Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: marriage

It’s a nice day to start again

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I was reading the weekend thread at Ask A Manager. There were two questions that I saw about weddings. The second was more pragmatic while the first asked what was one thing people loved about their weddings and one thing they would change. She had a bonus question about whether it was OK for her to go dress shopping alone.

I have a visceral reaction to the whole concept of weddings because of what they have become in America. Like some kind of grotesque Frankenstein monster, they have grown to become bloated. all-encompassing, and a massive waste of time, energy, and money.

The fact that the concept of Bridezilla exists disgusts me as does how much ‘but faaaaaamily’ is invoked for the occasion. When my brother got married, he and his fiancee at the time planned the whole thing themselves and kept it to $3,000. This was nearly thirty years ago, but still. That’s pretty damn impressive. The biggest issue is that my mother made a big fuss because my brother wanted to keep to 75 guests total. In Taiwanese culture, weddings are huge. You invite all your friends who have kids of the same age, and they do the same for you. She threw a huge fit when my brother told her the total number of guests they were inviting. He compromised by having a dinner at a Chinese restaurant for her friends. He invited his future in-laws, which went…not great. His ex-father-in-law was a racist asshole who was not shy about voicing his uneducated and vile opinions. He refused to eat ‘any of that crap’ at the Chinese restaurant, which, fine. Be a big baby.

My BFF told me that her mother and mother-in-law clashed during her wedding over things like what food was going to be served. K is a pretty even-keeled woman, but she told me she was close to chucking it all aside and eloping. And I know her! She wouldn’t have a big blowout wedding in the first place.

I came to the realization in my late twenties/early thirties that I did not want to get married. Not only because of all the bullshit that surrounds the day itself, but also because I did not like what it represented. You cannot untangle it from the patriarchy, no matter how hard you try–in a heterosexual wedding/marriage, at least.

A few decades ago, I was dating someone who was a bit more traditional than I was. I had no desire to marry and have kids, but he was a bit more waffly about it. He said he didn’t want kids, but mentioned a few years later that maybe he might want them. I told him that while it would make me sad, we would have to break up because I did not want children, full stop.


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Looking in the mirror, darkly

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When I was a little girl, I assumed I’d grow up, get married, and have children. Oh, going to college should be in there before the getting married bit. In fact, that’s where it was assumed I would find my husband. This was just a given, and it did not fill me with any joy.

Some women say that they’ve wanted to be mothers since they were really young. They played with their dolls and pretended the dolls were their babies. It was the main goal in their lives, which I accepted was the norm. I never felt the urge myself, but I resigned myself to having children.

Then, when I was in my early twenties, it hit me that I didn’t have to have children. I no longer know how that thought came about, but once it entered my brain, I was so relieved and happy, I’ve remembered it for the rest of my life. It really was a pivotal moment and still the best decision I’ve ever made.

I don’t think about it that often because, well, quite frankly, why would I? People rarely think about the absence of something they never wanted in the first place. The whole discussion about childfree versus childless is necessary and good, but I don’t care for either label because it still puts an emphasis on something that has absolutely no effect on my life.

I’ve said in the past that I’m as likely to call myself childfree as I am to call myself dogfree or guitarfree. I’m not equating children to dogs or guitars, of course, but just pointing out how little I think about any of these things.  No shade to having children, but it’s nowhere on my radar.


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Tradition? TRADITION!

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I’ve been musing about tradition for several posts, and I want to continue that gravy train. When I start thinking about something, I keep going until I am beyond tired of the subject. Then I think about it some more until I’m ready to drop it and never speak of it again. I’m not there yet with this topic so let’s roll!

I’ve talked about several topics that opened my eyes to the fact that what I was raised with wasn’t necessarily what I believed in. The one that really stands out, even thirty years later, is having sex for the first time. I was very much a wait-until-I-get-married gal when I was young. That was what I was raised with and it was what was pounded in my skull in my church. Sex is evil, bad, and will put your soul in eternal damnation. Until you get married and then it’s pure and holy. Angels will sing as you have sex, but only for procreation reasons!

By the time I entered college, I was what I called a TV–technical virgin. I had done everything with a man except P-I-V (or P-I-A, but that wasn’t even a possibility to me back then). It really was a matter of inches at that point, and I became less and less convinced that it mattered. To be clear, I never really believed in the Christian God with a capital G. I tried really hard, but I could never truly believe. Which made me feel crappy, obviously. i thought there was something wrong with me that I never felt that connection to God. It didn’t occur to me that maybe there was no connection to feel.

