by Metamorphoenix

“What is Love?” – a friend blogged recently.

He was referring of course to romantic love; the love between a man and a woman (well, and other potential gender permutations too).

I wrote back to him and shared my perceptions of what I thought Love was, but even as I wrote I realised that I couldn’t define it either. Then it dawned on me that love is really such a personal and individual phenomenon. I call it a phenomenon because it changes you and allows you to make a difference in someone else’s life.

20 years ago, I thought I would KNOW Love when I found it. It would be romantic, exciting and everlasting. I had one schoolgirl crush (all I will say is … poor chap) and had a couple of guys interested in making me their ‘girl’. But at 21, I found someone I crushed on and grew to love. After 8 years of courtship and 12 years of marriage, that love has become – on my part at least – wariness and fear.

Was it really Love? What changed? What then, is Love? How will we know it will last?

Falling in love is easy; staying in love is the hard part. Once the romance fades, reality sets in with the day to day discovery of each other’s foibles and idiosyncrasies, the way we handle situations, the values we each have and the little niggling habits that once charmed. How do we get past that to a deeper sustaining love?

It doesn’t matter what love you have for each other, but the key thing is that you manage the couple dynamics and TALK through it all. Communications is key, and I believe in that with total conviction.

So back to that million dollar question – what IS Love?

A large category of my reading literature is romance, always has and always will be. But in real life, Love doesn’t come in the form of tall, dark and handsome, love at first sight, or even Like.

Sure, there needs to be some physical attraction. But a large part of Love is about finding someone who completes you across all levels. In my observations of friends and other couples around me, the strength of that Love is based on having your partner be your best friend too. How many of us can actually claim that in our relationships / marriages?

So what do we share with our best friends that can be brought into our relationships?   In a nutshell I can identify communication, honesty, acceptance and companionship. Can we honestly say we have that with our significant others? If we have this, then the Love that we share can only become richer.

In our parents’ generation, there have been many instances where the woman puts her needs and her wants second to her man’s. But this was also the generation that thought a woman’s place was in the home, and if the man was the chief breadwinner, he was the Man of the House and was awarded due respect for that. A return of that courtesy to the woman wasn’t considered necessary or pertinent. It wasn’t the woman’s ‘place’ to know more than what he intended to let her in on.

If today’s divorce statistics are anything to go by, we are the generation that has challenged many relationship norms. We find that Love alone won’t sustain us, but it does beg the question of how far we will go for our partners. What is the breaking point for each of us? Maybe for some of us, there is NO breaking point but we ‘tolerate’ any situation because it’s expected of us.

But whatever the choice we make, Love is the backbone of the relationship equation. Different people are contented with what they perceive as acceptable levels of Love. As long as both parties are happy with what they’ve got, then they’ve got a good thing going.

Love can be comfortable, passionate, all-consuming, intense, bubbly, cute, quiet, non-complaining, argumentative, conceding, demanding … really too many types to identify. But it has to be something that we are happy or at least contented with it.

Love meets our needs – our need to share, to provide, to spend time together, to go home to, to think of, to be confident in, to listen, to talk to, to do something for, to receive – so many things. Sometimes that love comes easy, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way we all have to work at it and maybe even fight for it.

Someone said Love is unselfish, but I beg to differ because it is a little selfish in that we love how it makes us feel good and completes us. The unselfish part is in putting ourselves second, in being patient, in letting go if need be and in being there when needed.

However, Love is not irrational, it should not harm, it should not resent, it gives before demanding. Maybe this perception of Love has been shaped by the bible lessons I grew up on but in seeking perfect Love, I forgot that it can come in so many colours and forms. And that it is something we can never take for granted.

Above all, we build on the Love we have and make it work.

Metamorphoenix is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister searching for a happy life. It’s sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but always from the heart.

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By Metamorphoenix

I fell in love at first sight. Well, maybe at first conversation.

At our first meeting, I saved him from a bout of salmonella poisoning when I saw him putting cooked food on a plate intended for raw meats at a conference barbeque buffet. We laughed about his faux pas, but we chatted later about this being his first trip to Singapore. Sparks flew and the rest, as they say, is history.

