In Singapore, 7,614 marriages ended in a divorce or an annulment last year, up by 1.2% from 2015.
I can’t really comment on why people get divorced. People have their reasons and I guess some marriages are simply too broken to fix.
But I do have some tips for young men contemplating marriage.
First, remember, marriage is a choice. You don’t get married because society demands it, you want free sex for life, or you find your girlfriend cute.
You shouldn’t let what others think to determine the way you live your life, sex is over-rated, and all women eventually become old, bloated and fat and will irritate the hell out of you.
Cute is nice when she is a young virginal lass, but cute at 50 would make her look like some alien from a bad sci-fi movie.
Nina Wang, from cute to puke.
See what I mean?
Next, ask some of these questions:
- Does she respect your parents and family members? Does she make an effort to interact with them? If at courting stage, she acts coy and would rather sit in the darkest corner of your house with a book, or stares at her phone doing Facebook, (ie when she visits), or hides in your bedroom, you will get an idea of how she will be like if she gets married into the family.
- Have you seen her mum? If not, take a look at her mum. Trust me, she will look like her mum one day. Can you live with that?
- Is her love unconditional love or does her love hinges on certain conditions? In the last year or so, my opinions of Christians have sunk to an all-time low; still, it is useful to turn to the Bible and read 1 Corinthians 13; you can find a definition of love there that I can accept.
I have additional questions under this 3rd point.
Love is what marriage is really about, after all.
Will she be by your side for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health? Really? In other words, is she the type who will stand by her man? If you should be inflicted with illness, will she tend to you or would she be sitting in front of the TV all night, glued to Korean soap opera, seemingly oblivious to your suffering? If you need cash for medicine, does she help out or tell you to “go figure it out yourself”? If she is brilliant enough to have a second income, would she let you have her second stream of income if you are jobless, or does she talk about saving it for her retirement? Yes, her own fucking retirement. She claims you are the love of her life but she’s saving her additional income for her retirement! If your business has collapsed, would she mortgage her properties (if she has any) to help you out? If you are hungry in the middle of the night, would she rise to quickly provide a solution or does she ask you to “drink water lah.” And in general, does she behave like a help-meet (a term from Genesis, yes that’s a book in the Bible, the very first, in fact) or a damsel in perpetual state of distress or a dominating mother? (I wrote the above based on what I hear people I know saying about what their spouses have said to them.)
Let me also say that since love ought to be absolute, you yourself must in no way be found derelict in your care and affection for the woman whom you have chosen to be your life partner. I am old-fashioned in that I think marriage is forever; you don’t get into it thinking there’s always a way out. It’s not like hiring a maid or to use a politically-correct term, a “foreign domestic worker” supplied by an employment agency (polite term for “body shop”), someone you can simply replace if things don’t work out.
More questions for you: Will you abandon her if she gets a disease that incapacitates or disfigures her? Will you still be proud of her? If she gets conned by some hucksters and lose everything, will you help bail her out financially even if it means having to sell your golf clubs, your golf club membership, your BMW, your second property, your holiday home, your left kidney?
Tough questions huh? I’ve been married for 35 years and am still married, and feel I am qualified to advise young men contemplating marriage to ask themselves these questions.
And I’m glad to say that though my dear wife is already 59, I don’t have to wake up every morning to a monster like Yayoi Kusama:
What a scream!