An Improvement in Our Future Relationship

Had this mind tickling talk about relationships with a friend of mine over dinner, mostly on how a female tends to revolve their world around their boyfriends.

Some scenarios as the girl played out:

1. Dinner. It's a regular weekday, and a girl friend calls you out for dinner. And, I as the girl, who had nothing much to do after work today would probably say yes. Then, when I am about to finish work and preparing myself for the dinner, my boyfriend texted me, asking whether would I like to have dinner with him.

So, what am I suppose to do?

Option A:

Being a loving girl friend, I would surely tell my boyfriend ya, we can have dinner tonight. And then I would call my friend saying that my boyfriend asked me out for dinner and it's been a week since I last saw him, so maybe we can have dinner some other time?

Option B:

I would ask my boyfriend what time would he be free for dinner. And if the time is late and I would be able to attend both dinner, I would have two dinners for the night. However, for this, during the dinner with my girl friend, I would be rushing and all, not wanting to be late.

Option C:

I would call off my boyfriend, telling him that I have a dinner date with my girlfriend.


It's pretty obvious that most of us have a higher tendency of picking Option A and B, Option C would be at the back of our heads.

However, if we swap the scenario, ie. your boyfriend is going to have dinner with his friends, and you called him up for dinner, what kind of response will you get? Most probably is that he would tell you up front that he is going out with the guys and it will be late. The second possibility would be he would tell you that he is going out with the guys, and I could join them if I want to. And the least possible one, he would call off the dinner with his friend and join you for dinner.

What do we see from this? The priority is a total inverse of one another. Girls do tend to give their boyfriends full priority.


2. Gym. Assuming that I am a gym kind of person, I like going to the gym on, and especially love going to the gym on Saturday morning. However, my boyfriend likes hanging out on Friday nights, having dinners with friends, catching up and chilling at a bar till late. He said you to join him on Friday nights, as that's what he loves doing. He would say that I can go for gym on the weekdays or some other days.

So?

Option A:

I will go out with him, hang out with him till late, enjoy the night and have fun, his way. I mean, in a way, I get to be with him. In the next morning, I won't be able to get up early for my favorite pass time, gym, ie. giving up things that I like doing.

Option B:

I will hang out with him and still wake up in the morning with the hang over and all to make my way to the gym.

Option C:

I will tell him no, as I feel like going to the gym on Saturday morning and I don't want to miss it.

Ok, this one is pretty obvious, written in priority order, the last one being most unlikely. However, let's say we turn the coin around, I'm the one who like Friday nights, and he is the one who likes Saturday mornings. I am pretty sure the priority order will be the other way round.

We did talked about many more other scenarios, like the one where he did not reply to your texts and you got all thinking what is he doing, why is he not replying to my texts, is he angry with me. But the other way round, guys don't think that way.

We look back to the time when this relationship had not even exist, as a girl, you would have a life that you enjoyed, hanging out with your girl friends, going shopping, karaoke, movies. But once you are in a relationship, do you notice that you don't really do all these as often anymore, some even non. Why? Our mentality will revolve around the guy, when friends ask you out, you will start making excuses to refuse them just because you want to make time for your boyfriend, or in case he has time for you. One of the most absurd reason, I am scare my boyfriend will be angry of me, or he won't be happy if I were to go out so often.

For a guy, once they got in a relationship, life just goes on like business as usual. He will still go out watching football with his pals, hanging out, chilling with friends and all. And their best move, the moment that they actually starts spending time with you, they make it sound like they made so much sacrifices and all just to be with you, but in actual fact he was just so happen free and his friends were occupied, or there's this movie his buddies had watched.

I might be wrong in the statements made above, or you may even say I am bias, well, I'm sorry, I'm a girl. But most of them are true, for me. There is this imbalance in priority in our relationships, and my personal opinion is that this may cause the failure of a relationship.

Imagine this, before the relationship, you as a girl, had a life, you are cheerful, had friends around, you did crazy things and all. You had a life and you are an interesting and fun person to be with. But once you walked into a relationship, things changed, you don't hang out with friends that often, you don't do as much things as you usually do. You only have your close friends, your family, your work and your boyfriend. This is when things will start to get crucial. You are not the same person as you were before the relationship anymore, the person the guy fell for. And right now, I won't blame him.

So, as stated in FRM Part I: Foundation of Risk Management, the problem had been identified and assessed. The next step would be to treat the risk, which would be another dinner on another night. But for a guide, we have to make moderate decisions, indifferent from how we treat our close friends, well, maybe a little different, but just not too much.

We must be able to be ourselves, live our lives, just the way we did before we jumped into this relationship, future relationship.