antecoitus

People with a predilection to cheat:

People can be more inclined towards infidelity than others for several reasons:

One, insecurity: some people just have the need to reassure themselves that they still got the bling. That’s why some people in their mid-life have this propensity too. Kailangang patunayan ang asim. You can also see this among those who flirt a lot without committing to the flirtation. Someone can be perfectly aware of his charms and of women-friends or male friends who are fascinated by him/her; he/she keeps the friendship, continues the flirtation and takes care of his/her ego.

Two, some people have a fondness for the thrill of the forbidden: there may be two people, both committed, who justify dangerous grounds by calling it a harmless flirtation. They do this because of the excitement that comes with the hiding. Or maybe they don’t even hide; they just sort of cover it up with a proclaimed friendship in order to appease themselves with the fact of a possible fallback. These people could be still in love with the people they are with, but are unsure of the future of their present relationships because of a specific challenge.

Three, some people find compatibilities in amazing proportions with each other, they consider compatibilities the basis for a fool-proof relationship, they will keep looking until they find that person that exactly fits them, and believe me they can be articulating it to every person they have been with.  People get into relationships for different reasons, some just plain find the magic of love (ambaduy), some, in the beginning, jump in for the challenge and some because of the fact that compatibilities automatically mean an issue-less time with each other (or if you can guess what the other person is feeling then you can already manipulate them from your side of the court ;)).

Four, some people are in bad relationships, they may be seeing something wrong in their relationship or there is a looming possibility that the current one is going to end soon. They, on the other hand, do not have the courage to take the risk of breaking the current relationship without a clear assurance of the new one. My boyfriend said that when a man cheats it is usually based on the libido; it is usually a sexual thing. However, when a woman cheats, then there is something fundamentally wrong with the relationship. I don’t specifically know why, but yes, I believe him.

Five, some people just fall in love in a blink of an eye. These people could be vulnerable their whole lives, they can interpret an act of kindness easily as a message of undying devotion.

Six, some people just need to scratch. (siguro, walang pader sa kanila hehe ;))

Yesterday, I received a phone call from one of my most respected close friends. She had a concern with something that happened to me not so long ago. Her distress was slicing through the phone line. I felt her disbelief at some of the things people tend to do, and somehow are even proud about. She was incredulous, totally thrown back at something that should have made me feel harmed instead of her, someone not totally involved with what happened. Funny enough, I did not even induce it. Riotously, I do not even feel connected to that past anymore.

I will not reveal details, because apparently, they involuntarily disclose themselves anyhow. Two, three, twelve months after a controversy. It has never been my nature to play with dirt or to discredit my adversaries with a little bit of muck here and there, especially if I do not see the point in it. As with choosing your battles, your enemies’ worthiness must be considered too. It has never been my interest to look back and glue my eyes on neither the wrong choices I made nor the disappointments I’ve had. After learning, I move on. Like a kid – I will continually be trying the heat of the fire, but also, never the same fire.

People choose not only the whats in their lives but also the hows. This is a basic rule of reality. You can choose whatever you want because it is your own business, but how you get there will determine your fortitude and your quality as a person.

People choose not only the whats in their lives but also the hows. This will be the basis of this short essay on the politics of cheating, and the catchphrase will be ‘pack your bags with much more style’. I will write this because I owe it to myself and to that special lady in that heat wave city called Copenhagen, hehe (it really proved to me how involved you are with the gold and grime I say, love you mamu).

An attempt on definition

Cheating is an act or an aggregation of acts demonstrating a desire to rid one’s self of a commitment or to satisfy a need that cannot be derived from a present relationship - it can be proximity, good sex (or just plain sex), better conversation or even variety - without wanting to sacrifice the person one is currently involved with (or at least to face the fact that this is the by product of the deed). Cheating is an act committed out of cowardice and confusion. Cheating in more course versions equate to – lies and betrayal.  If we go even more lewdly – it is the result of the inability to control an itch when an opportunity presents itself.

Cheating is an issue of control, but more importantly, it is the process that you allow or not allow yourself to go through that determines your success rate at getting the correct results (which we will discuss further).

When does one cheat?

This is a very tricky question. Is it a look across a room, or an admiring gaze at a firm behind? Is it a friendly conversation that borders dangerous grounds? Is it an attraction you cannot explain? The answer to all of this is a no. Attraction is a natural tendency, unless you are married to a goddess incarnate, you will never get rid of that penchant for what you think you do not have or that inclination towards a seemingly better option (in one or more of the following aspects: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual – ayan isama na natin ang mystcism).

