Love is overrated

Of all spectrums and variations of emotions that exist, love remains a strong and powerful feeling which anyone anywhere could relate to.

We are all pumped up, hyped up to believe that love, with all its perfectness and splendour to arrive at our feet, kneeling down, proposing with sugary sweet words, a magnificent 27 karat gold mounted with a blinding bright diamond and to expect a romantic reply as simple as 'i do'.

Awwww. How Schweeeet.

We are systematized to believe that our soulmates would come and sweep us off the ground through various writings, songs, poems and movies. A girl daydreams of Prince Charming or Edward Cullen (just to hike up visitors to this blog), handsome, macho, perfect eyes, biceps and triceps as large as 5 litre mineral water bottles, with six packs worth of abdomen, romantic and all that jazz. While a boy conjures up an image of their fantasy Sleeping Beauty, or Rapunzel, skin as white as snow (no racism here, if your choice is chocolate skin, then make yourself at home), sweet, beautiful, cute, nice, excellent at cooking and all that jazz. There is, of course, that search for perfectness, which i assume is normal, as nobody really wants a semi rotten apple for their dinner.

But of course everything is rosy when you're in love. You imagine the snow falling down as 7e slurpees. You don't mind the sun shining bright and hot and your skin goes all sticky sweaty wet because you believe it's your source of vitamin D. Your finger bleeds, but you say that's the colour of love flowing down. Quite simply, the world and all its inhabitants don't really exist, except the two of you. The hard cold facts of reality don't really bother you. Of course, all that comes before the package called 'maturity' arrives at your doorstep, which will be attained when the right time passes by.

So, what if your partner comes up to you and reveals his or her bad habit honestly. It's like being hit hard with one negative attribute or habit, when you're like thinking the sky is blue all day long.

'We have been going on for quite some time. I want to let you know something. I am..uh..diagnosed with CFO. That's the acronym for chronic farting disorder. I've been taking medications each time we meet. There are days when it blows like a machine gun, some days it's like the whisper of the wind. Most of the time, it's an atomic explosion. Well, there are of course those occasional engine start up sounds. Occurences coincide with inadequate intake of medications but i've learned to control it throughout the years through farthotherapy, preferring the silent smooth type. Don't get me started about the smell. There was this one night, i couldn't quite sleep, so i forced myself to fart just to make me faint.'

Of course, CFO doesn't exist in ICD-10, which is the acronym for international classification of diseases. It's easy to like someone for their positive traits, but the fact that every Tom, Dick, Harry and Suzie have bad attributes should also be put into perspective.

Whatever it is, love is simply overrated these days. From a historical point of view, relationships of the past have been arranged by parents and surprisingly, although i don't have statistics, i think most of them turned out well and spawned numerous writings of unrequited love of their ex lovers. I try being fair here, by not being a male chauvinist who is often referred to a pinkish animal that feeds on its own excrements or a female activist who screams for gender 'equality', which for me, is such a waste of time. Both contribute to the downfall of the institution of relationships equally because there are desires and the neverending search for the perfect love. Desires, in this context, refer to sex and exclusively sex for men (food comes a close second) and for women, they require their partners to satisfy each and every single need of theirs, according to this Allan Pease guy.

But of course, in the end, the ones with the most desires eventually contribute more to the divorce rates. I have a unofficially weak statistic to prove my theory. In the USA alone, 50 % of marriages end up in divorce, with 70 % of them being initiated by yes, you guess it right, women because the more desires you have, the more unsatisfied you are when they are left unfulfilled. Now call me a male chauvinist, but women are a demanding bunch and i've got statistics on my side! Boohoo! It's a touche too cliche to think of men as playboys but i have to say there are guys who feed on their egos and go on a love rampages, they will never be satisfied with one woman. They like to test their proficiency in the language of romance. These people would marry up to 10 women if the law says so. I grew up living with this fact in my head, too. That's why i found Hamka's version of love from the male perspective to be enlightening and astonishing, since 'Tenggelamnya Kapal van Der Wijck' was written in 1937. Additionally, i found El Sharizi Habiburrahman (hopefully i got that right) to be heavily influenced by his writings. Hamka wrote : -

'Laki-laki bilamana telah menentukan cintanya untuk seorang perempuan, maka perempuan itu mesti jadi haknya seorang, tak boleh orang lain hendak ikut berkonsi dengan dia. Jika perempuan itu cantik, maka kecantikannya biarlah diketahui olehnya seorang..Sebab itu, kalau ada orang lain yang hendak memuji kecintaannya,...semua itu tidaklah diterima oleh laki-laki yang mencintainya tadi.'

Another stupid invention related to the love memorabilia is something called 'prenupts' or prenuptial agreement. It's a pre marriage deal of property division and spousal support if anything goes wrong. My lawyer friend considers this as a 'preparation for an inevitable future divorce'. It's like saying, 'We are going to divorce anyway sometime in the future, why not just sign it so that we could reduce any friction when we go our seperate ways.' Another friend, a law student in UIA is more pragmatic, saying that it protects men equally as it protects women because women tend to demand for everything in a divorce. Men can declare what items are theirs before marriage so that there are no ridiculous demands upon a beak up. I say, it's just stupid. You're entering something as sacred as marriage, and you're preparing for a possible divorce even before you recite the solemn oath of 'til death do us apart'?

No wonder there's a spike of single guys these days, and god only knows whether i'll be contributing to an increment of such statistics. Of course i am not accusing only you of having such desires or motivation to start of a relationship slash marriage slash I have my own preferences, which i'd rather not divulge here on my blog. I keep those preferences to myself, as i am an introvert and that's what introverts do. But the fact is simple, I am not trying to prove there's a prevelant role of either the female or male gender contributing to divorce or a downfall of a relationship. All i can say is, there's no such thing as perfectivity (the word does not even exist), although there are still those who search for that impeccable love.

Fart-all-that. Love is overrated.