Why I'm playing the long game in love

Hello beautiful, awesome peeps!

I’m 30 and with that comes a slew of societal and cultural notions of what it means to be a woman at 30.

While I’ve always identified as a bit more unconventional and free-spirited (my friends dub me the “Samantha Jones” of the friend group though I don’t think I am anywhere near as sexually liberated— yet!), as I’ve never really been bogged down by the idea that I must be somewhere at some place in life, a topic that has been at the forefront of my mind lately is: marriage.

Since pursuing this wild, absolutely fucking crazy journey of healing nearly 9 years ago, one of the main areas I’ve worked tirelessly in and made the utmost priority to heal is: love & relationships. The reason for that is because, with my first experience in love, the bar was in hell. Then, with my second, I feel like I was able to just get to ground zero. Also, there’s my parents’ love story.

After years of de-constructing and re-constructing so many of my beliefs and ideals about love & marriage, however dysfunctional or inherited or not they were, in therapy, with life coaches, with shamans… I do see myself seeking a more conventional path in terms of love. I want to get married and have a family! But as someone who has rushed her whole life— in her career, to the supermarket, whilst eating— this is one area I’m more than willing to take my time.

Here’s why I’m playing the long game in love.

Enjoy.
Amy Lee

Word count: 5,339
Pages: 8

 Glowin’ Reviews from Glowin’ Readers…

Gold, Not Yellow by Amy Lee

“No one truly alive can ever be pawned to a prison or a tomb.” —Rumi

I’m 30 years old. It’s a bright, breezy Friday afternoon. I am lying down, ready to be cracked, by my 52-year-old, married for 25, usually exceptionally chipper, spiritually enlightened, but not easily swayed, delightful chiropractor, with whom I have a special connection. We’ve somehow begun discussing the topic of love and marriages.

He tells me about his dad.
“How old is your dad?” I ask.
Crack. “83.”
“So he had you when he was in his… thirties? That’s pretty late for his generation!”
“Mm, 31. Yeah. I guess so, huh?”
“Because I feel like the older you are, the younger you got married. Like my mom was married and had a baby by the time she was 24!”
“Oh wow. Huh. That’s true, I could see that.”
“Now I feel like no one wants to get married. My generation is like we’re good.” I laugh.
“Yeah,” he pauses. “I guess everyone’s like: I want to …t-taste the world! Be with… e-everyone!” He laughs.
My laughter dies down. “Ehh I don’t think so. I think it’s more so attachment trauma.”
He gets curiously quiet, to listen in…
“Like my generation saw our parents’ generation be way too codependent and just get married for the sake of getting married. And we don’t wanna be like that. So as a result, now we’re all way too hyper-independent. So it’s just a… manifestation of trauma.”
He shrinks. I’ve triggered something.
“Like I used to never, ever want to get married! Because my parents’ marriage was so b—”
“Bad?”
“Yeah! It was like a real-life Eminem music video all the time!”
“So you don’t wanna get married?”
“No, I do now! After going to therapy and healing myself. It just has to be the ri—”
“Right person?” He warmly smiles. Crack.

“Yes and not only that…” I pause. “But… I’m waiting to meet the reason I never settled all my life!” I practically howl with a defiant pout. I look up to meet his eyes, hoping to hear his usual chipper confirmation like, “Yeah, you don’t want to settle.” Or “Totally. It’s best to wait for someone amazing.” Instead, he looks at me, lips frowning with the tiniest tremble. He looks like he’s going to cry. His wife is right outside in the lobby.

Oh no. 

Quickly I move along. “And yaknow, if that never happens, I’m also very okay with being alone! I enjoy my time a lot. Plus! That’ll ensure that I don’t date someone all dumpy, too! Or get married just because I’m all messed up…” 

“Yeah, you don’t want to be all messed up… It’s not good for the person you’re with…” He tries to recover quickly. He’s thinking a lot.

“Or myself! Plus this gives me more time to love myself.” I say with a finger pointing in the air.

“…Yeah…” He murmurs. He sounds like he’s going to cry again.

The great philosopher Hilary Duff once said, “You always dress in yellow / when you wanna dress in gold.” Okay, so she actually didn’t even write her own songs, but as a young Hilary Duff super fan, this line always stuck with me.

As a daughter of two Korean impoverished immigrants, I also always grew up hearing my mom, as she carefully hand-peeled some bae (Korean pear) with a paring knife, tell me how her greatest luxury now, living in America, was that she didn’t have to cut her napkins in half, she could use them whole, and that she could eat eggs any given day. She said this with a tinge of sadness and a whole ton of relief. She often told me the same story of how her family was so poor that their special birthday meal was one whole egg, and how, as children, they would foolishly add water, thinking this would make the egg more bountiful. Instead, it only watered down the egg. She told me of the days she’d walk to school and achingly smell the delicious aroma of milk bread being baked and how she dreamt of being able to eat it one day. She eats Korean milk bread every day now.

