‘Good friend, bad girlfriend’ by Teo Cheng Wee (today’s Brunei Times, pp 7) attract my attention. In that article, the writer was lamenting on how his best girl friends turn nasty with the girls’ own significant other, yet are always jovial and caring and lots of funs when in the ‘friends’ circle.
Its like Jekyll-and-Hyde, he wrote (I assume it’s a he). In one example he wrote that his Taiwanese female friend scolded her boyfriend for being late (only fifteen minutes) and later explained to him that the boyfriend would be the one taking care of her for the rest of her life so she has to be tough on him.
The writer ended his article by wondering why should people treat their friends better than the love of their lives?
This is interesting as my significant other just asked me the same question to me the other day. The story was like this:
I was having a disagreement with my significant about a silly flowerpot. My partner thought that one would be a perfect gift for his friend. I said why would a man give another man a flowerpot? (That’s strange isnt it?) He replied that his friend has just moved in to a new house and loves gardening. I told him why don’t just get this man a shovel or other ‘manly’-gardening tools. Maybe I bruised his ego so he started to raise his voice, which is like, against our Marriage Convention.
I raised my voice too to explain to him that he was raising his voice. So there we were, both talking at the same time. Boy, we both must look silly! Suddenly my handphone rang and it was from my friend. I answered in my sweetest voice and was really polite, asking how she was, those general questions. She said she just wanted to say hello. So I said, hello too.
When I was done with my sweet-talking, I turned to my husband and I saw that look in his face with his manly jaw dropped. ‘I can’t believe you!’ he said, almost screaming. ‘One moment you were raising your voice and the next thing you were the sweetest angel on earth. Why?!’ he said.
Ok so its not the same words with what the writer was asking but it’s somewhat similar. I didn’t answer my Popeye straight away (because if I do, that will be Fight # 2).
Now I wondered why ladies behave like that. I think,
# 1, We love fighting with our man. It doesn’t matter who wins, just love the kick of it.
# 2, We sleep, eat and breathe with our partners but not with our friends, Ok sometimes we eat and breathe with our friends and maybe sleep too, but not that kind of sleep.
# 3, Women are supposed to be ladies (remind me of that old Malay movie, Musang bejanggut on the difference between a woman and a lady) where it is unlady-like to scream at others but still alright to scream at your man? (because he scream at you first – see # 1)
