When A Playgirl Retires: an essay on commitment

The road to commitment is long and winding. Several pitfalls and booby traps may just smash your efforts to commit. Sometimes the journey to commitment is too psychologically long and tiring that you just give up. To someone who spent her life opening windows at night (at the risk of burglary and privacy invasion) just to avoid the stifling feeling of enclosed walls, being in a committed relationship is like living hell. The mere mention of the C-word had me running outside for air.

So what makes a person who is so liberated and carefree give up her independence?

Love? Na-ah. I’ve learned long ago that love as we know it is a very relative thing, and very fleeting too. If there is one abstract idea that has driven the sanest people mad, it is love. It is nothing more than an illusion. Or, to the hopeless romantic, a word to justify every single pleasureable thing or emotion that comes. Among animals, males emit pheromones during mating. The females sense this and get hooked, until the mating season is over. I guess that’s “love” for them. Humans are not much different really. We interchange the idea of love, with the chemical effects of hormones.

I guess as we grow older, we get tired of running or fighting, or proving something to ourselves. There was a story that i heard or read somewhere, which exactly defines my view on commitment. It moved me so much that I started questioning my views on growing old as a single mom, and not relying on a partner at all.

In the tv series, Friends, Phoebe said something that really struck me. Her lobster theory.

A lobster (the marine animal, lol) can easily defend itself from predators using its sharp claws. It does not need the safety of being in a large group (like fishes), or the protection of hard shells (like clams). But when a lobster grows old, it barely survives alone. It searches for another lobster who is willing to lock claws with it, and together as ageing lobsters they face the perils of the marine world, stronger now because they are together. When lobsters lock claws, they never let go. Can you imagine what happens when one of them dies?

When I told a friend of mine that I’m settling down, have a baby and a family, she asked “are you sure?”. What she’s really asking is if I will be able to sustain my free spirit inside a committed relationship. My friends are cynical about me totally committing to someone, they think I always have a plan B. Yes, of course I do have a plan B. Maybe I haven’t matured enough to embrace the idea behind the song about docking the boat and throwing away the oars forever. But I’m getting there… cautiously.

Years of inner struggle cannot be shrugged off easily. It’s just too easy to turn the other direction and just run, run and run from responsibility.

I finally, albeit warily, chose to commit to someone who has known me long enough to understand me. Do I love this guy? Yes, I do. But more importantly, do I trust him? He may be the only guy in the world that I trust, besides my dad and bro.

Why him? Frankly, it’s as simple as this: In a world where I’ve always regarded everyone as my bitch, I’m his bitch.

I’ve found my lobster.