I know what you’re saying. After almost a decade of “having a good time”, I had gone over two years without a Taiwanese girlfriend and had actually given up on them when I found the one for me. She does not have that much experience with the world at large, but she has an extremely open, curious, vivacious nature that made me smitten with her. I’ve taken her scuba diving, I’ve taken her to concerts (the symphony and the Beastie Boys), I’ve taken her to church and to keg parties. We’re travelling together often and making plans for some really big trips. I think I benefit from her relative youth in this regard - she’s only 24, and a 24 year old girl in Taiwan is not usually as cosmopolitan/international as we may have become, so right now she’s just loving all the new experiences. Since she met me she has developed a taste for spicy foods, she likes listening to all kinds of music, she’s no longer afraid of getting a suntan (I told her I’d love her in any shade), and she is twice as self-confident as when I first met her. She has adapted so well to my lifestyle - something which I was beginning to despair of before I met her. I figured that no matter how well I spoke Mandarin, no matter how well I understood the local culture and thinking, I would never be understood. Happily, I was wrong. 
No disrespect to you, Maoman, and I certainly wish you and your wife the best. And I do respect your honest post.
However, some of the things you mentioned almost made it sound as if you gave your wife a makeover.
[quote]
Since she met me she has developed a taste for spicy foods, she likes listening to all kinds of music, she’s no longer afraid of getting a suntan (I told her I’d love her in any shade), and she is twice as self-confident as when I first met her.[/quote]
It almost sounds like the the plot to “My Fair Lady.”
In the post you listed many ways that you have influenced or changed your wife. May I politely ask, how has she influenced or changed you?
Again, no disrespect intended. I am glad that you have found someone you really care about.
I don’t believe there’s one person for everyone. I think some people have a few hundred or a few thousand and some might not have any. I also don’t believe that the “one” is a constant person, but more along the lines of like, focusing a pair of binoculars. Some people are hazy and some are slightly focused and some are very sharply in focus, but we change and our focal points change too. Some people are able to keep their focus for a long time like a friend of mine who married the guy she dated since she was a sophomore in high school, the year after we graduated from university and my brother married my sister-in-law after they dated for 7 years off and on. Then some people are rolling that dial constantly and so their idea of the “one” might become static, but it might also undergo some changes before (and, perhaps in many divorce cases, after) they meet their “one”.
Because of this change, couples who want to survive long-term need to adapt to each other’s foci (foci being the plural of “focus”) and to be sensitive to these adjustments. The couples that stay together play off each other and realize that the rough times are just as important and as constructive to their relationships as the good ones.
“The couples that stay together play off each other and realize that the rough times are just as important and as constuctive to their relationships as the good ones.”
Well said ImaniOU, and so true.
[quote=“tmwc”]I have no problem meeting people, but there don’t seem to be a lot of female people able to keep up. I have yet to meet a girl here (except for the lovely Russian lady I had lunch with yesterday) who really has a life. I am so sick of hearing about parents, work, shopping, sleep and fantasies about doing something interesting - from people who lack the strength to step outside their mundane little lives.
[/quote]
Try the third sex…foreign women. 
Most of us have quite a well developed life here, thank you, due in part to the fact that we don’t end up wasting much time dating…not that there’s much out there for the most part except 1) guys who have not yet grown up and/or who have yellow fever, and 2) guys who have grown up, but are happily married (or unhappily married, but it makes no difference from my perspective, I’m not gonna get involved!)
Gavin Januarus made part of my point earlier without knowing it.
He said how he was only interested in sex and fun and then, like a born-again, he realized that he wanted to find someone to settle down with.
After searching several countries, he found his “one” during a tennis match in Taiwan.
The fact is that she is no more his “one” than any other girl. If he had met her in his earlier days, she would have been just another conquest, another babe, another bit of sex and fun.
But Gavin created his “one” out of his desire to find “the one.”
We manufacture the “one”; it does not exist independent of our desires.
From my experience – meaning personal and observational – I firmly believe that it is human nature to love more than one person at a time as a “partner,” and this includes sex.
The concept of the “one” is a Church-oriented concept of marriage. It is workable in certain cases, but goes against the natural course of relations. Why do we see, and have seen, so very many instances of “stepping out” or cheating? It isn’t because the person did not find the “one,” it is because monogamy is a construction, not a natural condition.
