Marriage Preparation Course Session 4: Keeping Love Alive

We did the 4th session in the Alpha Marriage Preparation Course manual. Keeping love alive; easy or difficult? In regardless, I believe it takes lots of effort from both side. It takes two to tango, they said.

Recently, Singapore’s former first lady, Lee Kuan Yew’s wife passed away after braving through a series of strokes that left her bed ridden for two years. Families and friends paid their respect and wrote their eulogies. Out of all the eulogies, one that touched the hearts of many was of course, Lee Kuan Yew’s, her husband of 63 years.

In Lee’s eulogy, he wrote this, ‘We knew that we could not stay starry-eyes lovers all our lives; that life was an on-going challenge with new problems to resolve and manage.’

Shortly after Oliver and I got together, he had to leave for Germany. That was 6 years ago. We tried to be positive; to keep in touch as much as we could and that’s pretty much we can do. At some point, we hit a pretty big bump on the road (metaphorically). We got too busy for each other. We got upset with each other quite often and that forced us to take a break. It was indefinite at that time. When Oliver came back in summer 2007, we had to make a decision. We decided to make it work-to keep love alive.

Developing our friendship - I like the fact that Oliver and I started out as friends. Far from being the case of ‘love at first sight’, we got to know each other first as friends before falling in love. But sometimes, we take this for granted. We’re so into the notion of being in a relationship that we forgot all about friendship and it’s important not to lose sight on that. Friends talk, share and laugh about things together. Couples should do the same, if not, at a more intimate level. Sometimes, I’ll be observing other couples in a restaurant and I noticed these; couples who look like they have been together or married for several years but hardly said a word to each other. They just go on ordering their food; wait for their food to arrive and eat in silence. One day, many years down the road, I want to be able to sit with Oliver, enjoying our meals and talking about things, even if I have to listen to Oliver talk about Mathematics or he have to listen to my 1001 lame jokes.

Discovering each other’s need-What is your and your partner’s love language? Is it; action, touch, words, time or presents? I used to get upset because Oliver did not say I love you-s or I miss you-s as often as I like to hear and for awhile I kept this to myself because I didn’t want to be the needy girlfriend. But, what I was denying was my love language. Those words of affirmations are how I know that I am loved. And sans touch due to long distance, I needed it even more. Oliver realized this and now, he says it quite often and I’m happy and he’s happy when I’m happy. Oliver said he knows I loved him when I buy him clothes. Well, Das ist ganz einfach.

Building our sexual relationship- There were times when the topic of sex is viewed as a taboo in the society. But due to the explosion of social media, this topic has been discussed more openly and I think it is okay to discuss about it in a healthy and more positive manner. Having said these, yes, to keep love alive, sex is important. As a Christian, we have been told to save sex for marriage. That sex is God’s gift to married couple and the greatest gift a married couple can give to each other. And to able to use that gift to its fullest, married couple should be honest to each other; with their needs and expectations and with their present or past insecurities. It’s all about communication and trust.

Communication, Commitment, Managing Conflicts and Keeping Love Alive

Four sessions done, one more to go and hopefully, many more years to practice and re-practice it over and over again. It’s going to be a great roller coaster baby, ups and downs, but oh so exciting.

Guten Tag

means ‘Good day’ in German. I’ve been trying to pick up or learn German for quite some time now. I bought German pocket book that I can carry everywhere I go. Oliver bought me an audio learning device that he hope could accelerate my learning progress in German.

Having said these, I have to admit, I have not been a good, consistent learner. Maybe for the first few weeks, I’ll be all enthusiastic to learn new words or phrases each day. I’ll even show it off to Oliver over the phone. ‘Hallo liebe’ ‘Wie gehts?’ ‘Was machst du heute Abend?’ ‘Mench,du bist langweilig!’ All of that means in this order, ‘Hello love’, ‘how’s it going?’, ‘What are you doing this evening?’, and ‘Crikey, you’re so boring!’

German is an interesting language. Picking up words is easy. But saying it in a proper and correct grammar is another matter. I know a lot of words independently. I know how to count from 1 to thousands, I know the days in order. I know that ‘brot’ is bread and ‘gemuse’ is vegetable among many other food. I’ve learnt quite a few adjectives. I know simple greetings. It’s all up there in my head. Tons of it all jumbled up. My problem is practicing it on a daily basis. Other than with Oliver, I don’t really have the avenue to practice it. Even with Oliver, I hardly try to converse German with him. The most would be ‘Was?’(pronounced as ‘vas’ means What?’) or ‘Warum?’ (pronounced as ‘varum’ means Why?’) and my favourite one ‘Ach so’ which is an expression for ‘I see’.

My worry is this, that if I do join Oliver in Germany after we get marry, I felt like I need to know German in order to fit in, get by or ease myself into that transition of being in a foreign place. What more if I need to find a job or continue my masters, which I aim to do. Further to this quandary, living here in Kota Kinabalu, while there is a demand to learn foreign languages like Korean or Japanese, there is none for German. A while back, I was looking for a German Language course locally, I stumbled upon this local institution that said it conducts German course. I called up the contact person to know when the course is starting. According to the contact person, they need at least 6 people to register for the course in order to start the course. And guess what, I’m the first to register. The person was supposed to get back to me once they have enough people to start the course. That was about 6 months ago.

So, I guess it’s back to self-learning. But first, I need to rekindle that enthusiasm to learn German. Pick up my pocket book and learn a word/phrase each day. Listen to the audio learning. Let it be my lullaby. Practice it with Oliver. Even, if he’s not the most patient teacher. There is this German restaurant here ‘Gunters Gasthaus’, just a little bit out of town and I’ve heard that the owner (who passed away awhile back) was a German and he married a local. So, I had the inkling that maybe, the wife may know how to speak German. Thought I drop by one day to check out the restaurant and perhaps see if we could do the weekly meet up and I could practice conversing in German with her. It’s a plan.

Till then. Auf Wiedersehen. (Bye in formal)

Happy Hump Day

One of my daily tasks is to email travel trades of our current promotion. While we do have a standard format of sending the email, I sometimes like to add a bit of a side friendly note to it. One Wednesday in particular, I've learnt that Wednesday is a Hump Day and one can wish 'Happy Hump Day!' Now, before, you start to think otherwise, read more about Hump Day. In brief, it means Wednesday, being the middle day of the week implies that you have to get "over the hump" before you can anticipate the weekend.

I thought it was a cool new thing to me. So, one Wednesday, when drafting out an email to travel trades, I've enthusiastically added 'Happy Hump Day!!!' and even linked it to its original meaning and press the 'Send' button.

A second later, I got a phone call from a colleague of mine and she went 'What did you just write in your email!!!???!!!!!!?' Apparently, despite linking it, some people still thought otherwise. Ooops.