I prayed for God to change me into a boy when I was seven. Every night before I went to sleep, I prayed that I would wake up a boy. If God was that powerful, then it should be a breeze for Him, right? It never happened, obviously, and I would wake up, bitterly disappointed to still be a girl.

To be clear, it wasn’t that I felt as if I were a boy; I did not. I never have. I am not a man. I am very clear about that. However, because of all the shit I got as a young female-shaped person, mostly from older Taiwanese women (internalized misogyny is a bitch, yo), I thought the only solution was for me to be a boy instead.

“Girls don’t _____” was a recurring theme in my childhood. Fill in the blank with climb trees, play roughly, sit with your legs open, laugh loudly, and the list went on and on. It was some toxic, retro bullshit, even for the time, that I didn’t recognize was firmly not my problem.


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Tradition? (No) Tradition!

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I’ve been thinking more about gender roles because I’m still not comfortable with being called a woman. I said to Ian that while I’m not going to make a fuss when someone calls me ‘she’, I prefer to skip pronouns completely. He said he would keep that in mind, which touched me. I wasn’t necessarily saying it because I wanted him to change (we rarely use pronouns for each other, anyway. It’s not something that comes up often when talking directly to each other). I used ‘she’ for myself a few times and did not like it. I did not hate it, either, but it just felt foreign to me. As I’ve said in the past, it’s the one that’s the closest to describing me, but it doesn’t fit. Like bisexual for my sexual identity. It’s close-ish, but not quite right. At my age, though, I just don’t care enough to explore it any further.

It’s the same as how I finally gave up on religion. I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, replete with brimstone and hellfire. There was a heavy emphasis on sex being the worst thing you could do (especially as a girl) until you got married and then it was holy and angels would be singing. When I went to college and had sex for the first time at age 20, it was fantastic. Once it was over, I thought, “This is what’s sending me to hell?” It felt so good and more to the point, did not hurt anyone. Once I realized what shit that was, it was as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. And, on the other hand, there were no angels singing, either. It just felt really good and was something I wanted to do again.

Once that lie was exposed, I left Christianity. Full disclosure: I never truly believed in the Christian God, but I tried really hard. After that, however, I did a 180 and raged at the religion I had been raised in. I was furious that it had lied to me in such a massive way and I refused to listen to anything about it. Around the same time, my mother became even more religious–which was a trial. We were driving somewhere (she was at the wheel) and she would not shut up about Jesus. I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my mouth shut, but it was too much. I snapped that I didn’t give a fuck about her Jesus Christ (and as a general rule, I don’t swear in front of her). She stopped the car and told me to get out. We were about a mile from home so I just walked back, which was for the best.

I never played wedding when I was a little girl. I’ve heard it’s common to dream about it and plan it and enact it with your dolls and whatnot, but I had no interest in that. I hated dolls, anyway; I preferred plushies. I didn’t give a shit about weddings or any of that. I assumed it would come later–the interest, I mean. I also assumed that I had to get married and have children, which filled me with no joy. The day I realized in my early twenties that I did not have to have children was the best day of my life up until that point and it’s not been surpassed by many days since.


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The truths I don’t tell

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When I turned twenty-six, my mother started a fifteen year campaign to get me pregnant. Moving to Taiwan didn’t stop her agenda–she just ramped it up every time she saw me. Some of the reasons she proffered: it was a woman’s biggest duty; it was special for a mother when her daughter had a child*; she would move back to Minnesota to help me with the child; I could compromise with my boyfriend at the time who was starting to make noises about wanting children by having one child; I could adopt a black baby to match my cats. By the way, the last was said in a joking tone, but it was only a half-joke. She even dragged my grandmother into the conversation by saying she, my grandmother, wanted to be a great-grandmother before she died. Why, I don’t know, as she never showed any interest in being a grandmother, but probably for the prestige. I said that I could do it, but would have to have sex without a husband to get it done in the time frame (grandmother was dying) and incredibly, my mother said my grandmother would be fine with that. A lifetime of Christianity thrown out the window for someone else having a child in order to bestow upon her a meaningless title.

I am not exaggerating that she mentioned this every time she came to visit and would. not. let. it. go. She could not imagine that I could be a woman and not have children. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want children; it was my duty. I have never been sure of anything in my life other than that I never wanted children. One time, she wore me down to the point where for a brief moment, I considered having a child just to shut her the fuck up. Fortunately, I came to my senses and realized that was a shitty reason to have a child and never thought about it again.