I didn’t plan on falling in love again quite so fast. In fact, when questioning whether I should initiate my divorce, my biggest worry was whether I could find anyone else to love me. But when I realised this fear would dog me in an already unhappy situation, I moved forward into a lonely unknown.

With the turmoil of the divorce as well as my father’s illness and death (all in the space of 5 months), I decided not to worry about finding love and concentrated on working towards a happier life for myself. One month later, I threw myself into helping a friend out at a conference, and on the final night at an appreciation dinner for the exhibitors, found my heart trembling at the edge of a precipice.

He said he had seen me at the conference and was immediately attracted. Then when I saved him at the buffet table, he was hooked. I believe my response to that was, “Eh?” Months down the road, I’m only starting to believe that I am beautiful, but I still qualify it with “in his eyes.”

Faced with a divorce that had taken a violent and verbally abusive turn, the first thing that caught my attention was his kind and gentle eyes. His slow Southern drawl was fascinating and on our first date the next night, we shared about our lives, and what we were looking for in future partners. There was just something in each other that we found so … right.

Why did I feel so much so fast for this man? Yes, the physical attraction was there, but it was tied in with the emotional connection we had managed to establish. It felt like we were each the answer to the other’s needs, and there was a level of comfort there that superseded the heebie-jeebies of first dates and dating in general. A good way to sum it up would be we looked at each other and thought, “There you are.”

A large chunk of our earlier dynamics was of us sharing about our day and our thoughts – a level of comfortable communication sorely lacking from both our previous marriages. When he highlighted the things about me that attracted him, I drove him mad every time I gave him dubious side glances tinged with ‘are-you-crazy?’ intimations. He pooh-poohed my perceptions of his open and beautiful spirit. We highlight the good in each other, so that we can see ourselves more clearly.

Often a relationship suffers from us trying hard to be what the other person wants. How refreshing it is to find that we already are what the other needs, and that we are discovering so much about ourselves we have forgotten or suppressed. It helps that we are at the same stage in our lives, looking for the same thing in our partners and relationships.

He returned to the US three days later, and we kept in touch. The separation felt odd, because we didn’t know what we had and if it was going anywhere. Then he announced that the Singapore office needed him back here three weeks later, and we knew that this would help us determine if we had a relationship.

The ten days during his second trip was an amazing time and we both made a commitment to work on a long-distance relationship with an emphasis on finding the opportunities to be in the same geographical location. This second parting was painful but filled with hope.

It’s been 8 months since we were together, with several of his scheduled business trips here called off. It’s been hard for me to schedule anything to the US because of possible clashes with his other trips within the US. Then there were the ups and downs in maintaining the long-distance relationship, but I’ll talk more about that another day. The wonders of Skype, SMS and video conferencing have helped us lead the first flush of romance into a deeper realm of sharing lives.

I’m usually a practical person, with a believe-in-love-at-first-sight-but-it’ll-never-happen-to-me practicality grounded on a poor self-image. But just when I thought I wasn’t looking for love …. Love found me.

Metamorphoenix is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister who’s in search of a happy life. It’s sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but she writes always from the heart.  To find out more about Meta, click the ‘about’ tab.

by Metamorphoenix

There’s a special bond between fathers and daughters, one that we can’t even begin to fathom.

In a daughter’s eyes, a dad is invincible, infallible and the foundation of the family. He is the breadwinner (well yeah, mum is too, but dad generally earns more), and is usually the more stoic and less emotional. Traditionally, dads aren’t especially demonstrative of their love, but that love is something we always know is there.

My dad became a single dad in 1976 when my mum succumbed to cancer. Faced with raising four daughters ranged in age from 10 (me) to 18, he was suddenly faced with the monumental task of being both mother and father to us.

A staunch Christian, he was a quiet man who taught us to live by the tenets of the bible, very seldom criticised, but could with a stern tone fill me with remorse for disappointing him. Being the youngest, I had the opportunity to spend the most time with him before I got married.

