Wednesday, February 14, 2007

It's Valentine's Day

...so I won't post about Chile ... at least not in this post...

Today I was listening to the morning radio station that I always have on during my trek to work, and they decided to replay what they called the on-air proposal that went wrong. I didn't get to hear the entire thing, just the replay, but essentially, a guy phoned up and wanted to propose to his girlfriend on the air. They got her on the phone, told her they were live, and off he went. He started to say some nice stuff but then he said, "Remember when I gave you a yellow rose, a white rose, and a red rose? Well the yellow rose symbolized our friendship and the white rose symbolizes your purity... " and that's where I pinpointed the problem. [There's a chance I misheard what he said about the roses... if so.. it doesn't affect my opinion.. so shush.] Long story short, they had been dating two months, and the girl was shocked and felt she had to say no, it was too early, she was having fun but didn't know if it was a long term relationship,. etc. I kinda felt bad for the guy, but more because the humiliation, oh the humiliation of having that aired... [and subsequently blogged about]

The radio hosts then embarked on a discussion of whether people should date for a certain time before getting engaged. One said, there is no time, I've seen arranged marriages where the people have never met, and the marriage lasts 30, 40, 50 years. The other said, you've gotta date for at least a year or more.. or at least move in together.. and the third said, sometimes you JUST KNOW. Then the first one said, yes, it's fate, it's destiny sometimes.

Obviously, I don't subscribe to the belief that if you don't live together first, you won't have a successful marriage - although I was a tiny bit shocked to find out that MANY people out there hold this belief - and I clearly don't believe in "fate" or "destiny" either (sorry, Lionel Richie, Xtina, whoever else sang a song about destiny...) Other than that, I saw valid points in what everyone was saying, not that I would tell someone they hadn't been dating long enough to get engaged, of course.

I used to be so frustrated when people would tell me, "You will just know when you meet the right person.. you always just know." I mean, what an unsatisfactory explanation. I've been asked if I "just knew" that the hubby and I were meant to be... and I never really know what to say. We dated a long time before getting engaged/married, so clearly I didn't just jump into things.

I guess one's perception of these romantic things has to do with whether one is a romantic person or not. I always just think that by God's grace and in his time, the hubby and I met, and by his continued mercy, we made it through what was not always an easy dating relationship... and through daily efforts on our part and reliance on God... we work on building our marriage. I certainly couldn't have agreed to marry him after only two months of dating, but then again, I was only 18 or so at the time.

This post doesn't have as much of a point as it did when I started to compose it in my head, but alas, pointless posts are still bound to appear on my blog once in a while (or all the time.) Anyway, to those of you out there still looking for "the one", have you seen that Jet Li movie? Just kidding. I offer what encouragement I can. Just remember, don't ask someone to marry you until you know he or she will say yes. It's just all sorts of awkward otherwise.

Final note: yesterday the hubby and I went grocery shopping at one of the Asian supermarkets... I wanted to get some cute red envelopes for the "real" New Year... there was some loud Chinese opera music playing and I distinctly heard the woman sing, in a high screech, "Faaaa... kewww.." It took me at least five minutes to recover from the laughter.

1 comment:

Tree said...

I have always thought that public proposals are very risky unless the couple was dating for a long time. That guy on the radio must've either been super confident or really delusional to propose after 2 months of courtship.