OMG Mum!!

Read this.

And I thought Pakistanis were an intrusive lot!

Marriage Part 9: Clingons

Not the ones from Star Trek – although if they were a factor in my post marital life, that would be SO cool! See Marriage Part 8.

There’s every reason I should wait untill I get married to philosophise on such matters but then supporting theory with fact would very much risk the reputation of my blog [and myself] as a Know-Nothing-Know-It-All and well, we don’t want that.

My 9th issue with the organisation that is Marriage is the dependency it surfaces in one half or the entirety of the married pair.

While a level of dependency is necessary for the happy institute, I become very quizzical when I see individuals erasing all boundaries that uphold a sense of personal reliance. Take for example the woman who needs to call her husband an average of 15 times a day to enquire after the minutiae of their day.

“Did you get my email?”

“Where were you just then when I rang?”

“Were you at your desk before?”

“Your phone’s been off the hook since 2pm.”

“Are you at your desk now?”

“I thought you said the meeting would only go to 2:30?”

“Shall I get soap during our grocery run?”

And all this is just during the business day when the lovebirds have been separated by the cruelty of a capitalist system that requires them both to dance for their dinner. Some of the less inane queries have been omitted (and purposely so) from the above list of shame because they’re about relevant things, like, dinner options and bills.

To make matters worse (because there is always, always room for improvement), the receiver of these calls drops everything (yes, even discussions related to critical system issues) to attend to these calls. How does he not go nuts with all this contact? If I required so desperately to be coddled by my partner’s reassuring gaze, hopefully my family will shoot me. In the event a ridiculous sense of “justice” gets in the way, I’d get a job sitting in the next cubicle, preferably taking the partitions out. Does it not bother you that your partner in life can’t manage a grocery aisle without your input?

Second case in point, the friendless husband. Can I get an Oh. My. God. followed by the contact number for the Rent-A-Friend hotline, please? There’s always a niceness in knowing your husband (or wife) puts you on number one on his (or her) list of priorities. You would want to know that their time is first reserved for you and then others. What’s not nice is when this guy (or girl) doesn’t want to create their own social experiences. Everything for this individual centres on their partner. I have no idea what this kind of person does BEFORE they enter a connubial state. There really isn’t any where their partner can go that they won’t want to tag along. They will not understand why their partner’s friends don’t do “couples day outs” all the time or why their partner even needs to see people outside of their heavenly union. Taking any sort of time out from this person becomes a feat of epic proportions and a lot of people, for the sake of their marriage, just end up cutting themselves out of their previously led lives. Thank you disappointment, welcome resentment.

How do you even grow as a couple if you don’t like doing different things? How does your life develop any perspective if you don’t introduce diversity into your world through modified interests?

I personally like the concept of spending time apart (from any one I’m close to). It very much rejuvenates my need for them. It also gives me a modified perspective on all the things we share a commonality in. Some relationships are so consuming you tend to take on the other person’s traits rather than acting out your own. Removing yourself from the cocoon of comfort is an apt way to test your mettle against the torrent of social expectations.

I don’t pretend to understand Clingons. I just hope I don’t end up with one.

Assimilation

Imagine telling these people to go back to their own country.

Maryam’s Guilty Little Secrets (Part 16)

Perhaps the scariest thing about getting older is the realisation that I am turning into my parents.

Ah nuts!

Marriage Part 8: Boredom

Recently (yesterday), I realised that out of the 200 contacts in my phone book I can only deign to spend time with 4. I suppose that’s not such a bad thing when you consider most people are tarded.

I also realised that I’m over a lot of things in my life like music, tv (God, I hate TV), shopping, picking on the ethnics in town on a Friday night, discussing other people’s problems, finding solutions to world hunger (no, wait, I’m still into this), eating out, “doing coffee” and just the general humdrum that reverberates the quiet corridors of an average mind. Work, study, home, monkeys. That’s all I got these days.

Don’t get me wrong I love having some time on my hands after a crazy few months BUT it’s just given rise to the realisation I keep pushing to the back of my head that I am perhaps a little bit bored with my world as it stands. I don’t know why there aren’t a lot of people that maintain my interest any more (or rather… have ever maintained my interest). What is so good about me that I can’t call any one of the other 196 people in my contact book and arrange a night out? They are perfectly good, happy people. And they’re stupid.

In the same vein, reading doesn’t appeal to me because most books are not anywhere near as engaging as I require them to be. I suppose the fact is, the world isn’t a boring place but right now, my world, as full of opportunity as it is, is!

What do I want to pursue? Not much. Infact, this week I’ve given serious thought to a life without full time work. What’s a career. Balls to that. What are friends? Balls to them too. They’re all married. What’s study? Another way to shut yourself from the world. I had creative energies. Now I don’t. Nuts.

To combat this horrid lull my ingenious mind, a keen pupil of the school of optimism has lobbied an idea into my heart.

I should get married!

This way I can inherit the entire social capital of someone I barely know! Think of all the new people I could meet and reject! What a novel way of resolving my existing dilemma! Yay! I’m sure the process of discovery will last at least 3 to 4 years? Even if it lasts 2, at least we’re out of the current jam and then, in another 2 years time, I’ll pick a fight with him, we’ll break up, I’ll go traveling around the world, meet someone new and do it all over again! Maybe this time, he’ll have loads of money so I can set up the institutes I want!

Go ahead, call me a pragmatist. It’s not such a bad word.