Cheating happens when you allow yourself to move one inch closer to the bait, each time. It is how you, even gradually and in the littlest amounts possible, permit yourself to drown into the temptation that is ominously or maybe covertly present. It can be, startlingly, an indulgent flirtation, a type of gluttony that not only the id but also the pride commits.

This morning, my boyfriend woke me up in a sleepy voice saying that it is ten minutes past seven but without letting me go. I kicked him lightly on the shin and he held tighter, I have no chance to free myself from a guy 25 kgs heavier than me.

‘Sweetie, I have to go, its either you let me shower now or you bring me all the way to the office’.

He released, I knew that would get to him because he wants to be in the office early as well, I ran half asleep to the closet, grabbed everything I need and was ready to leave in 20 minutes. (Yes, I am one of those low maintenance women who can get out of the house with neither blown dry hair nor makeup, one of those too who maxes out sleeping time). I never imagined I would ever say this, but I hate being late. A statement that my closest friends back home would probably gape at with utmost disbelief knowing intimately their friend who they fondly call (smirking, most of the time) – ‘the late Judy Anne’. Pun intended.

See, here’s the deal, I had to adapt, ladies and gentlemen. Otherwise, they would frown upon that ‘young Asian girl who thinks she can get away with anything on the basis of cultural difference’.

Outside, the inversion was still up, and arriving at the office, everything was fogged. 830 in the morning and you could easily get head-butted walking to the entrance by someone also just getting out of his car, navigating in this weather is hell served in a shiny pristine white sheet. The chilly wind only able to bite your face almost bloody because the rest of you is covered with layers, I always imagine my ears falling off and breaking like dropped ice cubes on the floor. An ordinary day. Another day of proving that being a girl and being young means charming and cutting your way painfully through for people (i.e. big older men in suits) to take you seriously. I do not go to work playfully tumbling amidst white fluffy clouds in a room filled with my private harem. I work hard to get noticed but also to not be judged loosely as that foreigner who stole their job. Sometimes I work until my nose bleeds, literally.

Winters can be cruel, especially to perpetually tanned sun and beach devotees. This is just not home. Four years now of living in and out of the smells of home (the first two years in shorter spans of time, the next two in longer), and it still does not get any easier. Although my view of the world has expanded immensely, my love for mingling with and within different cultures has become more addictive and my hate for people who stereotype and judge quickly is with a more resolute passion… I still miss all the warmth, comfort and amusement that only being back home can give me.

It is not such a party to be away from my country, and it’s definitely not in any way funny to have people implying that ‘they love their country so much and thus they do not want to leave’. That statement makes me double up, it makes me drool with laughter. Honestly, people! At least be a little bit more original. Calling me an ingrate does not change the fact that bitterness is gushing quickly down these people’s noses, otherwise they would just let me be. It does not change the fact that saying or even just thinking this means they look down on every Filipino employed overseas, believing that they only went abroad for the money. Not for enriching their lives the way they know best, not to open horizons, not to follow their heart.

I agree, most of our fellow countrymen who have left, work for their families back home. They work as nurses, teachers, domestic helpers, engineers and what have you. They send remittances to the families they support back home, to provide for that one pregnant sister whose husband somehow cannot manage to find time to look for a job but has the time to play basketball at the local ‘kanto’ court, for a sick grandparent, for a younger brother’s education, for Christmas clothes for the extended family. What the eff is wrong with wanting to prop up the lives of people you love? These people sometimes even end up feeding the mouths of free-riders. OFW remittance is currently one of the pillars of the Philippine economy, while our country’s government spends precious, precious time catering to shameless political careerists hiding behind ‘pubic service’ (I intended that typo ‘error’) or involving themselves in mudslinging so that self proclaimed intellectuals can have something to analyze and talk about over venti frapuccino.   

I have been criticized for making the country short of one more educated mind. Bloody self-righteous fake nationalists. They think that leaving the country was a plain act of greed. Critical and open minded as they claim to be, they can come up with only this reason why other people have decided to take a chance somewhere else. Amazingly intuitive and insightful sons-of- their-mothers.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few reasons why people to do what they do, motivation is never solely based on money.  If these critics had the consideration to know people before they put them into little boxes, they would be amazed that they can actually grasp the concept of depth. Surprise, surprise.

