So last night, Tyne and I decided to hit a bar in Clarke Quay after we watched the movie What’s Your Number?
She brought me to China One, and I enjoyed the bar’s music, ambiance, and widely-spaced tables that didn’t give me the feeling of suffocation the way other bars do.
We eventually hit the dance floor about one hour before leaving, but before that we were doing something I’d bet you’ve never ever seen anyone do in a bar before – reading book quotes on my kindle, with the aid of my mini reading light. LOL.
See, it’s my phone’s fault for dying. It does that a lot lately, even when its battery is more than 70% charged. I need to get my hands on a new phone… iphone 4S, yes?
So anyway, since I had nothing to get busy with my hands with, I was forced to take out my kindle. Haha.
These were the quotes that I shared with Tyne:
Maybe that’s what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.
Somewhere deep down, I think I knew from the start that our relationship lacked a certain intensity, but not in a way where I felt something was missing. To the contrary, it felt like huge relief never to fret – sort of like your first day of feeling healthy after a vicious case of the flu. The mere absence of feeling miserable was euphoric. This, I thought to myself as Andy and I gradually grew closer, was the way things were supposed to feel. More important, I believed that it was the only kind of love that wouldn’t burn out. Andy had staying power. Together, we had the potential to last forever.
I hoped for what all girls hope for in my situation: that he’d change his mind, come to his senses, realize what he had in me, discover I couldn’t be replaced. I kept thinking, even saying aloud to Margot and my sister, “Nobody will love him like I love him,” which I now realize is far from a selling point to a man. To anyone.
Still, despite her ordinary looks, I feel an unexpected competitive pang I don’t believe I would have felt if he had shown me the woman I was expecting. It is one thing to be defeated by an Angelina Jolie look-alike, another to lose to someone so squarely in my league.
They all came from the same book: Love The One You’re With by Emily Giffin.
The story in a nutshell: Ellen has been married 100 days to Andy when she runs into Leo, her intense first love. When she gets a chance to be with him again for a job he orchestrated, she realizes that she still feels the same intensity with him and starts questioning her feelings for her husband as well as her own happiness in their life together.
♠♠♠WARNING: SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!♠♠♠
I hate Leo. He and Emily had a very passionate relationship but when the fireworks fizzled out, he left her just like that. A real piece of work, if you know what I mean. I’m sure you know someone like him in real life. I know I do.
I love Andy – golden boy, perfect, my ideal, I now realize. He may not be as intense as Leo but they get on well together, not just lovers but friends, he bringing out the best in her.
So I totally got annoyed with Emily when she hooked up with Leo, but I suppose it’s hard to fight the magnetic pull of an attraction to someone. Still, it was wrong. Morals should override feelings. It’s in the human manual.
So who do you think she chooses?
The title actually says it, but in the beginning, I had misunderstood. I thought the “one you’re with” was whoever happens to be there, like Leo, because that’s what the saying implies, the complete saying being: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”
But it turns out that in this case, the “one you’re with” is the one you’re in a relationship with, in a marriage with. The title says that you should choose to love the one you’re with.
Love is a verb; a willing, not just a feeling. It’s a commitment, a promise that no matter what happens, you would choose to love him.
I’m just glad that she made the right choice in the end, going back to Andy, the one who is good for her. While fireworks are wonderful, it’s not sustainable, and it could blow up and hurt you. What we all need is a nice steady flame that will burn on and on and on and on…
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