When I hit forty, my mother dropped the kid talk, but then she ratcheted up the ‘when are you getting married?’ bullshit. I realized in my late thirties that I did not want to get married. I saw it as nothing but misery, honestly. Not just because of the bad marriages I saw around  me, but because I really, really, really did not like compromising with my time. I do what I want to do when I want to do it and how I want to do it. My frequently-given comment is that if I want to eat cereal at three in the morning, I damn will eat cereal at three in the morning. I have a friend who can only eat a certain cereal when her husband is on a trip by himself because he considers it a children’s cereal. Even the good marriages I’ve seen are involved and day-to-day. I mean, that’s the way it should be; I’m not dissing marriage itself. But there’s no way I want to coordinate with someone when I just run to the store or whatnot.

Back in my thirties, my BFF tried to convince me that marriage was what you made it. She said you didn’t even have to live together. You could live in separate houses or duplexes or on separate floors. She’s right, but you still have to interact with that person on a regular basis. More than just a check in with them in the morning and go about your day.

My mom pushed hard. She said who would take care of me when I was old? I should marry a strong man who–I don’t remember the rest of what she said because I blocked it out. Also, I thought about how she was in such denial. Would my father be able to take care of her if she were to become deathly old? Hell, no. He couldn’t even take care of her when she had shoulder surgery for fuck’s sake. When she had emergency gallbladder surgery in the States, he never came back to visit her. I was the one who took care of her, not him.


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Relationships, motherhood, and weapons, oh my!

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I’ve been thinking about relationships lately because, well, I’m not sure exactly why. Probably because it’s the end of the year and I get introspect as the year comes to a close. Thinking about it reminds me of how I realized I didn’t want to have children. Well, not really, but the aftermath was similar. The decision itself was easy. It was as if the heavens parted and the sun shone directly  upon me. If I liked sunshine, that was. I didn’t have to have kids! I was filled with relief and went about my merry way.

Or I would have except I naively shared this decision with people who asked me about children and when I was having them. I was a young woman in my early twenties, so this came up more than I wanted it to. To me, I made a decision that only affected me, and that should have been that. Instead, I had people question my decision making several gross claims that were firmly rooted in sexism even if I didn’t recognize it as such at the time. This was in the early nineties when it was still preached that a woman’s #1 job was to be a mother.* It was the main tenet of both of my cultures, and I got so much pressure from my mother, but that’s another post for another day.

I was so young and naive to think that I could dare state that I didn’t want to have children without any blowback. Mind you, it wasn’t something I brought up out of the blue, but I was honest about it if someone brought it up. The reactions I received ranged from condescending–you’re too young to know/you’ll change your mind–to anger. Yes, I actually had people think I was judging them for their decision to have children because I said I didn’t want them. Honestly? I didn’t give a shit about their reproductive choices–just mine. But, I was pushing back on the status quo which made some people very unhappy. More to the point, I acted as if it simply did not exist, which really shook some people. In reflection, I realized that people who followed the status quo without thinking REALLY did not like those who didn’t.

I gave dozens of reasons why I wasn’t going to have children depending on my mood. I was too selfish (true), I was too hot-tempered (true), and I didn’t have the energy (true). My go-to snark answer was that I would be screaming, “Get the fuck away from me! Mommy doesn’t want to see you for three days”, and I couldn’t afford paying for a lifetime of therapy–but it was basically true. I don’t like being around other people all the time or having anyone depend on me (except my cat, and even he pushes it when he meows incessantly in my face in the morning for breakfast), and something I didn’t admit to many people was that I could see myself abusing a child. Not purposely, but because I snapped.

It was all faff, however, because while it was true, the simple answer is that I didn’t have children because I didn’t want them. I never have, and I only thought I’d have them because that was what I was supposed to do. I cannot tell you how free I felt when I realized I could choose not to have children, and it’s a feeling that has only intensified over time. Over a quarter of a century later, I am happier than ever that I don’t have children. There was only one time I briefly considered it, and it was because my mother engaged a 15-year campaign to get me pregnant from the time I was 25 until I was 40. During the heyday when she was nattering at me yet again about how motherhood was whatever she said it was because I blanked out every time she mentioned it, I had a flash thought of, “Maybe I should get pregnant to shut her the fuck up.” Fortunately, I immediately realized that was a fucking stupid reason to get pregnant, but it was a rough fifteen years.


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How I want to play the dating game

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i'm on the edge.
On the edge of a broken heart.

I was reading my stories yesterday (Ask A Manager weekend thread), and there was someone asking for some outside perspective on her relationship and whether she should leave. The issue was that her common-law husband would never admit he was wrong, and it came to a head when she was out of town for a wedding, and he went out with friends. That wasn’t the issue. What was the issue was that he had a flirty friend (FF) he’s known forever, and she and another friend spent the night with hubby. FF wore his boxers and slept in the spare room. Hubby didn’t tell his wife, and she found out from someone else.