As a result, from a young age, I not only learned but inherited and was praised for how well I, too, could inflate my one birthday egg, so to speak. When I was in the 6th grade, in the height of y2k culture of low-rise jeans, Paris Hilton heroin chic, and velour Juicy Couture tracksuits, all I wanted was a pair of tan suede UGG boots— to pair with my denim Hollister mini skirt, from the sale rack, of course. So for Christmas, my mom got me the off-brand pair because we couldn’t afford them. They sure weren’t UGGs, but I loved them, I rocked the hell out of them. Until they were beaten and battered. The rubber soles shredding. When I wanted to learn how to play the flute? We rented a used one, and boy did I blow air into that used flute— for four years, to be exact.

As a younger sibling, with an older brother by six years, I also got all his hand-me-downs. When I wanted an iPod, I got my older brother’s used, scratched one. I never once complained, because the Golden Child doesn’t complain! She’s perfect, grateful, and never makes any mistakes! Realistically, I was only actually ever grateful. Because— hello! Did you hear? Mom didn’t even have eggs.

To this day, I do believe there is a skillful art of making lemonade out of lemons. For me, that was learning how to thrift in middle school. Despite my mother’s own wishes for me to not go to the local Goodwill, her ego felt it was shameful and would have rather bought me a Wal-Mart or Target version of what I wanted, my childhood best friend and I would spend hours at the local thrift stores in our town. I’ve always been drawn to vintage, in the same way I loved learning about history in school, but there was also an enticing element of seeing something in a catalogue of perhaps, Urban Outfitters for three times the price that we could never afford, that would make my best friend’s and my little pubescent eyes twinkle like: “Bet we could thrift that!” And we did, over and over again. Our teeny tiny 14-year-old weekly allowances thanked us for it, too.

Today, we live in a culture of finding great “dupes” (duplicates) or alternative items for a cheaper price and ideally the same, if not better, quality. I can’t scroll on TikTok without someone trying to say, “You guys, this is a total dupe for ______. You need to get it!” 

But as I spoke with my chiropractor on that Friday afternoon, I thought to myself: how often and how well are we conditioned to be settling for yellow, when what we really want is gold?

Hilary Duff continues to sing, “Instead of listening to your heart / you just do what you’re told.” And more importantly, how often do we settle in matters so much more important and meaningful than a pair of boots or an instrument, like… love?

“This will do.”
“This isn’t exact, but I can’t afford the other one.”
“This isn’t completely right, but it’s more convenient.”

My whole life, I’ve proverbially always worn yellow, instead of gold. Always opting for the cheaper one. More convenient one. More accessible one. And quite frankly, I’m tired of it. Because at a certain point, while it’s great that you’ve got the recipe for an awesome lemonade, what if, at a certain point, you want something completely different like an orange juice, a Coke, or an unsweetened iced tea?

When I used to be staunch on my beliefs about never getting married, people would often assume that it was because I didn’t see the value in it. That I saw it as stupid, meaningless, or total garbage. That could not have been more the opposite. I see and have always seen marriage as something so sacred and pure, the beautiful extra-ordinary merging of two beings of consciousness into further alignment, that when I witnessed how so many others viewed and regarded it, I became offended and enraged. Even as a young kid, I often felt that peoples’ decision to do it, just to do it, soiled the whole concept of it all.

With my mom, for example, I thought, “You did this just because you wanted his money?!” Ugh! And now it’s me that pays the greatest repercussions for your decisions, I sobbed.

Or with others, “You did this just because you didn’t know how to be alone?”
“You did this just because you were approaching 30?!”
“You did this just because you wanted to have sex?!”
“You did this just because you couldn’t handle heartbreak again?!”
“You did this just because you saw everyone else doing it?!”

HUH?! …Ugh! You guys are the ones who are not owning up to its sanctity! I fumed.

Though no matter how enraged I might have been at the absurdity, it never came without compassion and understanding. Let me be clear: I’m sure as hell not shaming anyone for their decisions. 

From birth, we’ve been fed romantic movies and books and story lines of: “You complete me” and tons of Valentine’s Day marketing “My other half.” “I was lost without you.” And you throw in religious beliefs and patriarchal notions into that mix— how could any of us known any better? Historically, the purpose of marriage was for economic liaisons and allowed the secure transfer of property within a family.

Beyond that, I know so many of us have had the best intentions to do it differently— better— than how we saw it growing up. 

And, yet the issue remains. For it’s so much deeper and far more complex than just our, however amazingly benevolent, intentions.

Relationships are like walking into a house of mirrors at your favorite amusement park. Everywhere you go, there you are. Some optical illusion, a distorted image of who you think you are, being reflected back at you. You walk in and there you are: head obtuse, body wide, nose distorted. It screams: “How could anyone ever love me?” You walk another few steps into another reflection, this time, skinnier and taller and more narrow than ever before, your body almost disappearing: “I’m not enough.” “I’m too much.” “I’m hard to love.” “Someone like that is totally out of my league.” “My husband’s still in love with her, but maybe if I please him hard enough, it’ll go away.”

In this way, relationships, or simply, how we relate to others, hold the power to be the ultimate growth catalysts. Where we feel intense, deep emotion, we find the path or sign posts to emotional healing: 

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