EP 8: My Past Romances And What They Taught Me
Hello and welcome to this episode. Some of you in Singapore will recall the recent incident of a local busker that had gained much fame performing in open public space. He seemed to be on his way to stardom, gathering a big fan crowd and lots of hype on social media before his ex-girlfriend alleged his past wrong doings. This ignited sudden cancellations of his busking performances, fierce online debates and defences from his family and eventually his image took a hit.
Past romances, whether long dating period or short whirlwind courting, do impact all of us in one way or another. Some of the luckier ones end up married and remain married, while some of us may have bad experiences, scarring us for life.
I had my first date at seventeen. He was one year my senior and at that time I had not cared much about how I looked. I didn’t know how to dress up, I felt I was a plain jane and hardly stood out in appearances. My mother bought my clothes and it was usually what she thought looked nice, cheap and good for her budget as we were from low income family that time. My hairstyle was the same as Aaron Kwok’s, one of the four heavenly kings from Hong Kong pop music scene, centre parting, short to the ears level and shaved with a slope on the back of my neck. I wore big plastic rimmed glasses, hardly the concept of beauty by today’s standards.
I was weak in my Physics during my upper secondary school days and wanted to look for help with my Physics homework. As finances were very tight in my family, getting private tuition was not an option. Somehow I ended up befriending one senior who was good in Physics and was willing to help me. And it was through this senior, I met my first ex-boyfriend, who was also good in Physics. Those were the days before technology of handphones and I remember we had long telephone chats late into the night using our house phone. Phone calls on Physics homework soon became dominated with other conversation topics and playful teasings.
It wasn’t long before the seniors graduated and being in different schools limited our interactions to only long telephone conversations in the night to share about what happened in the day. Thankfully I finished my Secondary school education with grades that allowed me to enter the same junior college. With that we were reunited in the same school and he asked me to be his girlfriend. I was taken aback by the love interest from a guy, or even any guy, given my own self-image that time. So it was unsurprising that I agreed.
With newfound freedom because I was now in junior college, hanging out together more often made me realised alot of differences we had. Fundamentally, my first ex-boyfriend had a different concept about money. His parents were not well-off, held low wage jobs and his dad was very old when they had children. But my boyfriend was blessed with a godfather that was quite well-off. His godfather owned a small store and the small business brought him a comfortable income. His godfather did not marry but had a sister with a condition that he had to take care of. Which was why his godfather had money to spare and dote on my first ex-boyfriend.
My first ex-boyfriend would want the latest things in trend, be it Sega gaming machine or Nike Air basketball shoes that his favourite basketball player wore during the recent NBA games. All he had to do was ask for money from his godfather for his Nike shoes, his bag, his Sega gameset, whatever he wanted his godfather to sponsor and he was never disappointed him. To him money came so easily, he never bothered saving. He would just spend on things that made him happy. I remember I was envious but I never felt comfortable asking for money. Especially when I know my parents made very little and were often cash-strapped.
In the first year I was dating my first ex-boyfriend, I often felt inadequate. He was a flirt, always comparing and measuring me against the other girls he knew around him. He would make remarks about how he cannot see my eyes because they are obstructed by my very thick glasses. He would comment about how his female ex-classmate’s breasts looked because she wore good maximiser bras, or I could look better if I applied makeup. I felt I was never pretty enough, never good enough in his eyes. He would cajole me into changing how I looked, because everything about me needed “improvement”. He would bring me to the optician so I could be prescribed contact lenses. He would say girls look better with long hair and psycho me to keep hair long. I remember a comment made by his best friend with whom sometimes we hang out together as a group of three. His best friend had told my ex-boyfriend if he doesn’t find me pretty, just breakup and find another new girlfriend that is prettier. The comment was very shocking to me because it made me feel like I was a commodity. Not happy, just change lah. There is no consideration for the bond in a relationship between two people, the feelings of the person who is the subject of the comment. If the old saying of one should be judged by the company he keeps, I should have seen that as another of the serious red flag earlier on in the relationship.
The change in my appearance was so drastic, one of my classmates commented after comparing class photos we took in Junior College year 1 and year 2 that I had the biggest change in looks among the whole class. What was unknown to them was that instead of feeling great about the change or feeling comfortable with how I looked after compared to before, I had on the inside, felt so small and miserable in contrast. And all these changes needed money. For example a good bra from an international renowned brand would set me back for about $50. And more often than now, I would need to buy a number of bras because I will need to change and wash and wait it to dry. I would have to save and pinch from my pocket money to pay for some of these, while he would use the money given to him by his godfather to spend on me. Instead of feeling deserving, I felt dirty because I don’t like to use other people’s money. To me this was all so wrong because money was a very limited resource in my eyes and shouldn’t be wasted on frivolous things. When the time came after I completed my GCE A levels, I went to find work. With the money I made, I paid for food when we go out sometimes, so that I could even out what he’d spent on him.
This is not to say change is bad. I have learnt change has to come from within. A person must be willing to seek change and embrace so that he or she can accept the change happily. A person must find the big why to move forward with change, so that the change is sustainable. Otherwise it could feel like a very hollow change, a change for the sake of changing but deep down it could make a person feel miserable and small. You could present change options to a person, but the person has to be willing to take ownership of the change before undergoing it.
Many couples breakup when the male gets enlisted into the army under Singapore’s compulsory two-years long national service. I had kept myself busy with studies in the final year of Junior College and busied myself with work while waiting for university admission. As my first ex-boyfriend had made it to the Officer Cadet School, he was allowed to disrupt after one year of national service to continue with his undergraduate study, on the condition he would serve the remaining one year upon graduation. Essentially, we went to University together despite being one year apart in age. However, life on the University campus was drastically different from what previous school experience was like. I broke up with my first boyfriend less than six months into University. Partly because he was in Science stream which is in a very different area of the campus, while I was too busy struggling in architecture school to be able to always afford the time to hang out with him. Being suddenly out and surrounded by new faces, he suddenly found himself with plenty of female company and faces around for him to discover one by one.
My limited time for him wasn’t enough to keep his attention. His radar would always be on the next pretty girl around him. Our telephone conversations took on a weird turn in the first six months of University. When he recounted what he did for the day, he would tell me of things such as how it was night time, he had sent his female classmate home but they ended up sitting at the bus stop and how they chatted on and on for three hours at the bus stop. While I was listening, thoughts raced through my mind. My gut feeling asked myself: Am I your girlfriend or is she your girlfriend instead? It almost felt like I was the buddy that he was sharing how he was chasing after this other girl instead.
By six months’ time after University started, I finally had enough and wanted out. I decided I should trust my gut feeling that this relationship is going the wrong way. The mental stress of maintaining this relationship had felt very one-sided and on the other hand I was having a very tough time with architecture school. I felt burn out and a need to prioritise what I want in life. I learned I shouldn’t waste myself on people that are no longer worth investing my time and energy in. I learned to focus on myself so that I could achieve what I want and what I need.
I told myself if I am in the same university and he is flirting around, I cannot imagine if I am not around him. My last contact with him was the most peculiar. Few months after the breakup, I suddenly received his sms for karaoke. It wasn’t addressed to me, or anyone in particular. I suspected he had send out an sms to a long list of people, to see if anyone would respond back. At that time it felt like our breakup didn’t affect him as much as it did for me. I felt depressed, I felt so emotionally hurt even though I was the one who initiated the breakup. While he seemed to have moved on in life. I changed my handphone number after that. This was the only time I changed my handphone number in my life because I wanted to end all contact with him. With that I cut communication with him and I moved on to slowly heal my wounds and carry on with refocusing on my life.
