keninabu!

Bridget Jones and Women on the search

A friend of mine is now travelling through Vietnam and entering China, and here's a sanitized transcript of our conversation:

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Me: When do you return?

Her: hahah/... i bought a one way ticket

Me: interesting. So you intend to come back somehow someday, I presume?

Her: hahah... when I find my soulmate!

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Knowing her, she's probably only half-joking.

It's interesting, though, that she has such a strong urge to hook up. I am not sure how old she is, but this friend of mine can't be older than 30. Why is there such a strong urge to bond with someone?

She's not alone though. An ex-"girl friend" (female friend) of mine said much the same thing, and directed me to read Bridget Jones' Diary, which I did. It yielded few clues, although I did recognize most of the symptoms in a number of my friends: the urge to look for someone, socializing, dressing up like bait to 'snare' a guy, and worse of all to talk in fishing terminology ("snare", "hook", "lure", "fishing grounds"). There is also the worry of being 'left on the shelf', as though they have an expiry date printed on their bottom, like canned food.

It's much the same thing with "Sex and the City", which starts off with the premise that modern women are independent and strong, but ends up with all of them becoming different versions of the soulmate-hunting-art-dealing-character Charlotte, who is very much a personification of a trans-atlantic Bridget Jones clone.

That said, I can understand this urge to be with someone. I remember being depressed about being single when I was younger. I was also desperate to get laid, and still a virgin at that point (this was before I went to the army). I remembered thinking that once I had a girlfriend, everything would be bright and happy, and all will be well.

Of course, after getting a girlfriend then, I quickly realized that this is not the case at all: if anything, having a partner when you're unhappy creates a lot of new problems in itself. There is a tendency to expect the partner to be responsible for your personal happines, like "Why am I so unhappy if I have a boyfriend/girlfriend? He/She must not be doing things right" and that's when the nagging starts.

Relationships requires relationship skills, but first and foremost like a lot of other things, it requires first a relationship with oneself. Looking at a number of Buddhist monks, Catholic nuns and some single older-generation Americans, they seem happy and at peace with themselves. All this without having someone as well.

Coming back to the girls who look to snare someone, I guess I must sound really smug, but I'm just really puzzled by this mentality, which strikes me as analogous to being unhappy about a bouquet of wilted roses while standing in the middle of a garden full of beautiful flowers. There is much else in life to be happy about, besides hooking up, and if you're happy and already living an enriched life, your chances for finding someone balanced and beautiful are that much greater. The beauty being that if you don't find that person, it is not the end of the road, as would seem to someone who has as his/her raison d'etre to be finding a partner.

I know I sound like a know-it-all at this point. But I know I don't know everything. In particular, I don't know how to help my female friends who are stuck with this mindset.

The truth is, I am in reality just a hypocrite, because I am already happily attached and cannot imagine living otherwise.

posted by keninabu @ 9:21 PM