The OP (original poster) kept stressing that she wasn’t the jealous type and how fine she would have been if he had just told her–though maybe not about the boxers part. It was interesting to see the responses. Some took her at face value at her not being the jealous type, some questioned her on that. Some didn’t see the boxers as a big deal, but most did. Some gently told her she didn’t need to have a reason to get out, and others mused that by focusing so much on how the message was delivered (by a third party), she might be not owning her hurt feelings. Still others pointed out how her husband brushing away her feelings is the real issue and how he probably won’t change. One person suggested he might be trying to push her to leave (because the behaviors have been escalating, and they’d already tried couples counseling for a few sessions until he quit).

By the time I finished reading the post, I was exhausted, and I was on the side of leave him. Not because of the incident itself, necessarily (though I am on the side of wearing someone’s boxers being too intimate. You couldn’t give her shorts or sweats? And not telling your wife isn’t good either), but because the OP sounded done with the relationship, but not sure she had a good enough reason to walk away.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading advice columns, it’s that you can end a relationship at any time. You don’t need what other people would consider a good reason–but because our society is so invested in the narrative of coupledom and that you’re not a complete person without someone attached to your hip (especially as a het woman, even in 2019), and you still hear how a bird in the hand, etc., etc., etc., it’s no wonder that people hold onto relationships for way past their expiration date. Not to mention sunken cost fallacy, and it’s understandable.

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What is ‘normal’ isn’t universal

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run, run away.
Just looking at her makes me tired.

It’s wearing to always be the weird one. I have to get that out there before I start blathering about whatever is on my mind. Fair warning: I woke up feeling as if I was hit by a dump truck (not as bad as a Mack truck, but still), and I’m slightly dizzy and nauseated. So, I’m going to write until my brain gives out, which could be in five minutes or it could be in an hour.

One common wisdom people give about depression is to write about your feelings as a way of tracking them. It makes sense, but I refuse to do it. Why? Because I write a lot on a regular basis, and I don’t want to make it a chore, rather than something I enjoy doing. Telling myself that I have to jot down every feeling I feel is a sure way to make me not want to write. I do it, anyway, in these posts, so making myself journal seems excessive to me.

Another common wisdom to counter depression is to get some sun and to exercise. I’ve heard the latter so much, it’s embedded in my brain. My experience with exercise, however, begs to differ.

Side Note: I have SAD in the summer instead of winter, which is yet another way in which I am not normal. I love winter. I roll down the windows in my car until it’s zero degrees. I used to do it sub-zero, but I’m more sensitive to cold now that I’m an Old. My thermostat is set at 62º during the day and 60º during the night. I did not wear a coat all of last winter, but I also didn’t go out during the coldest days. I think we reached something like  -50º including the windchill, which is cold, even for me. I do appreciate the sun, but in small doses. I like it better than gloomy weather, but it has to be paired with cold.

Back to exercise. I’ve heard it all my life, and I’m sure you have, too. “Exercise drives away the depression!” Well, no. That’s not true. I found that it didn’t make my mood worse, but it didn’t help, either. No endorphin boost for me, except when I did dancing as exercise. Fast walking (and I used to do four miles a day) just made me actively angry, in part because I was getting hot and sweaty while doing it. I sweat. A lot. More than most people. I don’t have a problem with that, but it’s not fun to be bathing in it. Also, being in the heat makes me actively angry. Anything over seventy is not my happy place. I read about the office temperature wars, and I have to shake my head. Most people seem to think 70º to 75º is the comfort zone. In fact, women in general prefer a higher temp than men do. Me, I would cuss everybody out if I had to be that hot every day.

People who like it warmer complain that they have to cater to people who like colder temps, but it’s because at some point, we can’t take off any more clothing. One person on this temp war thread said their dad started a new job at a place where a woman kept the thermometer cranked to 85+º. Eighty-fucking-five. PLUS. The commenter said their dad almost fainted, and I would have fainted. The dad also kept his thermostat at 62º during the winter, so he’s my kind of people.

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Becoming what I feared

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When I was in my twenties, I used to joke that I was attracted to the exact wrong person for me. Gay men, straight women, anyone who was taken, or someone who was simply not interested in me*. If I walked into a room with 100 people and 99 were eligible dating partners, I would inevitably beeline towards the one who wasn’t.