If you knew me better, you should also know that I can never stay in one place for longer periods of time. To know and search and see, that is how I am built. My beloved critics think that I am doing this because I do not love my country. Man, how about personal reasons ha?! Have these people ever considered that interracial relationships can also be true and successful? As Filipinos, let us not flatter ourselves, a person’s view on the basics of proper relationship has absolutely nothing to do with skin color or with the carb-type one eats. (if you want examples, I’ll write you another essay). I have my guy here, that matters to me, and nobody can tell me how to live my life best, unless he wants me to call him mother and reimburse me with my 16-year school allowance’s worth.

To all those educated minds left in the country, who are apparently offering their talents to our dear mother land (except those who wish to leave for what they consider ‘better opportunities’), continue doing that. That is very admirable. But for crying out loud, stop judging other people’s choices. If you have decided to stay there for your country then do it with utmost dedication, not a half hearted resignation because it’s scary to get out and risk getting discriminated upon by other cultures in some foreign country without your usual comfort zones and with much more pride you’d have to swallow everyday. Some people cover this statement up with patriotic bull: ‘Bakit ako aalis ng Pilipinas kung dito hari na ko at dun e second class citizen lang ako’— dude, a perfectly wonderful approach to life, hiding cowardice behind nobility.

If you are staying in the Philippines to work for your country, and especially if you are working in the name of public service, then prove to me the hard work you invest on each single day fighting your little battles to win something more for our people.

Don’t be late every other day and stop slacking around. Fight stubborn bureaucracy with a louder voice and less acquiescence. Add something more to the job than what is asked from you. For chrissakes, make our mother land the first country to use water as an alternative fuel source… go on, run after that patent! But quit convincing me to build you a national hero’s monument.

All that I mentioned above is what I try hard to do.. well except for the water fuel thing.. for my country, hopefully so. Mainly, I left because of my personality, my private circumstances, my career choice and my passions. In the end life brings you somewhere, either willfully or inadvertently, but we all must keep kicking as hard as we could, because it’s only what we do in that little life which we can offer to affect things bigger than us.

I hope in the future, I can tell you something more concrete that I did for my country, that is certainly my own dream, and I hope someday you do too, because, sweethearts, if only you have moral ascendancy over me, I would gladly concede. But then nobody ever solidly has this over anyone else, anyway. So quit looking at me and start concentrating on building up your excellent nationalist’s resume with more quantifiable proof.

At eleven o’clock on a Monday morning in the office, I was laughing at some joke my boyfriend made about having an ex, not specifically about his or mine, just having one in general. Still talking to him, my eyes started wondering around my table and around my office when they landed on a stack of CDs that my ex made for me before I went to

Europe

for my two year stint. Those CDs now contain relatively older songs, not only in fact but also in what they represent. They epitomize a lot of who I was two years ago, of what my life was like. Now staying in my office with a pile of business week magazines, three open excel sheets and right after trying to explain to an area manager why we cannot do some VAT filing for a client because it is against the law, in a turtle neck sweater, warm polyester skirt, boots and glasses, with my hair up, saying “I love you” to a blonde blue eyed man at the other end of the phone line, something clicked. This is a different life, mine, sure, but still mind blowingly dissimilar to my past and to my planned present.

My issues now include: Should I get a flat on my own or should I start living with my man? What am I saving for? How can I best plan my last five years before thirty hits me right smack in the forehead? How can I best take care of my parents and my loved siblings? How can I make this career lead to my ultimate goal of working for other people? How can I best prove my principles in little ways? How do I enrich my life and nurture friendships more? Where do I want this passion for photography lead? Deep, disturbing, hilarious.

The issues that I tackle now are quite different; my view of life, of relationships, even of marriage has changed. This may have been brought about by the fact that being away from all possible comfort zones, trying to make a life of your own, not just letting the flow take you places taught me to fight harder (shitloads more than I probably would have if I did not make some of the decisions I made, some I had to, some I plainly wanted) and humor life more. The painful parts, the disappointments and the funny endings, made me able to turn my head 90 degrees more than Linda Blair. Fighting is a humbling experience; often it is as profound and as difficult as acceptance.

When I told my best friend that I have grown up and was scared that even I cannot grasp the enormity of the changes in my character, I did not know what I was talking about. Until now.

