i never do believe in holding back my love.

well, maybe i'm lying. i used to do that after my last breakup. coz i thought i never want to be hurt again. i put on a strong front, told myself i'm a strong girl, convinced everyone else around me that i'm strong, and talked a great deal about how unreliable the whole concept of love, boys, and marriage could be.

to put it in simple words, i never thought i could love again.

if you know me long and well enough, perhaps you'll realise by now how easily i fall. no, not fall down, fall for somebody i meant. it often takes a mere spark of chemistry and huge doses of niceness, and in i fit myself nicely into the trap. no denying here how dangerous that gets.

in a way, after the last break, i never wanted to fall in love again. and in a way, i still fall in and out of a few crushes now and then. but there was the note of caution to self not to give too much and get hurt again. i never wanted to commit to anything either.

well, at least until he walked into my life.

it wasn't always smooth-sailing and right away of coz. but it was comfortable being with him, and if there was anyone who could regain my confidence in love and marriage, it was him. coz barely a month into the relationship, i was ready to get married.

you may gape at my impulsiveness. but i am one who pretty much go with my feelings. and scary as it may sound, i've never gotten into a relationship that i don't want to turn into a marriage. ok, except one, which i convinced myself that it probably wouldn't be that bad. which explains why it ended in 18 days. hah.

they tell me that i'm too young to be thinking about marriage. and they say to always make sure your partner is the one treating you better than you are treating him. and one of the ways is supposedly to tell him you're not marrying him for certain unless he remains nice, good and all to you.

i don't think there's anything particularly wrong with thinking that way. but it just doesn't work for me.

to me, if i'm in a relationship with someone whom i don't intend to get married to, i'd simply be wasting my time and youth away. so if you don't want to marry your partner, why do you treat him extra nice, save him the biggest portion of your heart, and let him treat you extra nice in return? companionship? i could be a normal friend, and still keep you company what. why must you get yourself a partner then?

although i've been hurt enough before to realise that it's really unhealthy to put everything i have into a relationship without any reservations, i guess it's just the way i function. if you're my friend for long enough, you'll probably realise that if you treat me nice enough, i generally treat you quite nice too. (if you have issues about me being not nice enough to you, you can probably tell me, but i'll probably tell you too i don't think you're treating me nice enough, or i probably don't treat you as that close a friend as you think.) and if you're my love, and you're treating me nice, all the more i'll reciprocate without any qualms. unfortunately, i can't make myself un-nice if the person is being nice to me. it's either all or nothing for me. and unfortunately too, if the relationship goes on long enough, and my love starts being un-nice to me, i'll still be nice. fortunately, i got out of such an abusive relationship 2 years ago.

and how do you think it will be like if both you and your partner think that the other party should be the one being nicer to the self? you can sing on and on about how the other party should always be the once nicer to you than you are nice to him. but what if he tells you one day that he expects the same out of you too? how would you feel then? would you be happy to hear that? so why expect something out of somebody which you can't gurantee doing yourself?

and if you think my boyfriend is too nice for me to be typing all this crap here, every couple do have their issues. no couple will be woeless just by being nice to each other. needless to say, we have our fair share of unhappiness now and then. it's about how you work things out together when things are not working out for you. which i don't deny, i still have much to learn about how to go about doing this.

i know it's hard to put up with an un-nice partner whom you really love. and i know how it's even harder to initiate a break with the one you love so much. i was fortunate he did something unforgivable first, so that i can slap myself in the face after getting dumped, and never turn back again. but not everyone gets a chance. i personally regret not getting out of an abusive relationship sooner. don't make yourself regret in future too. you think you can't do without him, that's because you haven't given yourself a chance. everyone deserves a chance to be happy; not the occassional type of happy when he's sweet to you once in a thousand years. i'm talking about the kind of long-lasting happiness, which if you can no longer picture the both of you together in 10 years down the road, it's time you do something about it, or leave it.

on the flip side, neither do i believe in not marrying your partner unless he implicitly stays nice to you. true, if you're not happy in your relationship, and he's not treating you well before marriage, chances are 99.9999999999999% that you'll not be happy after marriage, and 100% that he's never gonna treat you well after marriage. but again, what promises or happiness can you secure by telling him that you won't marry him unless he stays nice to you? afraid that he'll change in the future? what makes you think he's not going to change once you are married? true, he can stay nice to you, and you can happily get married. but is that going to say anything about how he'll treat you after getting married?

i'm not saying by outwardly declaring that i'm getting married in 4 years time will gurantee a happy marriage. (though, yes, i'm quite sure of that actually.) but at least i won't be sending the wrong signal to a guy who's really nice to me now, and whom i love the most, that whether i love or marry him eventually will be dependent on how hard he has to work to continually please me. to me, and i know to both of us, love is not about how hard he tries to be good and make me happy now (i.e. before marriage); it's about how we work things out together and still continually shape our love to be perfect together, with each different phase we enter. some may say the real challenge is during NS, and some may say it's when one is in uni and the other is not, and some say it's when you both enter workforce. real enough, they are all challenging phases. but does that mean once you pass that phase, you no longer have to work to maintain a happy relationship anymore? what about the merging of your two families after you get married? what about when a child or more comes along? what about growing old and falling sick together? are these all not issues important for you to take into consideration too? so now you have even more issues to worry about, so when then can you get married?

no, you can't try to calculate everything nicely into the picture when you're in love. to me, it's today that's important. and if i'm going to keep holding back my love, just to make sure somebody will be nice to me for the rest for my life, i don't think the somebody is my mr right. coz mr right will never have to make me do that in exchange for his niceness and love for me.

so much so for the girl who wanted to get married before 24 when she was 14, and no longer wanted to get married when she was 19, and is now confirming getting married by 25.

it's ok if you can't appreciate my way of love. i've found my somebody else who does, and his affirmation is all i really care 'bout. =)