In my late 20s/early 30s, I declared stridently that I didn’t want to be in a relationship. I was an independent woman, damn it! I didn’t need no (wo)man to make me complete. Of course, underneath it was my terrifying hunger to be in a relationship. I was told all my life it was the only thing that mattered, well, along with squirting out children, of course. It was confusing because I was also told I WOULD go to college, but at the end of the day, I better be married and have children.

Side note: When I turned 26, my mother started pushing me to have children. It reached the point where I began dreading talking to her because she would bring it up. Once summer when she visited, she mentioned it every goddamn fucking day. Her comment when I turned 26 was that she had my brother at that age. My immediate (internal) response was, “I’m not you, thank god.” I have been fortunate that I realized fairly early (21 or 22) that I did not want children. It was such a relief when I finally truly realized I did not have to spawn, I nearly cried. My mother did not stop trying to get me knocked up for the next fifteen years. I only relate this to underscore how much pressure I felt to marry (implicit in the preggers convos) and have children. The only time I ever had an impulse to have children was after my mom had been nagging me for days about it, and I thought, “I should have a kid just to shut her up.” Fortunately, I came to my senses and realized that having a child to please my mom would be a recipe for disaster.

I want to be clear. I was not a great girlfriend back in the day. I was too clingy and too eager to merge into one being. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of social support for a woman offering endless emotional support without receiving any in return, especially twenty years ago. In addition, there is the idea that you’re supposed to be the ‘cool girlfriend’ who is ‘chill’ and doesn’t get upset about, well, anything. It’s a neat way of keeping a woman firmly in her place (in a het relationship). Still. I fell into many of the traps of het relationships of that time, and I was not my best self in those relationships.

Many times, I was just desperate to be in a relationship, any relationship, because my self-worth hung on what my partner thought of me. I put up with a lot of shit that I shouldn’t have because I thought I didn’t deserve better. It was a vicious cycle, and I didn’t know how to get out of it. Hell, I wasn’t even aware of the problems for a long time. Once I became aware of my own issues, it was hard not to see it in myself all the damn time. I worked hard on it through a lot of therapy, but some of the issues are so deep.


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I have a dream…of being a normie

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a lonely, friendless path.
The road less traveled….

Still sick. Got better, up to feeling 75% or so, and then I plummeted back down to roughly 40% two nights ago. I’m hovering around that same point right now, and it’s fucking annoying. I think it’s time to actually go to the doctor and/or try Chinese medicine/acupuncture. Ugh.

So, on one of the advice forums I read, there was someone asking how does someone know if they are ready to have children (indeed, if they should have them at all). Someone responded with a classic column from Dear Sugar in which she counsels the LW to imagine a ‘sister ship’ to the life he is leading (in this case, he’s a childfree man contemplating having children) and to see what that sparks in him.

I’ve been thinking about that since rereading the column. I don’t know if I agree with how she ultimately made her decision (feeling like she’d slightly regret it more if she didn’t have kids than if she did), but I think there’s merit in imagining an alternative life. So. Let’s try it out. I don’t have any qualms about my decision not to have children (and never have. The only decision I’ve consciously made in my life that I haven’t second-guessed), but there are plenty of things in my life that I wondered what would have happened if I’d taken another path.

In addition, it can be alienating to be so persistently on the fringes, but not completely alternative. I’ve written about it before, but it’s my blog, so I’ll write about it again if I want to. Nothing about me is ‘normal’–unmarried, gleefully childfree, agnostic, freelancer, bisexual, Taiwanese, non-movie lover, etc. Something that makes me fringe from both normies and freaks is that I’m completely straight-edged when it comes to drinking/drugs. I don’t do any of that, and I have little patience for it. It’s not fun being the only sober person in a group of drunk/high people, which, unfortunately, many artistic people are.

Then, there’s sex and relationships. In my teens, I was determined to wait until I was married to have sex because–church. The problem was, sexytimes were AW HELL YES times. It felt goddamn good, like, really fucking good, and I became what I later called a TV (technical virgin). I did everything up to PIV (penis-in-vagina) sex, and that’s how I rationalized that I wasn’t breaking my Christian vows, as it were. Even though I never really believed in God with a capital G, I tried so goddamn hard. But, sexy stuff felt amazing, and it got harder and harder for me to abstain from penetrative sex.

In my twenties, I realized I was bisexual, but I denied it for several years. I was already an Asian woman in America–did I really need to throw another label that would make life harder for me into the mix? I couldn’t deny it forever, however, and I came out with some fanfare. It took me roughly a decade to adjust to that, and I also had what I fondly refer to as my slutty years in my late twenties. I did a lot of experimenting, and while it got messy from time to time, it was a lot of fun, too.

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