Dad handled 4 daughters who wore bikinis, brought home foreign and local boyfriends, went out till late, became teachers or entered Public Relations (2 daughters per profession, I kid you not), got married, had kids, got divorced – through it all, he always advised and led by example. As he once told us, “I can only teach you right from wrong; the rest is your journey.”

When one sister introduced him to the Englishman she’d been quietly dating and asked for his permission to marry a week later, dad was calm. As he told an aunt over the phone later that night, “You have to let them make their own choices.”

He was a cool dad, way ahead of his time. But like any other father he worried. And that worry would pop out at the most unexpected times. A couple of years after that sis got married, he suddenly leaned over while we were both watching TV and declared, “Don’t ever do what your sister did, give me some warning.” I goggled as he returned to watching Mr Bean.

He agreed to sponsor a dinner & dance dress when I was in the uni, so I shopped around and when I had identified one, brought him to the fitting. It was high necked and black velvet, but when I turned to show him the rather non-existent back, he wryly remarked, “So where’s the rest of it?” and then paid for it.

One Christmas, I brought an Indian Catholic Malaysian male hostel-mate to a family gathering. A couple of years later, he dropped another classic statement out of the blue. “You know, you had me worried over that Indian boy.” Then he puttered off to the kitchen while I recovered.

Dad continued to lead by example to the third generation, mentoring his grandchildren and encouraging their passions wherever he could. He still threw out pithy one liners when he was concerned about the iffy choices we all made, a man of few words, but whom we always knew loved us and cared in his quiet way.

We once asked him why he never remarried. He smiled gently and said no one could take mum’s place, and then cheekily added that 4 women in his life were more than enough. My eldest sis has one clear childhood memory, of sneaking downstairs late at night and watching as mum and dad waltzed around the living room.

Last year, two  months after he was diagnosed with liver cancer, we all gathered around his bed at home as he gasped his final breaths. And when my sister whispered in his ear that he could let go, that we were all going to be alright, he took his final breath. Till the end, he embraced the fact that he was going home to the Lord and that he would finally be reunited with mum.

My sisters and I miss him terribly, but one scene keeps us all going. Mum’s waiting for him with arms akimbo, gently berating, “What took you so long?” and then they waltz through heaven’s gates.

Metamorphoenix is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister who’s in search of a happy life. It’s sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but she writes always from the heart.  To find out more about Meta, click the ‘about’ tab.

By Metamorphoenix

There is only one word that comes to mind when re-entering the dating arena after more than 20 years – dread. Sure, its travelling companions are fear, insecurity, apprehension and nerves, but underlying it all is the dread that the search for new relationships will be lots of smoke and no fire.

The dread hits you like an allergy after you whip out rusty dating conversation skills and dust them off for a go. Nausea swamps as you try to draw up a description of yourself that would seem palatable, attractive and not too desperate.

And then there’s the question, how do we tackle the dating monster at this stage in our lives? A friend came back from a speed dating evening traumatised and ranting. “Aiyoh! We never had anything like this back in my dating days! How much can we really find out about someone in 3 minutes? How do I encapsulate who I am in a 30 second description and yet sound interesting without sounding shallow? How desperate are we that we have to resort to this to meet men?”

Honestly, I wondered as well, how I would describe myself in 30 seconds or less. “Hi! I’m a newly divorced freelance copy-writer and I don’t have an adventurous bone in my body. I love movies and temperate climates. Oh, and I’m never losing any weight, so what you see is what you get.” Yikes.

When we hit the post-35 years, we would have already accumulated a steady circle of friends – gal pals, married couples, guys we wouldn’t date, and acquaintances aplenty. These are people who fit into our lives like ratty comfortable T-shirts. So how DO we go about meeting new guys and getting started on our dating cycle again?

Friends are a great source of hook-ups and will make it a personal mission to pair up all their single pals. Since they can provide reliable character references (or one should hope so), this would be a relatively safe and viable route to possible dating success. The worse thing that could happen is if you don’t like the guy quite as much as he likes you, and then you would have to put up with sad puppy dog eyes from your friends as they lament “…but why? You’d make a great couple!”

