On a serious note for a moment, I believe that what this thread raises is the entire issue of “jealousy”. In my experience, an abundance of this element on the part of either party in the relationship is definitely indicative of future problems.
My Taiwanese wife was a former Hotel Manager. Obviously, she had many male acquaintances, of varying degrees of closeness, and hundreds of business associates. When we met I was doing TV and movie work, as well as English teaching and editing. I knew a wide variety of local women, from authors, media people, TV stars, teachers, government officers, barbershop ladies, neighbors, friends of friends, etc.
One thing we agreed upon very early was: I don’t check up on you, and you don’t check up on me.
You have to develop some mutual trust there, and obviously that takes time and effort. As a result, early on when someone would come to my wife (my girlfriend at that point) and say “Oh, I heard that Richard was in a coffeeshop yesterday afternoon having drinks with a lady wearing such-and-such kind of clothes, etc.”, she would reply: “What of it?”
We lived together for many years before we got hitched. I even remember one time she called me up at 11:00 pm saying that she was in a hotel room with a friend Mr. Wu and since he had drunk too much and was rather ill, so she was going to stay with him that night.
I said: “OK, as long as I know where you are and you are safe.”
That was the kind of relationship we built up, with mutual confidence about our feelings for each other, and a long term desire to be together, and the active elimination of jealousy.
I don’t know if these comments are of reference to others. The stories I am reading in this thread about a Taiwanese girl who wants to go through all your things and check up on you all the time sound like very bad news to me. In my single days I recall a few girls like that, but we just met at coffee shops or pubs, I never even let them know where I lived. In my impression, this aspect of their emotional makeup was a very deep neurosis, and since they didn’t recognize it as such, they were unwilling to seek competent medical help.