In the post you listed many ways that you have influenced or changed your wife. May I politely ask, how has she influenced or changed you? [/quote]
This is interesting! I’m not talking about Maoman’s case, which I know nothing about at all. But I find many male foreigners in Taiwan who tend to seek Taiwanese girlfriends who are cute, beautiful and much younger than them. There’s nothing wrong about it but in some cases these sweet little things often don’t have their own opinions. They take their boyfriends’ opinions as theirs, they take their boyfriends’ hobbies as theirs. They learn a lot from their boyfriends, boyfriends are these young girls’ mentors. But without their foreign boyfriends, they can’t think independently and don’t have the ability to learn and grow on their own. (Let alone that their boyfriends’ opinions are not always objective or right!!) To be fair though, some of those girls do gradually develop the ability of independent thinking and judgment later on, good for them!!
But we all know who else has a say on this, as long as the both parties are so happy together!! After all, we just try to find our match/type and be really happy!!
That thar’s what we call a home run…
And I agree…isn’t this some James Mitchner-esk “South Pacific island girl syndrome”? SPIGS!
I’m afraid this is rather Mills and Boonish and horribly long, but here goes anyway:
It’s already more than a dozen years since she entered my life, and a decade since she left it. The ache lessens as time goes by, but it never disappears. She was “the one”, sure enough.
We met when she, a student at Taida, came to my bushiban conversation class. She was a slender little thing with long fine hair, as smart as they come and chock full of spirit. The moment I stepped into the classroom and looked in her direction, our eyes met and a powerful feeling of mutual attraction flowed between us.
After the lesson, she loitered in her seat chatting with her friend who had joined the class with her. I also stayed there, fiddling with my papers and waiting for her to come to talk to me, as I expected she would. As soon as everyone else had gone, she did indeed come, and the words we exchanged were enough to confirm the signals that had flashed between us during the lesson.
We had our first date a week or so later, and became lovers on a large rock in the middle of my favourite mountain creek on a chilly and drizzly February morning, both of us quite oblivious to the inclement weather as our clothes came off and we explored each other with our hands and mouths. From that explosively passionate start, a beautiful relationship blossomed between us. The sex was great, while the companionship and shared understanding could not have been better. It was the perfect conjoining of two people in mind, body and soul.
She called herself April. It wasn’t in the month of her name that we met, but it was in that month I lost her.
Before I met April, I had long been adamant that I would never willingly surrender my bachelor status. With so many lovely women in the world, why would I want to attach myself to just one? She, too, had perturbed her mum by often pronouncing that nothing on earth could induce her ever to consider getting married. But all that changed, and soon we were making plans about spending the rest of our lives together. My God, we were even talking about making babies – a thought that would have filled us with horror before we reconfigured each other’s worlds.
There was, however, a very big obstacle to be overcome: her rigidly conservative, xenophobic father. A Hsinchu businessman who owned some kind of detergent factory, he was a dyed-in-the-wool racist bigot. When she told him about her foreign boyfriend, he went ballistic. He ranted and raved about her bringing shame on her family, degrading her ancestry, and more of the same. She wept her heart out but stood her ground. That was the first of many angry and tearful scenes between them. It was bitterly distressing to her, but she wouldn’t give way.
Fortunately, in spite of everything, her father doted on her. He’d always indulged her every whim before this lamentable business sowed such poison between them. When he discovered that no amount of bullying or threats would get him his way, and that she’d rather break with her family than give up her damned foreigner, he began to relent. No doubt he was scared to death of losing her and would rather put up with having a foreign son-in-law than face the unthinkable alternative.
So first of all, his eldest son was dispatched to Taipei to interview and appraise this would-be-usurper of his daughter’s affections. The son reported back favourably, and it was then ordained that I would pay a visit to their home in Hsinchu to meet the paterfamilias and present myself to a gathering of the clan elders.
I was as nervous as hell, and not exactly thrilled at the prospect of paying court to this dreadful ogre, but of course I had to do it for April’s sake. So I swallowed my pride and distaste, and did my utmost to steer things through to a happy conclusion.
After the initial meeting with her father and mother at their home, we repaired to an upmarket restaurant where an assortment of uncles, aunts and senior relatives gathered around the dinner table with us – not so much to welcome me as one of their own, but more to scrutinize and pass judgment on this prospective interloper.
At least the meal provided the occasion for some comic relief. Although I went through it with deadpan seriousness at the table, the two of us had a damned good laugh about it when we were on our own again later. The amusement stemmed from my being a vegetarian. April had warned me beforehand that I mustn’t on any account let her dad know this. Apparently, he regarded vegetarianism as a kind of vice, a sign of moral degeneracy. Real men ate meat and did so with relish; anyone who didn’t must have something wrong with them.