Then there is the speed dating route where you have to make quick first impressions to set up fingernail-biting first dates. There could be a multitude of first dates that follow, where you would end up running through the tell-me-all-about-yourself routine countless times. Even worse, nobody wants to even follow-up with a date, and you sink even deeper into the quagmire of despair.

But the biggest minefield out there would have to be online dating sites. Who weeds out the sleaze-buckets from the nice guys? Some barf-worthy slime balls enthuse about your ‘beautiful eyes’ and their ‘instant connections’ on their first chat with you. What do you take us for, guys? Then you discover that their profiles (word-for-word) have been posted within the same site but under different names. The deal breaker comes when they ask you for money so that they can fly over for a visit.  Riiiiiiight …… Losers.

I think the issues we face during later-in-life dating come from within. We have survived difficult periods in our lives, have become more self-assured, and have made something of ourselves. Sometimes that can be a difficult thing to share with someone else. We are more set in our ways, less likely to give in or pander to male egos. We want to be accepted for who we are. On the brighter side of that same coin, we are more confident and it shows. We know what we like, and have so many more facets than a woman in her 20s. We are womanly, have so much more to talk about, are articulate, and can bring so much more depth to a relationship – we know what pleases a man and what pleases us. With many innovative beauty products and services at one’s fingertips, women tend to look younger and lead more active lives. TV shows like Cougar Town also raise the profile and social acceptance of relationships with significantly younger men.

If we can embrace these beautiful aspects of ourselves and live life to its fullest, the possibility of finding a new life partner becomes less an anxiety and more a blessing to already resonant lives. The search for love, in whatever form it takes, is then only a means to fulfilling a need for partnership, and could at least expand our social networks beyond mere comfort zones.

So take a deep breath, embrace your Self, be happy in the moment and face the next date with a smile. Be comforted by the knowledge that you will know when you have found the right man – one who appreciates you for who you are, and who can only make your life richer for having known him.

Metamorphoenix is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister in search of a happy life. It’s sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but always from the heart.

By Metamorphoenix

Every Mother’s Day for the past 34 years has been a non-event for me and my sisters, ever since we lost mum to cancer back in 1976.

My most enduring memories are of her making fresh soya bean milk by hand (boiled and strained through a muslin cloth), of her sternly supervising me doing my homework tearfully (I was a dreamer at the worst of times, ie when it was time to study), of her discovery that a chicken with its head chopped off will still run around frantically, of her gentle smile and generous spirit.

She passed away on my 10^th birthday after a year of chemo and operations, and since then birthday celebrations have always been bittersweet. Mum was a disciplinarian, a do-it-all working mum (she was an Art teacher in a secondary school) and a great artist to boot.

I remember many Christmases where mum and dad (also an art teacher) would set up a little sweat shop at our back yard where they would orchestrate a production line of little workers (my 3 older sisters and me) in creating presents for friends and family. Most of the time, we made copper tooling artwork – mum would be cutting out the copper sheets, someone would trace out the design, the rest of us would use various tools to push out the designs, mum and dad would burnish the recesses so the designs stood out, and dad would create frames for them.

There’s lots I don’t remember – kids aren’t generally known for seeing beyond their own needs and wants – so I loved hearing about her from my sisters (who were teens when she passed) and from my aunts.

From them, I found out that after my mum started working, she – as the oldest of six children – made and sold kueh kueh after work to help out the family finances. She also stepped in with food and visits to infirm or elderly relatives whenever she could. Those who weren’t related by blood were often treated as honorary kin.

I think each of her daughters came away with a little piece of her: we’ve all inherited her artistic bent in one form or the other; my eldest sis is a great organiser; my second sis is fantastic in running an efficient and happy home for her family; and my third sis is so creative in her PR work.

Me? I think I came away with her ‘always-think-of-others’ outlook and her non-confrontational style. I guess this came about when, as the youngest, I used to follow her on her visitations. However, as a chubby child, I tended to get my cheeks pinched before being plied with cookies and F&N Orange. But I guess between the chewing and gulping, I must have absorbed a lot of mum’s good intentions and way of thinking.

