It started like this:
"On this day we will marry the one we laugh with, live for, dream with, and love"
And i believed so deeply in our marriage and love that i thought this is a new chapter in our lives that will mark eternal love and happiness. Yet, unbeknownst to me is that the t-shirt that my cousin worn to my wedding was actually an omen to our happiness -- "game over".
I miss 贝 terribly. Unlike him who can get used to not having me around and have fun returning to his bachelor life, i still miss him dearly everyday even though i've moved out for nearly 2 months already. With every waking hours doubting that he feels the same for me, i still feel miserable, but then i gotta tell myself to accept that things have changed and it is no longer the way it was or the way i hope it to be.
Actually things had changed ever since we got married, but i've probably ignored the telltale sign. I was reading one of my old post back in Dec'08 and noticed how our relationship had turned bad slowly. I was too engrossed with my work, or probably had too much trust in 贝 and too much confidence in our love and relationship, that it had never occurred to me then to pay close attention to it until it's too late.
Actually back then, i was crazily overloaded at work due to shortage of manpower in our department. Not only i needed to travel every month, i also gotta work at home until quite late sometimes. I would have stayed in the office to finish up my work, but then it may get very late, and i didn't want 贝 to wait for me in the office, as his workload was comparatively less heavy then. So i always gotta rush for time during office hours, to make sure i could complete as much as possible without staying late and to minimise the work that i needed to bring back home.
This had somewhat resulted in me "taking him for granted", so as many people said.
I think one of the contributing breaking points for us was also 贝's birthday last year. I had wanted to get 贝 what he wanted (an expensive watch), but i did not have the budget then. And even if i did, i would want him to choose the watch himself, because for something that expensive, it'd be better that it was something he really liked rather than i chose something that was not to his liking. I did ask him to pick his gift repeatedly but he refused.
Then i was really at a lost as to what to get him. I was also super busy at that time, just returning from Korea and planning for the next business trip to Australia. I didn't find time to look for birthday gift, and also didn't know what to get him (i can't possibly give him a soft toy), so the only thing that i think would sure be useful for him was sports shirts.
So on one of the weekends, i took the chance of meeting up with friends to go to JB to look for sports shirts. I spent quite a few hours looking, but JB wasn't really a good place to shop. In the end, i picked the best design that i could find in the shop as his gift.
Then the result was not what i had expected. When 贝 opened up the gift, the look of disappointment and unhappiness on his face was something that i remember even till this day. To him, i had no sincerity at all in getting him anything. He felt that i just conveniently went to buy a few t-shirts and skimped through the occasion. He said to me that if i were to simply buy anything for him, then might as well i don't get him anything. Then for the rest of the day, he was in a bad mood due to this.
I was hurt then, for i felt that he only looked at the physical thing itself instead of the thoughts i had for him, whereby i still got him something despite how busy i was. I expected him to understand how tied up i was by work, and how difficult it was to get him anything he liked, and then to see beyond the material thing and appreciate the thought. Sadly, he didn't, and worse, this was one of the triggering points of his dissatisfaction as well.
Ironically, a few weeks earlier, i was harping on the point that he didn't show his sincerity in salvaging the marriage that he destroyed. He said his mind was troubled and his work was super busy due to a major project. In fact, he works till very late almost everyday. So really, i should understand that he has more "important" things to do than to divert his attention to our broken marriage. And seriously, the sensible me does understand it fully, of course the non-sensible me is a different story.
Well, that goes back to my point about how unfair it was to be a woman. My heavy workload and stress from work were not a justification for not spending more time and effort in getting him a decent birthday gift on the important day of his birthday, and yet his heavy workload now is a good justification for him not spending more time and effort in showing his love and sincerity to salvage the important thing in life called marriage. You see, it's similar situations but the treatment and expectation for different genders are simply not the same.
Sigh, it is really not easy being a woman.
