We’re just like everybody else

Once upon a time I was in a relationship. It lasted 4 years. Eventually I realised I was arranging things to do on the boyfriend’s days off from work, and that led to the realisation that I didn’t want to spend my spare time with him. He asked me to marry him; I turned him down.

I left pretty soon after that.

Later there were weekend flings and a few one-night stands. I don’t think they really registered though - I don’t think I was really interested.

Then I moved abroad. One very brief failure, a few one-night stands, and one near-miss - that was it in 11 years.

What this amounts to is that this century I’ve dated 0 people and been sad about 0.5 people. The 0.5 was an instructor in HK. We understood each other’s jokes right off the bat and made references to the same films - we even shared a love of one or two of the same albums. However, the more I saw of them the more I was convinced that I liked them more than they liked me. I asked them. I was right.

I left pretty soon after that.

So here’s where we are: I don’t care for relationships and I don’t miss them, in that you have to know what they are and how they feel in the first place to be able to miss them. But I still remember what it was like to find the one person I actually liked, and to enjoy their company more than my own private time, and then to realise it was all in my own head.

I’m currently binge-watching an HK dramedy called ‘My Dangerous Mafia Retirement Plan’ from 2016. It’s pretty funny and I’m enjoying the characters and witty banter. However, one character, a copper named Liu, takes an interest in a woman he’s met, and although he’s a tough, fit, smart copper, every time he’s with her he turns into the clumsiest blunderer that ever fell over a stool. This intensifies as he tries to prove he’s not a complete klutz, and then gets even worse as he tries to undo previous faux pas, mishaps and fuck-ups but only succeeds in embarrassing himself and her in various hilarious accidents. At one point he actually asks the heavens themselves what he’s done wrong in a past life and why they’re out to get him.

A colleague who knows them both decides to intervene, setting them up for repeated meet-ups, but eventually the divine machinations of their busy lives bring his bad luck to a head and Liu Sir decides enough is enough; he avoids the woman. However the colleague is sharp as a tack and tells him the reason he’s been so intent on proving he’s not actually an idiot is because he cares what she thinks of him, and he wants her to be impressed on some level. He blushes, she says that’s her proof he fancies her, and he’s left wondering what to do about it. But Best Colleague is ready for this - she tells him that the root of his ineptitude does not like wishy-washy men and he has to just tell her outright and see what she says.

He does.


And it turns out Liu Sir likes her more than she likes him.

He appears relieved, and says he just feels happier for getting it off his chest, he understands, he won’t make things weird, and he wishes her a nice life and all that. She asks if he’s ok as he’s about to walk away and he gives her a smile and says yes.

But you know what’s coming; as with all dramas he has to walk past the camera to leave the scene, and we get to see that his face is one of disappointment and maybe loneliness.

I felt for him. I’ve been there - I’m sure many of us have. Being that this is a TV show, and also being on the outside looking in, it’s easy to point and say ‘but you two are on the same wavelength; you’re basically the OTP in this show’. However the way he gives up so easily reminds me of how I felt when the same thing happened to me.

I was too ready to accept it was going to be a failure. I was too ready to agree that there was nothing special about me, certainly nothing that struck a chord in him. I was too ready to believe that little voice in my head that said ‘told you so - I really don’t know what you expected’.

If the sum of your experiences shapes your every decision that follows, then I can understand why I don’t even look at people as dateable now. I don’t meet someone and think about whether they’re fanciable or not. I don’t seem to feel anything for how physically attractive someone is - it’s like a painting or a car or anything else in that, ok, it’s very nice to look at, but it doesn’t trigger anything else and there is literally no feeling attached to the admission that it’s nice to look at. I don’t care whether they’re married, single, divorced, straight, gay, bi, pan, or anything else. It’s kind of liberating, actually. People are just things that I have to interact with, and interpersonal elements like making friends or forcing myself to think about attraction are irrelevant.

I believe this is directly linked to every other encounter I’ve had. I’ve learnt through repeated adventures that I just don’t care, and any fascination or novelty value of fancying someone or dating someone has worn off a long time ago. I don’t look for it, I don’t value it, and therefore I think I’ve written it off so it doesn’t occur to me on a day to day basis.

Queer as Folk - remember the UK series? There was a brilliant scene with Vince talking about unrequited love: “Unrequited love. It’s fantastic because it never has to change, it never has to grow up and it never has to die! ”. This is probably the closest I’ll get to feeling something for someone else. And it’s probably always going to be for some character on a TV show or in a film - the character, not the actor.

And I think I’m ok with that.


After all, people only let you down.

So I’ll continue to watch Liu Sir to see if he gets his happy ending, but part of me knows he won’t. It is an HK drama, and they don’t pander to what the public wants. And in a Matrix kind of way, if they did pair him successfully with someone I wouldn’t believe it anyway.


And so it goes.