While nothing on earth would persuade me to consume any animal flesh, I had to maintain a convincing pretence of tucking in with the best of them. So while choice morsels of meat and fish were constantly piled on my bowl, April and I hawkishly watched her father’s face, and whenever his attention was averted from us, she plucked away pieces for her own consumption and I secreted whatever I could into a napkin on my lap, to be discreetly disposed of at opportune times when dishes were removed by the waitresses. I’m amazed we managed to get away with it, but nobody seemed to cotton on to what we were doing.
Anyway, the meal finally came to an end, and April and I could take our leave and head back to Taipei. Apparently, I had managed to pass muster. Taking her aside before we left, her father grudgingly conceded that I was more “polished” than your average Johnny foreigner, and if she had to marry a non-Chinese, at least I was more acceptable than others. We were cockahoop on the journey back to the north that night.
The outcome was that the old man formally gave us permission to tie the knot, but subject to certain conditions. First, we would not be allowed to have any kind of wedding ceremony in their hometown: he didn’t want his acquaintances and business associates to know about such a shameful besmirching of their family’s racial purity. Fair enough, no skin off my nose, and April didn’t mind it either.
The second condition was his really clever one. He knew his daughter much better than I did, and presumably foresaw that if only he could get us apart for any length of time, then the bonds between us could be severed before the formalization of marriage made the damage irreparable. So he stipulated that, as his daughter was still very young and had not completed her education, she must go abroad to pursue her postgraduate studies before he would sanction our getting married. When she came back with her master’s degree, we could do as we wished.
I didn’t have much problem with that. We’d have preferred to get married first, but a year or so’s delay didn’t seem to matter a lot. I knew she was really eager to study abroad, and I was glad that she should have the opportunity to do so. So that was all settled.
She applied for and was accepted to study for a master’s degree in anthropology at LSE. That summer, she graduated from NTU with sufficient credits and high enough grades to earn the equivalent of a double first in chemistry and psychology, having switched from the former to the latter at half stage (yes, she liked to flit about in her studies, which should have forewarned me about the capriciousness of her character and affections, if only I hadn’t been so blinded to it by her constant protestations of undying love and devotion). Her father gave her NT$3 million to cover her study expenses – i.e., enough for her to stay there and get her doctorate if she so wished, as he knew she would – plus a credit card for her to use as she pleased.
We set off together for England in September, with an awkward sendoff from her parents at CKS airport. After a week of “honeymooning” in Malaysia, we went to stay at my parents’ place and I introduced her to all my family. We had the last ever gathering of my whole family (not foreseeing that my parents would both pass away prematurely before we could all be together again). Everyone gave her the warmest possible reception and was really happy to welcome her into our family (in stark contrast to her father’s attitude), and everything was as good as it could possibly be.
Before we headed on to London to get her installed in her hall of residence, my father asked me why on earth I wasn’t going to stay with her in England, and how come I would take the risk of being apart from her for so long. Wasn’t I afraid that some other guy might snatch her away from me? Other people had said the same thing to me back in Taipei. But I laughed it off, not having the slightest shadow of doubt about her constancy. But it seems that my dad – and her dad, as well – had much more realistic notions about the true nature of women and their capacity for fidelity in absentia.
We had a few more heady days together, roaming around my old London stamping grounds. Then it was time for me to fly back to Taipei. As we spent that last night and those final precious hours together, we could hardly bear the thought of our impending separation. She was all ready to give up her study plans and go back with me, but of course I wouldn’t hear of it. We clung together, made passionately intensive love again and again, and spilt many tears on each other’s cheeks. I was reeling like a drunk, red-eyed and struggling for breath, when I bade farewell to her and made my way to the airport.
For the next three months, we missed each other terribly. She called me regularly (using her dad’s credit card) and wrote me long letters nearly every day, to which I replied in kind. She talked about abandoning her studies and rejoining me in Taiwan, but I firmly dissuaded her from doing such a thing.
In the Christmas vacation, she flew back and we spent a delightful few weeks together. Then came another painful parting, and the flow of letters and phone calls resumed as the only rays of sunshine to light up those dreary days apart. I remained as firmly committed to her as ever, and didn’t have the slightest doubt about her being the same.
In early April, I started to get worried when I didn’t receive any letter from her for two or three days. I tried to call, but she didn’t have a phone in her room and I couldn’t get through to her at the hall of residence (those were the days before mobile phones and the Internet, when communicating across the world wasn’t nearly as easy as it is now). All kinds of disturbing thoughts crowded into my mind: Was she sick? Had she had an accident? Might she have been beaten or stabbed by skinheads in the street? But the true cause of her silence never even crossed my mind.
At last, on about the fourth or fifth day, just as I was leaving for work, the mailman delivered a letter inscribed with that familiar handwriting. What a huge relief! So she must be alright after all. I put it in my bag, mounted my motorbike, and sped off to the office with a greatly lightened heart. Little did I expect the terrible blow that lay in store for me inside that envelope.
