fake it to break it

Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships. (Sharon Stone)

I never imagined I would someday borrow some words of wisdom from Sharon Stone. Well, she’s right.

Relationships are very precious to me. I remember how my first romantic relationship began. It was a hot no-class day in July 2002, and we were parked in front of Ateneo’s Belarmine Hall. I told him to bring me home if he did not have any plans of getting serious, because I was not that kind of girl. He left the car, probably thinking he did not need to be put on the spot by some impatient bitch, but came back with two cups of coffee. “I want to preserve out relationship. Would you be my girlfriend?” I argued some more, never making him forget about his commitment issues, but he asked the question again. And that’s when it all started to make sense to me. A commitment is something to be treasured. Someone actually wanted to be with me and take me in from the dark cold night also known as nineteen years of singleness.

Now how real was that? No one really knows for sure. But I felt that it was. For two and a half years we were committed, happily fulfilling our promise to love each other no matter what, until one of us decided to end the relationship, and I did not bother to think whether what we had was real. Really, what is real? Well, all I know is that he was such an honest, law abiding citizen to the point of being obsessive compulsive that he could not have faked his part in the relationship.

And I realized that you can only acquire bits and pieces of information, some of them merely based on intuition or inference, in order to determine whether a man is being sincere or not. A relationship may last for decades, and still, a woman cannot be sure whether what she has will lead to forever.

Which is why I don’t want to get married. (OK here I go again, but please hear this out.) Marriage doesn’t guarantee the realness of a man, or a woman, or the love between them. And oftentimes I think that someone is finally here to let me experience the luxury of real love, but just as often, I turn out to be wrong. Nothing wrong with making a few mistakes, but there is definitely wrong with the way some men handle relationships. I didn’t ask for them to court me and stay interested in me and give me things and ask me to be their girlfriend. And in the end I would find out that everything was a big fat joke, but no one was laughing.

See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.

(Robin Williams)