Knowing what you want

I had the pleasure of attending a friend's wedding over the weekend and it really was an interesting ceremony and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Funny huh? How can wedding be that entertaining? Don't mistake me, but this is a normal church wedding ceremony but what is interesting is the content of the wedding. In the wedding we had certain speakers who shared their experience of being married and my friend shared her story how she met her husband. Let me share that story with you as my entry is the reaction and reflection of what she had shared.

At the age of 21, my friend attended a talk organized by her church on single hood. During that talk the speaker shared with the participants her views of what kind of men a girl should look out for. She listed the following five of which I could only remember four. Firstly the guy must be God fearing so he does not stray after marriage. Second he should be responsible, after all its about sharing life and responsibility. Third is that the guy must be mentally stable. This I so agree there are weirdos out there but, yes, you do need matured guys. The last one i remember was the guy must love you for who you are. Now when my friend met her husband she knew that he had all that but the problem was that she did not like him. After two years, she finally said yes. So she was telling us that for five years she prayed for this. She told us singles that we could add in the fact that we should like the guy. She was telling us that we needed to be specific and ask GOD cause he cannot just read our mind, which is true because he has a lot more to do.

At first I agreed but after much thought, I question myself, how do we know what we want? Let's say these are the qualities we want but then the guy is old and married then how? I mean my friend was lucky she found someone that suits what she wanted and she was his first girlfriend but not everyone gets that. And what if what we want and desire is not something that will keep us happy and what if what we don't want keeps us happy? What do we choose then? Many a times my mother told me that we will learn to love someone, lets assume that God gives us someone we don't favour but my argument is yes we will learn to love but what happens when you married this person and then discover your 'right' man? What are you going to do? Moralistically you can choose to live with the person and forget about the other 'right man" (which is called compromise) or you could leave your spouse and go leave with that person. Go watch the bollywood movie Kabi Alvida. To sum it up, the idea of compromise is not something that is easy to live with. As I was discussing with my friend, Gurpreet, learning to love a person is very much different from loving the person. For instance you love GOD, you don't learn to love him. When you learn to love someone it is easier to be swayed when you discover something more desirable. You cannot learn to love someone, you need to love the person because you really love the person at free will.

That brings me to the second notion, what if the person you love is for the wrong reason? Over the course of four years in my Uni, I have seen couples who have been together and then broke up after four years. The reason is that they realise that they no longer love each other. But how could you not see that in the four years that while you were together? Then you realise that many people don't understand what they are getting into when it comes to relationship. What do you want out of a relationship?

Thus, the idea of knowing what you want is not easy especially when it comes to relationship. You see I have not been in a relationship but the way some guys treat me sometimes I feel as if I was in a relationship and went through a lot and ended up with a break up. The catch here is that, I wasn't even in a relationship with them in the first place. But as I mention in the blog post before, the problem is that they assume that I knew what they were talking about (i.e these guys already assume that I know that they are interested in me) and go about treating me as if we were in a relationship already. At times I find it hilarious but in reality it can be really traumatising. Life is complicated and amazingly interesting for me. These experiences make me think about what I want and what I need. I feel at times I am doing a life anthropology course exploring myself and society I live in. I have become the subject and the object of my own study.

Like what my best friend Cassius always say to me when she seeks me for relationship problem is that ," For a girl who have never had a boyfriend, its ironic I am seeking advice from you on this subject" To which I reply that it is because I give another perspective and that when you are not in that situation you tend to think rationally. My biggest concern however is that when i do get into a relationship, I wonder how I would view it in that situation. Well I shall never know until I get into one. But again what if i do get into one without realising it, then how??? Sigh there is no right or wrong answer