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This story is about how a woman in Kuala Lumpur finally found a husband after 1 year of not dating anyone.
In the era of “hook-up” culture, I found that being celibate and not being intimate helped me find a partner I could marry.
I’m a typical Malaysian-Chinese girl. I am in my mid 30s, work a 9-5, and after 12 months of being celibate, I’m happily married. My husband provides sufficiently, treats me with a lot of respect and care and we have great intimacy and a fulfilling sex-life. However, for a long time, I didn’t think I could find someone that I would want to get married to, although I dreamt of having a life-long partner.
Dating was so tiring in my 20’s
Like many single women in the city, I often found myself at the losing end of the dating scene. Everyone wanted something casual, and it seemed like no one wanted a serious relationship. I would consider myself decently attractive, so swiping and getting matches was easy enough, but beyond that it was a painful process.
I’m what most parents would call a typical liberal KL girl. I’m not very conservative in my mindset and I never took being intimate to mean too much. For me, it was always just a bodily desire and I enjoyed exploring my sexuality in my early adulthood.
In the beginning stages of dating, men were nice enough to me. We would go on a date, get to know each other a little, and sometimes I would end up bringing them home. However a few months in, or even a few dates in, I would notice how there was a trait that I couldn’t get past. If I could sum it up in one word, the biggest problem was: commitment.
Why are men so afraid of Commitment?
I could never understand. Whenever I approached the topic of “What Are We?”, why men were so adamant on just “hanging out” and “hooking up”?
The responses were always the same: “Let’s just see where this goes”, “I’m not in the right place for a relationship right now”, or “I really like what we have right now”. What confused me was that we acted like we were in a relationship. We would have meals together, spend weekends exploring new activities, or even have a weekend getaway outside the city.
In my last relationship, we were seeing each other for 6 months, as “friends with benefits” before I finally caved and asked “Where do you see this relationship going?” His response shocked me. He laughed and said that we were just good friends that had good sex, and that there was no relationship for it to go anywhere.
Hearing that was a wake-up call. I felt like a complete idiot. He was someone that I deeply cared for, and had spent a lot of time and money on – going on trips and expensive gifts. I had even gifted him a pair of shoes costing over RM1000 for his birthday. The moment he said that, I felt like my whole perspective had changed in a split second.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
That day I realised something that I was lacking severely. I was not showing myself any respect by being with a guy like him. Not only was he insensitive and disrespectful, the worst part was, he couldn’t see anything wrong with his response.
I was disgusted at myself that I had let someone like that have access to my body. I was sick and tired of men, and I vowed to myself I would never let anyone like that touch me or have access to me.
I spent the next year just learning to fall in love with myself. I had completely sworn off dating, or being physical with anyone. Instead, I spent my time going to the gym more often. I picked up pottery as a hobby and committed to spending more time with my friends.
I was slowly learning to love myself. Although there were many moments I felt lonely, I reminded myself of that distasteful event, and remained committed.
How I met my husband
It must be that the universe aligned for me to meet my now-husband, because there’s no other way to explain it. We met at a weekend pottery workshop, and were assigned to sit next to each other. The workshop had you partnered up with another attendee, and we had to share a pottery wheel. We got to talking and realised we both had a few common interests, one of it being coffee.
We both love hand-poured specialty coffee, and it so happened that there was a cafe that had just opened up on the same row as the pottery workshop. My future husband, then a stranger, invited me to join him and some friends that were going to check out this cafe right after the workshop. Since I was in my adventurous phase, a coffee with a bunch of strangers was not the craziest idea.
That night, he messaged me and asked me out on a date. He said he wanted to get to know me better and wanted to plan a date. I was surprised. I don’t think I’ve had a guy actually say those words to me. I agreed, promising myself to keep my new-found values close to me. We kept seeing each other, although we never did anything physical, and we got closer. I felt that, emotionally we were on the same wavelength.
We only took things physical after 2 months of dating, which for me was an unusually long time. I told him on the fourth date that I wanted to take things slow. I have to admit, we both worked hard on being better at communicating our needs, and I shared my experience with men in the past where I felt I wasn’t respected.
He said that he wasn’t used to taking things this slow either, but he assured me that he didn’t mind as he really enjoyed our dates and spending time together. Many times, I felt insecure that he would not want to see me any more as I was so “high-maintenance” and didn’t sleep with him.
But to his credit, he always put in extra efforts to plan dates that revolved around something adventurous and outdoors. The insecure part of my brain was telling me he would find someone better than me, but I worked hard to stay true to myself.
Married life is great
Two years after we started dating, we began to have a lot of hard conversations about how we see our future, our financial plans, and how we envisioned starting a family. When we knew we were aligned on all of these harder topics, we decided to get married. He proposed to me by placing the ring in a clay jewellery box that he made, wrapped in some ribbons. Simple, but it definitely pulled all my heart strings.
We got married less than a year later in a small ceremony. There were no fancy public proposals or lavish 100-pax wedding ceremonies. Just had a few select family members and some close friends, and it was beautiful.
Now, married life is great! Sure, we have disagreements and arguments like any other couple, but the biggest difference I have noticed is that even at our worst, we both respect each other that we do not blame, point fingers or accuse each other. Instead, we try to communicate our differences as patiently as we can. We tackle problems together and look for long-term solutions, making communication the pillar of our relationship.
I’m certain that the celibacy period of my life helped me realign my values and what was important to me. It allowed me to fall in love and start respecting myself. If there’s any woman out there struggling to look for a partner, I highly suggest trying it out. It may surprise you the journey that you would go on.
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