November 18, 2008
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Love and living in the material world
It has been said, many times in fact, that I am a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. It is true that I have been known to get involved emotionally very quickly, and I think it is because I know people well, without the need for asking questions. I can just spend time with someone and their very presence tells me about that person.
In her song, The Glamourous Life, Sheila E sang about a woman who wanted material things, and that “love would only come to her head”. This woman, she sang, got scared by love, by emotions, and wanted to be driven around in her Benz, having emotionless sex rather than letting herself get involved with a man. Another famous American singer, the Queen of Sleaze, aka Madonna, would later bring out a song that summed it all up very nicely – We are living in a Material World, and I am a Material Girl.
One big difference I have noticed since living here in Asia between westerners and Asians is that whereas we tend to love with our hearts, Asians love more with their heads. That is not to say that they are emotionally inept, far from it, but the mix of head plus heart is much more evenly distributed.
It’s two years now since Joanne left me, and I have to admit, I do still wonder about the reasons why. I never really understood – mainly because Asians tend not to come to the point, but will give other reasons why, leaving you to actually guess – what went wrong, but I fear it was more of her head getting involved, her heart not being allowed the free room to develop the feelings. At the beginning of the relationship though, I could see that she was letting herself love me with her heart, and this was definitely something new for her.
My father – and to a lesser extent also my mother – would argue that the heartfelt emotions that are so strong at the beginning of a relationship do not last, and that they are replaced, over time, by more, different things, such as respect, common interests and mutual understanding. No disrespect meant to my olds, but that never happened in the 2 years Joanne and I were together. Perhaps it was because she left to go to the UK for 15 months, but there was not one day where I did not miss her. Even during my trip over for Christmas, I felt so emotional when I met up with her in Southampton that I puked up in a pub car park whilst waiting for her to join me.
Asians tend to look at a relationship in the traditional Chinese way – a marriage of power, perhaps, a marriage where both families can benefit. Japanese girls have a reputation of being the same way – looking at what they would get from being in a relationship with any given man. If this man is not able to buy them nice things, treat them to holidays and high-society living, then they will not let themselves love.
Do they love then with their hearts or heads? When I was living in California, I would go to a sports bar across the road from my apartment. On the rare occasion I would make eye contact with someone I thought looked quite nice, within the first 5 minutes of conversation there would come three questions. Always the same:
1. How much do you earn?
2. What car do you drive?
3. Do you own your own house?
When these inevitable questions came, I would just leave. For me, love will never be about the head. Sure, you can not just ignore what the head tells you, but love is a heartfelt emotion. The head tells you other things, but love does not come from there. So if a girl wants all those material things, she should go find a man who is prepared to give them to her, or – better still as we are living in a sexually-equal world (supposedly) – go and earn it herself.
The pursuit of that elusive happiness is always going to be a trade-off. There is no way you can have your cake and eat it too. Getting everything you wish for from life is a Hollywood dream. It just does not happen. A lot of Chinese (Taiwanese) girls now concentrate on their own careers rather than getting married that their male counterparts look elsewhere for their brides. Thai, Vietnamese, and mainland Chinese women come over by the boat and plane load to get married to locals.
But the Taiwanese girls who trade love for career – are they happy? Many of them are sent the opposite way, to the mainland, where the usual excuses come out. “I am not happy, but …” yet their pursuit for career and money is the one that takes precedence. When they have the money, get to the tender age that I currently stand at, finding themselves in a state of singleness – having traded relationship for career - will they look back and think how happy and lucky they are? I personally don’t think so, but what do I know? I am merely me.
I look at some friends who are married, have kids, and I see how happy they tend to be. Maybe fatherhood and marriage suits them better than others. And maybe they are just putting on a façade, the public side showing harmony, papering over the cracks that are the private life. But who truly is happier? I have focused on career, but still have not made it any further than I ideally would like to have. And in terms of love, I wonder about Linn. Does she love me with her heart or head? She readily admits she is not emotionally very deep, but I know her heart feels a lot. What it feels though, I don’t know. She comes from a family where emotions are locked away, generally. I do not want to talk too much about Linn’s family, because that is her thing, and not mine, but from her background, I wonder what her heart is emotionally capable of.
As for me, do I know what I want? I know exactly what I am looking for, I know exactly how I feel about everything. And like I mentioned before, it is a trade off. I’ll eat my cake, but once it’s eaten, it’s gone.
