I love you forever

I’ve been through all kinds of breakups.

Some short and sweet like the time my golden ex, who had perfect blonde hair and ridiculously piercing blue eyes (why did we break up again?), made an album for me for each day that were together. He has a great Takashi Murakami and a Rothko and he was never a dick about it.

Some were long and heartbreaking, like a screaming kitten that decides it’s hungy and prematurely in heat in the middle of the night and sounds like some score by Henri Mancini. Some just had to happen — Skype and quick and passionate visits easily turned into quick and passionate cussing.

Then some were just plain cray cray.

He was beautiful; his female version would be a stunning blonde in Bebe. Like any blonde in Bebe, he had some unscrewed action going on up there. I’ll spare you the specifics. Let me just give you the pièce de résistance. The piece of shit actually put me on a plane back to Manila because I showed him a photo of Max Wigram (gallerist and husband of Phoebe Philo) and I doing the Chicken Dance. Asshole’s parting words were: “There’ a devil inside of you.”

Someone please explain this to me. I have a feeling the explanation is funnier than the circumstance.

I don’t get it. I just remember feeling like a slave having the twine sliced off my wrists. Happiness! Freedom! Katie Holmes!

I haven’t thanked Max for saving my life that day. It was a classic Cinemax romance: perfect guy, paranoia, suddenly I had no friends and he turns out to be that guy who collects fingers inside his cigar box. The last bit thankfully wasn’t true. I hope.

I remember going home and hugging my door and promising myself that no man shall ever lay claim to any of my abodes. I painted it pink. It is totally man repellent and any guy who hangs out voluntarily at Marlowe (in tradition of naming my homes after celebrity babies; this is Sienna Miller’s) is gay, gay, gay.

How do these things really work? My best friend Marcel, ever the reductive thinker, told me the simplest way to do this beautifully, being both the injured party and a moderate Ophelia: you know enough madness to collect pity but not so much that you turn into a little Miss Havisham.

The trick? Get your sorry ass dumped. It’s really not that hard. Just let that devil in you come out and play.

Perks of being dumped: 

• You can date almost right away.  

• No hypocritical grace period.   

• You have an instant icebreaker (save it for the third date, please) and heart-rending vulnerability.   

• You look like you’re the type that really tried.     

• You can go out a pretend to be the “happy one.” Because you are!

Look, even I feel sorry for batshit-crazy Tom Cruise.

I have two friends in Hong Kong. They are the ultimate cosmopolitan couple. They are at all the right parties, they are part of the cool crowd and they charm and light up a room while holding hands being beautiful and soignée. They have two beautiful children, both well behaved, who are placed in the most exclusive school in HK. It’s hard to imagine that they are the product of an arranged marriage. Like they met twice and tied the knot. No one blinked a judgmental eye that it was whirlwind affair. They have been married for more than a decade and all I can say is: I want some of that.

On the flipside there’s the sad get-me-out-of-here situations. Some tormented Chinese guy who was rich up the wazoo once cornered Marcel. He then oddly told Marcel he wanted to stop cheating but that he was so unsatisfied. His wife wore ruffles on her collar. I must say that sartorial crime may have opened him up to his other ideas, but it didn’t make it right. Mandated or free, people cheat. He desperately wanted to stop but his life made him so depressed that on that night he was literally was sweating vodka. He is a good man. He just found love in a hopeless place. He left that night in his sports car not even bothering to open his companion’s door. It would perhaps be a forgettable night of drunken sex. He will go home to his wife (here’s hoping) who will be noting the vanilla-scented perfume his paramour shot all over her body.

If you’re going to be dessert, you might as well smell the part.

So let’s see what we can learn from arranged marriages.

Arranged marriages skip the drama of forgotten calls, wilted yellow roses and the voodoo of self-help books. However, unlike many packages, there is no return-to-sender option.

When I was living in India, these arranged situations were so common that after a few weeks of arranged marriages it started sounding normal. I encouraged a friend to go for this guy who grew up in America. He was, after all, an astronaut. Shocking that some guy who has defied gravity, circled the moon and wore that puffy suit from MTV still has to subscribe to the tradition. He spoke no Indian dialect and loved the show Family Guy. I accompanied them on their third date, and let me tell you: as my astronaut-loving friend had the galaxy circling around her eyes, the guy seemed so out of it he seemed to wish that his nose would start bleeding so he could end the date. I imagined horrible things in this marriage like cheating, domestic abuse and the husband getting addicted to Xbox.

A year later, I saw them again and, hell, yeah, if Norman Rockwell were into Indians, they would be it. My friend seemed to have a makeover, wearing a Matthew Williamson kimono smelling like Floris. The Astronaut was smitten, carrying the baby, her bags and basking on her passive aggressive remarks. She was suddenly Wallis Simpson.

Maybe we are the worst judges when it comes to our own love lives. I asked my Hong Kong friend how this was even possible. “Love grows,” he said. I immediately thought of Ned and Katie Stark in Game of Thrones. They hardly knew each other when they got married and they just had to work it. I think in happiness, passion is just a bonus. I know what I’m talking about! The supernovas and fate shit? At some point the paint peels. Everyone cries when the onion is sliced.

As my friend said, love grows. In our demo-bratic scene, hate grows. There’s just so much dissatisfaction, so many blanks and so many tennis pros to lust over.

In arranged marriages you work with what you have. As my friend in Hong Kong said, “So many people look outside to find their happiness.” She adds, “You just really need to work with what you have.”

Of course this is not all love and beauty. There is a dark side to all this. Stoning is one of the more grotesque forms of punishment to a disobedient wife. This shit happens more that the rainbows and unicorn version. Best to bite the stone on this one. So maybe following the dictum of arranged marriages about being happy with what you have, maybe I just need to enjoy. I don’t need to overextend myself so I can wear Matthew Williamson while I’m running errands. I mean, look at friends setting you up. It’s a form of an arranged something. Of course there’s a return-to-sender option for this one.

Another point is that you get support from your family. My friends who got married would often move to their parent’s home — forever. I have managed to live my life, despite my fluctuating income, and have my own home. I cannot believe people look forward to this. Grandmas are there to buy your tot Baby Dior and Marie Chantal onesies. Other than that, a restraining order is needed.

The last point is that once you’re married, you are married! There’s no way out. You can walk away but you better come back, Although I’m not a believer in divorce, check out my collection of engagement rings. See, I think things through. I don’t get married! I don’t just get married! I just cannot let go of my favorite pastime: breaking up.

I need a lot of time to frickin’ grow up. And get dumped on my ass over and over again.

Then maybe, at a certain point, it will eventually hurt.