As soon as I got to the office, I opened the letter and eagerly started to read the shorter-than-usual missive inside. Then my heart froze and the bottom fell out of my world.
In short, spare sentences, with cruel directness, she told me that, after agonizing for several days and nights, she had concluded that we didn’t have any future together and therefore was putting an end to our relationship. She wished to stay in London, I was firmly rooted in Taiwan, and we’d be wasting our lives to go on as we were. She mentioned that there was another guy, living in the same hall of residence, who had been paying a lot of attention to her, and she’d decided that she’d be better off taking up with this guy than sticking with faraway me.
Needless to say, I was utterly devastated. I don’t know how I managed to get through my work at the office that afternoon, and then go to teach that evening and act as if everything were normal. I rode home in a daze, and then I stopped struggling to stay afloat, and let the swirling tides of shock and misery pull me into their blackest depths.
I’ll spare the details of what I went through in the following weeks and months. It was far worse than the deep grief I felt when my parents passed away. I can fully understand how people become deranged and suicidal in such situations. My mood veered between hopeless black depression and bitter vindictive hatred, when I would contemplate taking the next plane to London, hunting her and her lover down, and exacting bloody revenge against them.
But I never for a moment considered pleading my case and trying to win her back. I felt that her betrayal was so monstrous that it could not possibly be forgiven. The moment I read those fateful lines, the bond between us was snapped and destroyed. All that was left in its place was the desperate pain of unbearable loss, the tearing agony of having a vital part of me ripped out of my chest.
Life went on, and I slowly recovered my equanimity. I even started to regain my old pre-April appetites, eyeing up the lovely ladies around me (I had given up my old philandering ways and been totally faithful to April during our time together).
After a few months had gone by, I received another letter from her out of the blue. She wrote that she realized how wrong she had been, had split up with the other guy, and wanted me to take her back. She said she didn’t expect me to reply after what she had done, but she’d write to me again and again until she could succeed in regaining my favour.
All the bitterness of those months in Hell welled up inside me. All I wanted was to strike back, to make her feel at least some of the pain she’d inflicted on me. I sent back a brutally scathing rejection, the harshest and most hurtful words I could conjure from my pen. And that was the last I ever heard from her.
Of course, it wasn’t long before I deeply regretted having written that letter. And I often hoped that she still might give it another try. This time I would be magnanimous, all would be forgiven, and everything would be like it was before. But she never did.
Since then, I’ve got on with my life. I’ve had a lot of good times with some lovely girls who I wouldn’t have known if April hadn’t dumped me. For most of that time, I just didn’t let any of them get too close. Now, however, I’m preparing to take me a wife at last. She’s a nice girl, and if we both make a full commitment and follow Maoman’s and Tigerman’s advice, I’m sure there should be a good chance of it working out well.
As for April, I sometimes wonder if she ever still thinks about me. I’m sure she doesn’t. She probably just shrugged her shoulders and moved on when she got that last letter.
I used to sometimes fantasize about running into her in the street, and then getting back together and everything turning lovey-dovey again. One time I saw a girl who I thought might be her, though this girl was evidently much too young (the same age as when I last saw April years before). Yet while reason told me it couldn’t be her, in the brief time that hope held sway, I felt so dizzy that I almost fainted and had to sit down. It took me some time to recover my composure.
The only time I came close to getting in touch with her again was, quite strangely, through Oriented. When Gus and Christine had just set it up and I paid my first visit, I was glancing through the list of member profiles when I came upon that fateful name. No mistake, it was her alright. She’d got her doctorate and was still in London, pursuing the academic career she’d always yearned for. I sent a casually friendly message by e-mail, and waited with bated breath to see what kind of reply I’d receive. I did not receive any reply. When I went to those profiles again, hers had been deleted. So that was conclusive enough. The door had been firmly closed and locked for ever and ever, amen.
So there it is: the story of “the one” in Omni’s life. It didn’t have a happy ending, and it cost me dear, but I don’t regret that she came into my life, and I’m thankful for the colour that she brought to it while she passed through.
So she was your “one,” but you were not hers.
(More later)
Half way through I wanted to puke, but I’m glad I made it to the end. Quite a story. I still think about a girl I knew years ago (she was 17 when our relationship started), and would drop everything if she came back into my life.
Good post, Omni. It was long, but heartfelt and rather touching. And I’m glad I made it to the end.
Omni,
Sounds like you never had closure in the relationship with April, which may be in part why you haven’t got over her after so much time has passed. I recommend you try to contact her again, or her parents, at least to find out how she’s doing and what she’s doing. A friendly gesture after so long wouldn’t be like stalking. It might put your mind at ease some.