Though the basics of my character have remained (something I proved half a year ago), I have changed, something an ex boyfriend would probably resent if he was still a still and not an ex. As some guys I know would have put it, “I like my girlfriend because she is exactly right for me”. I’m not; I was never ‘just right’ for anyone, no matter how much we fooled ourselves. It could be the reason why this new relationship is fitting me, because its expectations are managed on the basis of free flow, more difficult, more interesting. I used to rebel against myself, convincing myself that there is a way to get grounded, probably by a typical life or a fixed deal. However, believe you me, by virtue of first hand experience, when you are like me, even the most proclaimed liberal of all possible Romeos would back off. That is since funnily though, they are the most sententious, the least brave and the most proud. Having grown braver and more clear on what I want out of either a business meeting or a couple’s spat, with finally that little healthy dose of disillusionment, my type A slightly mad personality would have made him want to die… drowning or burning… it would not really matter.

Now I have decided to move my life away from home indefinitely. I am staying here with my boyfriend, looking to land somewhere less subdued by standards and more by reality, a different path, and admittedly a path that is more me. Stubborn, playful, exploratory.

I have changed, fully conscious of a direction but sometimes disoriented with the consequences. Life is like that anyway. We say ‘I know everything about my life’, but in the end, all those inevitabilities can throw you off, until one day, you look at yourself in the mirror and realize that had you been looking at yourself two years ago, that image would have been looking back at you with a crinkled forehead mouthing the words, ‘who the fuck are you?’. But it’s not like that. You everyday look at yourself in the mirror thinking ‘I did not change at all, I feel the same, I feel myself.’ To recognize character change is especially difficult, particularly when you are busy making supporting details to a subliminally fated design.

I had my appraisal with my manager recently and some of the things he wrote on my conclusion I would have never thought of myself. He made it sound like I am a full grown person, and fully respected, finally. Then I realized, your own development is as invisible to you as your decline. When I started writing more, traveling more, learning another language, opening my circle of friends more, doing more photography, challenging more, playing with life more, in general, looking back, I felt richer with each moment. Changed for the better? I will never be able to tell. That’s the beauty of it.

Going home from work, I, most of the time, find him on the couch reading a newspaper, it’s his habit, and sometimes it does annoy me. He has to read the paper cover to cover everyday, even if it is already seven in the evening and the news for that day has already gone stale. He talks to me about the news and challenges me into an open political debate, much like the debate we go over about trivial stupid things.

Driven by a temper that surprisingly comprises his charm, he argues with me as if I will ever just concede. Until I hoist him back into a saddle that calms him down, with a shout or with a hug and sometimes with a flick on the forehead.

Even if we are both unyielding on issues such as integrity or love of life or devotion or adventure, we still find it an effort to agree on levels, intensity… even semantics. He’s extremely opinionated, always with a stubborn look and definitely has two hundred years worth of training to go before he achieves my level of diplomacy. On normal life bluntness and stubbornness, I also take the lead. He is able to tone my being-too-much-of-me down with so much patience and an unconditional show of love so that often he catches me off guard with a comment that would suddenly make me gasp or laugh or shut up. He unconsciously taught me to equate my pride now to nothing but foolishness when it comes to love. This lesson came from a trust and a respect of such proportions that I never had for a man before.

I came from past relationships where I have been told that when things are just right, things are okay. When there are no mysteries that can probably remain unearthed eternally or borders to cross or issues to wrestle over, then you have found the one. Unfortunately, exact is a very tricky word, as is forever. Work and candor and scars, are pretty words though. None of them is magical, true, but it’s their actuality that makes each interesting, a freedom of presumption that induces respect and reverence unto itself.

The love that difference or likeness brings is irrelevant. It is what makes us grow each day morphing into better people that matters. Besides, it is only through those difficulties, those little mundane differences that you are able to open your eyes to another way of experiencing life. Even puzzles must be differing blocks before they fit to make a picture.

Walking down cobbled stiletto-trap streets this new year, waiting for midnight to become more than midnight and become our next year together, we become poster children for reality’s little surprises. It’s not the color of our skins, or the similarity that the stars painted that brought us together. It’s our devotion to happiness.

It’s only what we do from hereon that will make us who we are together, nothing else.

“Tolerance and celebration of individual differences is the fire that fuels lasting love  - Tom Hannah

We believe in different things, always trying to find a compromise. Or a midpoint.

We believe in different things, always trying to find a compromise. Or a midpoint. Or a total agreement. But often, we end up discovering ourselves, and amusingly, together.

The differences between us are overwhelming, and it baffles even us, how we have never ever, willfully hurt each other. It’s inexplicable that despite having such strength of personality, he has no scarring pride when it comes to showing affection. He has never made me lose sleep on anything else but good pillow talk or a chance to catch me unaware, somehow.