Modesty of Marriage

When I look at my grandparents' happy marriage I am filled with warmth and security, knowing that they fully and truly devoted their love and lives to each other. I'm an old-fashioned kind of girl, born to a modern world. And I believe in love so true that not an issue of status, family, or monetary setback could detriment a relationship filled with honest and pure love.

Naturally, that Utopian hope for a fairy tale-like relationship can only survive in hopes and dreams (and old Disney classic cartoons), what with society's inability to cope with minute problems. The more I read about relationship advice, the more I feel the world is losing its depth to the shallowness of its people's flimsy minds.

Worse still I have recently read, seen and heard of SO many women settling for their Mr. Right Now-s because their biological clocks are ticking ever so loudly it deafens all concept of self-respect and perseverance. While I completely hate the idea of settling for Que-Sera-Sera, I am saddened to understand why they do it.

Don't Miss The Boat!

Because marriage has become a rat-race for women, especially in their 30s. It scares the shit out of me watching women around me get engaged in glee, knowing that they cannot honestly accept their partner's imperfections. But whatever right? Better be married than to be a lonely old loser.

Wrong!

A person can be lonely in a marriage. Marriage would then be cheapened for its title, and women who marry in haste would have been cheapened by the whole idea of marriage.

The Modesty of Marriage

Marriage is not just the next step in a relationship. Getting engaged is not the cool, fun, attention-seeking thing that you could do as a couple. It's a union for life, and a commitment to each other as a whole. It's building a life together, loving and understanding each other wholly and unconditionally. It is about sharing life and death and everything in between. It goes deeper than just being the couple who got married in 2011.

I also know I am an intense lover (the complete opposite of my realistic lover, which results in a strange but near-perfect balance). But I know that when I say I do, I do take the other half as a part of me, a completion of my being, a source of comfort and my pillar of strength. Our children will be truly a product of our love as a whole, and not just the next visible step towards achieving the 'correct' life.

But who's to say anyone's marriage can or cannot achieve Nirvana? Better to have the modesty of marriage in your mind than to treat it like the next show and tell project. That way you can never be disappointed whether it works out or otherwise.

Life is Beachy

Forget the peaches, give me beaches!

As any woman would, I had my fair share of browsing girly wedding reception locations. The only difference was that I was doing it for work. My friend Jelly B and I had countless conversations about our dream weddings, and although beach weddings aren't on the top of my dream list, I began to see, today, how easy it was for young brides to want to get married on a patch of sand.

Even though beaches pose no valuable sentiments for me or my darling lover, I must admit it would make a picturesque memory for us and everyone else who attend the wedding. It sure beats the traditional, typical, hotel ballroom everyone in Kuala Lumpur is accustomed to.

But more than ever, it wasn't the biological female clock that was ticking; rather my own hunger for the sun and the sea. No, scrap the sea. Just give me the sun and the sand.

Anyway I found myself fanning through expensive resorts on Langkawi Island, daydreaming in between my article, and copy-pasting every darn detail to my darling lover on Windows Live. If he wasn't there I traced him to gTalk.

I now realise it's been almost 3 years since I last went to a beach. The last shot of beach escapade I had was at Singapore's Zoukout, three years ago - and of course I was not there for the beach. I was lovin' a good party!

Unfortunately as time does not wait for man, and evidently women like me, I have grown up. In size mostly, and am too embarrassed to flaunt my new curves to the a) hot young happening beachies , b) over-tanned fat old beached whales. I am most likely the only one in my group of girls who hasn't gone to a beach in so long, and that makes me sad.

Mid-year resolution 2010 - Go to a beach.

Ideally, I'd like to go to Tanjung Rhu in Langkawi, because I absolutely love its Lagoon pool, which let me add I have requested my boyfriend make for me if we ever get married and have a compound large enough to accommodate my little fake beach.