Love in the Shithole

Male meets female. She’s not half bad looking and he is not too shabby either.

Male approaches female; female plays hard to get.

Male tries again.

Female decides male is boyfriend material.

They start to date, spending most of their time in the shopping malls.

Male invests in anniversary, birthday, and Valentine Day’s celebrations; male spends $1,000 on female, and female spends $125 on male.

Both have sex with each other for the first time. Both go at each other and try to make a game of it.

More dating and the occasional lovers’ tiffs.

Sex becomes less spontaneous.

Male proposes to female. “Should we get a flat together?”

Female agrees.

Couple register themselves as mated pairing with the authorities.

Couple spend $10k on a two hour reception to exchange engagement rings.

Lull period. Couple earn, save, borrow, beg, and extol to raise funds for their new lives.

Couple apply for pigeon-hole of a flat and spend $100k and six months preparing for a three hour engagement reception and a three hour wedding dinner.

Pigeon-hole application is approved. Couple spend a further $100k on renovation and down payment, and $20K on honeymoon.

After returning from their honeymoon, couple immediately return to their gulag and slog for long hours to pay the bills.

Work takes precedence over married life. Less time together, more time at work.

Love becomes a sense of duty; sex becomes mechanical: the male thrusts like a robot, the female lies there like a piece of dead fish.

Male decides to enjoy himself with ‘ladies of the night”, subscribing to the time-honored principles of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, and ‘what she does not know does not kill you’. Working life, meanwhile, continues, albeit with less sex in the couple’s bedroom and more sex elsewhere.

Working life is punctuated occasionally with family gatherings and the obligatory dinners together.

Female is pregnant. Couple argue about whether it is financially viable to keep the child, saying they need time for careers to take off.

Female aborts the child. Unbeknownst to the couple. a crack starts to appear in the relationship,

Male works late more often. Female stays out later than usual.

Female has a fling with some random male she met, feels guilty, and promises herself not to do it again.

Marriage is now less a duty and more a confinement. Couple are united by the bed they share and the bills they pay for their tiny flat.

Male has affair with married colleague who has been neglected by her husband.

Couple now has sex once a month, sometimes going without sex for more than a month.

Male and female start to quarrel over bills and inconsequential things. She cries that, ‘You don’t love me anymore. You have no time for me.’, while he belts out, ‘I work so hard for the family – why don’t you understand?’

Male and female take turns threatening divorce.

They try to make up after each quarrel.

A lull period happens in which there is no argument. Meanwhile, the male enjoys sex in a different bed from his own.

Couple are now just two persons living in the same house together.

Female has affair with random male who ‘cares for her’.

Couple now enjoy a cordial relationship: work, making small talks, the obligatory sex, and finding love in another’s arms.

The couple continues to drift apart, by almost imperceptible degrees.

Male discovers that female is secretly bedding another male.

Male flies into a rage and threatens to divorce female and beat up the intrusive male.

A tussle ensues, with enraged male posturing aggressively, female appearing contrite, and the intrusive male keeping under the radar.

After much deliberation, female apologizes and announces break-up with her second male.

Male is somewhat pacified, as he subconsciously or consciously realizes the male of the female he has been bedding on the sly will probably feel the same way if their affair is discovered.

Couple try to make things work again.

Quarrels break out more frequently since that 'incident'.

This time, their drifting apart becomes more perceptible.

Couple pay good money to consult a marriage advisor.

Sex becomes now an infrequent affair, a medicine the marriage advisor prescribes to 'keep the flames alive'.

Couple try harder to salvage what is left of their relationship.

The bonds in their relationship become more tenuous and one day, the 'final straw' snaps them.

Couple announce they are splitting due to irreconcilable differences.

Couple sign the divorce papers, and at the same time, try to divide between themselves their pigeon-hole and the things they have in it.

Despite occasional pangs and thoughts of reconciliation, and half-assed attempts at it, both eventually realize that things can no longer work out.

They move on with their own lives by remaining as 'friends'.