majority of things he still wanted to do in his life that he couldn’t anymore do now.

I’ve always wondered why people choose to stay in relationships that they know at the back of their minds won’t last. The only thing people will tell you is "Kasi love." Actually, if you ask the truly inlove people why they love their partners, most of them will tell you that they don’t know why. If you are inlove with someone right now, I’m sure you too will agree.

I watched Sara Geronimo’s "A Very Special Love" last week and something she said struck me: That if you truly love someone, it doesn’t matter if he gets mad at you, keeps scolding you, doesn’t pay attention to you, etcetera. You love him, therefore, you accept him and his faults, even if your heart is too tired already to love. You still love him, unconditionally.

Of course, in my book, that would be martyrdom.

But maybe that’s the reason why most people choose to stay in relationships that they know won’t last. It doesn’t mean though that it’s the right reason.

Eversince I turned 27, I keep listening to people tell me that I should be in a stable long-term relationship by now. I am frequently berated by questions from friends from long ago who tell me, "I’m married, ikaw kailan?", "I’m pregnant, ikaw kailan?", "I’m engaged, ikaw kailan?", "He’s my boyfriend for so and so years, ikaw, ilang years na kayo?" My friends keep wanting to set me up with their friends, even if personally, I’ve gotten bored with the usual dating scene nowadays. I’ve come to realize that I prefer relationships which start with us being friends or knowing each other at least by face and developing a friendship after spending some time with that person and eventually considering a relationship once you’ve realized that you make each other laugh and you do not have any silent moments when the two of you are together. Unfortunately, most relationships nowadays start out as textmates who see each other’s face for the first time through Friendster, thus confirming how shallow and superficial our generation actually is.

Seriously, where’s the hurry? Am I in a race for the altar that I don’t know of? Why is that at my age, people expect that I should either have the title of mother/wife/fiancee at end of my name?

A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of Oprah where the girls from Sex in the City were interviewed and something Sara Jessica Parker said struck me. Back in the days, when you were in your 20’s, people expect that you’re supposed to have figured things out already. That’s why you get married in your early 20’s with your current partner and stay in a job that will bring you stability. By the time you’re in your 30’s, you get divorced and start to despise your job because you know, that wasn’t what you really wanted to do for the rest of your life. So by the time you’re in your 40’s, you immerse yourself again in the dating pool and start applying at your dream job, competing disastrously with all the hot, fresh and more up-to-date 20-year-olds.

But according to the infamous Mrs. Broderick, the 20’s should be the time when you’re still trying to figure things out. It’s that time when you give yourself the chance to explore, to experience, to travel, to see everything out there, to get to know yourself, to find out what you really like and to make a lot of mistakes and learn from them. So that, by the time you’re in your 30’s, you should have figured things out already. No errors that may result in grave consequences will be made. No regrets over experiences that should have been done will be felt.

That’s why I’m okay with things in my life being a little chaotic than most people my age, because I’m one of the lucky few who can still afford to make mistakes and learn from them.
I do occasionally get the jokes about how I resemble a certain "terracious" spinster/well-known female doctor in our school and how I might one day end up like her if I continue with my happy-go-lucky ways (I hate you, Elgie and JP. I hate you…). Come on guys, it doesn’t mean that I’m not open to getting married someday. I do still want that husband with a good profession, 2.5 kids, townhouse, family car and the happily ever after that goes with it. I’m just not gonna waste my time worrying about my impending 30’s and how I might end up like most female doctors from our school. I don’t want to be stuck in a relationship that will prevent me from doing all the other things that I still wanted to do. Neither do I want to settle for someone who will bore me to tears and cannot make me happy for the rest of my life.

So here goes the next three years of making many more mistakes and hopefully, learning from them.