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| One day a real man will replace this lonely silhouette beside me ♥ |
So slightly more than a week ago (I am currently writing this on the 27th, but presuming I'll have this published the next day) , I received a suggestion/request on Ask.fm to blog about my views on relationships. As seen from my reply above, I was rather apprehensive at first, but anon was so great and he/she convinced me to give a small sharing on what I thought about presumably teenage relationships.
Firstly, one thing that really bothers me in modern society is how capricious teenagers can be when it comes to relationships.
Girl A breaks up with Boy A and one month later she is with Boy B. The second relationship lasts longer this time, but she eventually breaks it off and within half a year she is with Boy C.
The same is definitely so for males, and it really worries me to see people changing partners at whim. I'd like to think that this is abnormal, but it seems to me that many teenagers out there practise the same act and are absolutely fine with it, so I guess there might just be a problem with my mindset. But seriously - A new boyfriend within a month or two? I would think that getting to know someone enough to like him, and then to like him enough to be his girlfriend would take a longer period of time!
For the sake of clarity I shall give a visualization of what I think fits for me, at minimum:
Friend --(3 months)--> Good Friend --(4 months)--> Crush --(2 months)--> Boyfriend
I believe 3 months is reasonable, but the transition from friend to a good friend may be hard to identify. It however tends to reveal itself in intangible forms like emotions and consideration. If you feel comfortable hanging out with that person and you don't mind making exaggerated faces in front of him (at least for me) then he's probably your good friend. The same goes for when you find yourself being more considerate towards him than other male friends.
The duration for sustaining a 'Good Friendship' is longer than that of a Friend because I believe that is when you begin to see more of that person's character, be it positive or negative. The longer time allows for you to evaluate him more fairly and accurately as a person, so that you are not too quick to judge. Sometimes, patience opens our eyes to a whole new perspective!
For me, having a crush is different from wanting him as a boyfriend. My ideal is that I would like to have only one boyfriend before getting married, which means that my first and only boyfriend would be my future husband -- that's probably why the time period I have put up there are so much longer than what the normal person would deem suitable. In my opinion, having a crush simply means not fancying any one else but that one person, but not necessarily 'reserving' yourself for him. Say the crush reciprocates the feeling, I'd take some time to get to know him better before even deciding whether to take the plunge. I guess we can relate this to experiences in secondary school when we know that two people obviously like each other, but are not together for reasons unknown. They are more or less a couple emotionally, but in terms of status they are really still single - in most cases, they acknowledge each other as their future boyfriend/girlfriend and will not go off running and coming back with a new-found crush. This time the duration is much shorter, but long enough a time to understand your crush better. In my diagram, by the time you have decided that you like this person as a crush, you would have gotten to know more about his flaws and such, so really the extra 1 to 3 months are just buffer time to rethink your choices.
This brings the journey to finding a boyfriend (supposing immediate acceptance) at about 9 months, which is a rather long for the average teenager, but nevertheless, 9 seems acceptable despite being a little risky. Of course, the time can go over about 15 months but that will probably not be acceptable to the modern teenager today *laughcry*
Returning to my 'one-boyfriend' wish, I would like to also point out that this is another viewpoint that many people do not share with me at all. When I tell my friends about this hope and how I am therefore more careful with my selections (or simply unmoved by men - I don't even know whether it's just me being aloof) their eyes widen and they would exclaim "Why would you think so far?" And then there would be that issue to marriage prospects in a boyfriend and how I might scare men off when I enter a relationship to marry....
THAT IS NOT TRUE!!!
Sure, I will definitely consider marriage when agreeing to be someone's girlfriend, but that doesn't necessarily equate to me grabbing a boyfriend for marital purposes. All I do is ask myself, "Can I see myself with this man 20 years down the road? Will this relationship last? Am I going to embrace him despite his flaws?" and the answers to these are usually indicative of marriage if they are positive. If I do not see myself marrying this man then WHY in the world would I even go out with him? It is almost as if I would be playing with his feelings and wasting all my time... If I am unable to give a direct answer as to whether the relationship might last, I guess I would still give it a try, because it is after all just a wish to fulfill, to marry my one and only boyfriend, and it is certainly not worth to give up on a great person just for this selfish reason. If things ever do come to an end, I'd be disappointed but hey, who wouldn't?
Then comes the question of whether I'll love before I'll commit, or commit before I love. The progression of affection goes somewhat like this:
Like --> Infatuation --> Fancy --> Love
And I think that infatuation is a no-no for relationships, because it encompasses delusional feelings of admiration by romanticizing flaws or completely ignoring them altogether, and only seeing the positive side of someone. If you enter a relationship being infatuated, there is bound to be problems arising in the long run. Not that I mandate relationships to be free of problems; they certainly are bumpy roads, but it would be great to avoid unnecessary conflicts because of simple-mindedness. Therefore I reckon that you would have to at least fancy someone before going into a relationship with that person.
In today's society we often see couples cohabiting and that often occurs only after they have been in a stable relationship for a period of time. For me, I certainly don't mind doing the same, but if I were to do it, I'd probably do so only after being engaged to my partner (or if I've been with him for more than half a decade) ... That is probably when you have started to love this special someone, and as long as love comes into the picture, you are probably more or less settled for marriage. We see however in the modern era that this does not immediately follow the first utterance of 'I love you' because adults are simply too busy with their careers to even start a family. Whatever it is though, living together as a couple prepares you for married life and is really a good idea to consider when the time is ripe.
It seems though that some people on the other side of the world might not agree with me, as reflected by this Buzzfeed video that I'd watched a few days ago on signs that show you're ready to say 'I love you'. As you might expect (or have already watched, because Buzzfeed is so damn awesome), the couple in the video lives together and even sleeps on the same bed.... but they haven't reached the level of love yet???
Preposterous! Why would one be so intimate with someone that they are not even sure they are in love with? This mindset boggles me so, but I guess that is just how conservative we Asians can get. If anyone has something to share about this, feel free to comment!
I've pretty much exhausted all my brain power for the day (it's midnight!!) and lethargy is getting to me. I have more or less covered my stronger opinions on teenage relationships (not so teenage towards the end) and when time permits, I shall update with more. As for now, I shall need to rest up for a whole day of homework tomorrow. Ah, the life of an IB student!
xoxo
Valerie
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