Her influences continued even after her passing. Because she taught at Tanjong Katong Girls’ School, dad managed to secure me a transfer there after particularly dismal PSLE results and horror of horrors, a posting to the now defunct Tun Sri Lanang Secondary School. I shudder to think where I’d be today if I hadn’t been able to get into TKGS.

I believe some of my habits these days were influenced by my short time with her. She was part of the generation of women who believed that good grooming was essential. Her hair was always ‘set’ at the hairdressers every other day, and I toddled along for her sessions under the noisy ‘space helmet’ at the salon. To this day, I love going to the hairdressers for a wash and blow-dry, colour, perm or rebonding (and of course, nothing to do with the great neck and back massages at Salon 916).

Mum was always impeccably dressed in matching colours, smart suits, pretty dresses and nice accessories. My friends often wonder why I tend to match my watch, earrings, necklaces and shoes to my clothes. Well, wonder no more.

I discovered she was a well-respected teacher when the hearse bearing her coffin passed the school, to find sobbing students and teachers flanking the entire street. Also, I never knew it then, but my cousins speak of the times when “tua ee” would listen to their problems and guide them like a surrogate mum.

She was a beautiful spirit who died too young. Even after three decades, I’m sure there’s lots I still don’t know and may never find out about her, because talking about her still brings me and my sisters to tears – so great was the hole she left in our lives. So every Mother’s day, we deliberately ignored its significance and concentrated on only celebrating Father’s Day instead.

Since my sisters became mothers in their own right, we celebrated their roles and sacrifices. But this year I look forward to celebrating the presence of mum in all of us, because she lives on through our lives and in everything that we do.

before no 4 came along...

Happy Mother’s Day everyone.

Metamorphoenix is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister in search of a happy life. Her journey is sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but always from the heart.

She is a regular contributor to the groovini.  You can find more of her stories under the ‘Metamorphoenix’ tab at the top of the page.

by Metamorphoenix

I made a personally controversial decision at the end of 2009 – to make 2010 the Year of Me. Have you ever wished that you could just travel wherever and do whatever you wanted? What a wonderful thing that would be! Then you’d think about the disapproving looks and tsk-ing sounds your family and friends make as you try to explain your self-indulgence, sigh, and go back to being responsible.

As friends and family would attest, I am a woman of ‘shoulds’.  You know, like: Bosses should treat their staff with respect. Parents should discipline their children better. People shouldn’t impose their opinions on others. I should always turn the other cheek. Yadda yadda. So rather than continue with my should’ve-could’ve-would’ve life, I segued into a rather controversial decision of dedicating a year (or thereabouts) to myself.

The Year of Me would entail me doing whatever I was comfortable with, no matter how out-of-the-norm it was or how aimless it seemed to others. I’d left my job in a private education institute last May, and was caught up in 7 months of divorce hoo-ha, my dad’s illness, his subsequent death and general aimlessness. Decided to not look for another full-time job and explore the other aspects of my personal development.

So here I am, doing freelance copy-writing and business support services, getting groceries, heading into the gym (or trying to, damn the morning snuggle-under-the-covers syndrome), taking a few trips and toying with the idea of writing a book. But it’s a thin line between pursuing what you want and degenerating into a couch potato. Sure, it takes lots of discipline to go out and look for clients, and to sit down to get that book started. There are only so many grocery runs to do, and the holidays are starting to lose their allure.

But I realised that I haven’t been this close to my family in years, and (although some friends are getting a little sick of seeing me) I have expanded my circle of friends. I’ve never been too good with multi-tasking – when one project occupies my time, I always find I neglect the people in my life. Me Time has lots to do with self-indulgence, and therein lies the guilt.

But if you are a more disciplined person than I am, it can be a time to pursue one’s passions and recuperate your energies before you embark on your journey again. It can be for a day, a week or a month. You could finish that book, go for a facial, take up yoga or learn to bake.   Sure, I’ll probably head back out into the rat race soon but till then, I will treasure the time I have to myself and to do the things I want, not just the things I should.

Note to self – get off the couch!

Metamorphoenix is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister in search of a happy life. Her journey is sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but always from the heart.

She is a regular contributor to the groovini.  You can find more of her stories under the ‘Metamorphoenix’ tab at the top of the page.