Summer---a season of heat, a season of recovery.
It is also a season of break-ups.
Having lived in Singapore for so long, I never really understood the concept of the summer break-up, a phenomenon where relationships inexplicably get terminated once the months reach the time period of between mid-May and mid-August. The most obvious reason is the relatively different schooling schedules that I underwent in the foundation education levels (and that I never really was involved in any form of human relationship that way), since the longest break that anyone has in Singapore in school standards less than college are at the end of the year, from mid-November to December.
So what causes summer break-ups? After some slight thought and reasoning, I think that there are a couple of major points behind the occurrence. The first of which is the concept of ``distance''---the lovers in question are physically more apart than they were originally so, like for instance in the case of college/university romances, where the students in the educational institution can come from all over the world (or in the case of the United States, all over the country). The second idea is that of the wearing off of the novelty factor. These two ideas are somewhat related, in the sense that the increase in distance causes a return to something that is more mundane than the exciting life of studying in the close proximity of folks who are of similar interests and age group. And under such mundane settings which are sometimes far from the people who are involved in the same relationship, the rush of being loved and/or loving starts to destabilise and then apathy starts kicking in, and in the more extreme case, the entire relationship ends up not working good enough and a break-up is an expected outcome.
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Looks like I'm kinda doomed in human romantic relationships. Let's look at this analysis from three directions, namely time/location, intracultural dating, and extracultural dating.
From the perspective of time and location, I am boned. Here's why: I will be spending slightly more than ten years doing various forms of research, with time split between being in Singapore and being in a foreign country. That makes any form of romantic relationship hard to hold on to, especially since I do not have any of those ready-to-go-the-distance relationships at hand to reach that kind of level, i.e. that special someone who is willing to go the distance has not appeared in my life yet. Statistically speaking, it is extremely hard to find someone with that kind of level of commitment (a prerequisite since travel becomes a necessity in the decade described) in the current [short] amount of time of one year. There are just so many incalculable factors that cannot be understood and planned around, and not many people are risk-takers willing to put themselves out on the line just to see where they go (an action that I frequently use in my life).
From the perspective of intracultural dating, I am still boned. Here's why: many Singaporean girls do not appeal to me, for a variety of reasons that include the general materialistic perspective, and their relative selfishness in the way in which they conduct their relationships---everything is always about her and her alone. More importantly, I am not sufficiently appealing to many Singaporean females as a lover since I do not pander to their whims and fancies, am not handsome nor tall, talks about things that most people are generally uninterested in, and am not rich to boot. With such serious incompatibilities between me and the females that are immediately accessible within my society, I find that the likelihood that I can find anyone who is attracted to me (and of course, me attracted to them) is low. Complicating matters by considering the need for the long-term commitment as highlighted in the earlier point on time/location, the probability of finding someone who can match all these criteria decreases significantly.
From the perspective of extracultural dating, I am still boned. Here's why: there are many hidden cultural norms and mores that are not easy to be aware of as a foreigner---these unwritten social rules can only be enculturated after a few years of stay in the host country. In some ways I was a fool to have believed that I understood what was going on, as evidenced in my last two relationships. Thinking that I understand someone because she shares a similar hacker ethos was a point of folly on my part, making me oblivious to many things that were falling in front of me. Thinking that having a similar ethnicity with her would mean that I had a better understanding of her psyche was also a fatal mistake. Even trying to mitigate with guarantees of honesty did not help at all---honesty can only get you as far as knowing what a person is consciously thinking of, it cannot tell you the unconscious tendencies that have been ingrained through years of enculturation.
A fool in romance, a fool to the end.
So what do these all mean? Given these cursory analyses, what course of action ought one to do? The answer can be found in this.
That is, of course, what a rational mind would lead me to think for my circumstance.
But let's face it. Even though the answer is frustratingly obvious, I will probably be unable to tear myself away from it. The reason is that I am made up of more than just rationality---there's this entire side within me that that is not governed by my rationality, but by my intuition. Over the last few years, it is the growth of my intuitive side that made me aware of the fact that I had emotional reactions towards people, specifically towards folks of the opposite sex. It is a wonderful feeling, while it lasts. But when things do not turn out well, as they often do, the aftermath is rather hard to deal with. But herein lies the problem: rational thought stipulates that involvement in romantic relationships [within the next 10 years] is most certain to bring about sadness, yet intuitively, the mind and body yearns for that warm caress of another person who loves at a different level.
So, what ought I to do now?
Heheheh... if I could answer that, I think I would be on my way towards being a real life guru. I guess the more important thing is to take things one step at a time, and bury myself under as many activities as I can possibly want to do.
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