In a way, April used you. She broached the subject of interracial relationships with her family, she was able to glide into her new life in England and enter the world of academia with your guidance.
I reckon, and not saying this to hurt you, that once she’d carried on with her studies a bit, she thought that you two would grow apart due to different interests. Especially if you were ‘just’ an English teacher in Taiwan while she was planning to be little Ms. Doctorate.
This happened to a close friend of mine here too. He was seriously involved with a woman who went to England to get her Masters. When she returned, he was obviously not good enough for her anymore.
And people do grow apart. Who may have been ‘the one’ at one stage in your life, may not continue to be after going through certain changes, especially those not involving you.
You were naive to think that she’d remain the same April, and your dad was right, you should have stayed there with her. In part, you abandoned her, so she in turn, abandoned you.
You hear and read these things all the time if you’re a woman.
It’s good to hear a man’s side.
[quote=“fredericka bimmel”]
In a way, April used you. She broached the subject of interracial relationships with her family, she was able to glide into her new life in England and enter the world of academia with your guidance.
I reckon, and not saying this to hurt you, that once she’d carried on with her studies a bit, she thought that you two would grow apart due to different interests. Especially if you were ‘just’ an English teacher in Taiwan while she was planning to be little Ms. Doctorate.[/quote]
I think you might well have hit the nail on the head there, F.B. I’ve often thought along much the same lines.
Beautiful but sad Omni - a great post. Did she use you? No, I don’t think so. Just… A young Taiwanese woman in UK packed with lots of handsome foreign guys is a recipe for disaster if you are the guy left behind.
And why would I be interested in someone who doesn’t have a life, doesn’t have any experiences to share, doesn’t have any real opinions of her own, doesn’t do anything? I can appear interested in such people when I’m thinking with my small head, but lusting after someone hardly makes them ‘the one’ does it?
Of course I can be interested in the potential someone that my elfin beauty may become with guidance. (Was that Maoman’s idea?) Find one with a good brain, hardly used, and fill it with my own values and ideas - which nets me a reflection of myself. This can be fun, and I’ve done it s few times, but she has never been the one either.
The one should be the other half of you, not a clone of you, someone who will complement your persona and fill in the bits that are missing from your life as you do hers.
Ironlady has a better idea, unless total reform of Taiwanese society suddenly becomes viable. I met a foreign lass last week (in Carnegies of all places!) that has similar interests, similar ideas, a lifestyle that fits my own, and much more to commend her. She’s smart, educated, fun, and interesting in her own right - not just because her other qualities include a figure to die for. Of course it’s early days and I can’t declare that I’ve found the one on the basis of just a lunch date, but I can at least believe that there are people out there after all that it might be possible to form the big relationship with.
Alternatively we might just have one of those marvellous intense relationships that don’t last but sweep you utterly off your feet for a while. Love at first sight is passion, Omni, it’s lust and excitement, but I don’t think you should confuse it with finding the one. I would look back on an experience such as the one you describe as a treasure to keep forever.
Sometimes you have to bleed to know you’re alive - and I speak as someone who fell off his m/c this morning.
Agreed. After you two shared such real and wonderful love, and she even wanted to come back to Taiwan with you before the school began, you still suspect that she used you? Man, you’re blind and fooled by your sensitive and fragile heart, if I may say so!! 
Omni, Don’t try to negate her love once for you. To think it that way may help you feel like a complete victim or a tragic character, but it won’t make you feel better ultimately as you may have thought; instead, it only leads you to endless pain and hurt.
She was so young and probably lost (from you) when facing a brand new and exciting environment and people. Long distance relationship is never easy. She made mistakes and asked for your forgiveness. You refused and regretted. You were given a second chance to be with her again but you let it slip. Sad, indeed; regretful, maybe; but don’t assume that she would invariable betray or kick you off. That’s not necessarily true.
Long distance relationships are hard. When I ran into a Taiwanese gal I clicked with, I basically told her that a long distance relationship was out of the question, in other words that she would have to move with me once my time here was up. She did. When she wanted back, I obligingly followed her back.
Back to the topic, according to what I gather, if you buy into the “one” theory, Omni had his chance at his “one” and she slipped away. So, he might as well revert to that “sex and fun” thing since his “one” is in the arms of another. If there is only one “one,” if you find that person and then lose them, you have the benefit of knowing for the rest of your life that you will not find your “one” (since you know where he/she is, and it isn’t with you).
I sincerely believe that there are plenty of “ones”.
I am happy with the “one” I got.