LOVE, MARRIAGE AND MORE

My column in Mindanao Daily and BusinessWeek Mindanao 

OPINION

By KLAUS DORING

 September 14, 2021

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I am old-fashioned. For many decades, I have loved collecting old magazine and newspaper clippings. Can you imagine what my two offices look like?

Anyway, in a very old issue of PHILADELPHIA NEWS from 1999,  then columnist Larry Fields confessed: "I lead a life of wine, women and song (by the way, a wonderful waltz of the Austrian Johann Strauss!) - it's cheaper than petrol, food and rent!"

Is LOVE just an expression? Or love and marriage?

Some marriages are made in heaven. You know some? I do. The best of the rest is just simply down-to-earth. Maybe also yours? I am blessed and happy to celebrate my 39th wedding anniversary very soon... .

Maybe, my dear readers, you remember this, "Then the prince swept the lovely young maiden into his arms and carried her home to his castle. And they live happily ever after!" Indeed, they did. Meanwhile, I met several couples, who would say: happily never after!

What I would like to see is an autonomous in home affairs study of all these titles of nobility bearers seven years after their happily-ever-after marriages. Or even earlier, because the so-called darned and tricky seventh marriage year could be even the first one already.

The truth is that life isn't made up of the continual highs found in the initial stages of courtship. Of course, flirting is fun and a wide groove exists. But after a while our system needs a rest. Unanimously, we're in the second stage sooner or later and our marriage life badly needs a new outside coating.

All of a sudden, the partner prefers day and night watching all the sports channels, falls asleep while you're revealing your innermost secrets and even forgets the anniversary for the first or even second time . Just bear in mind: You've won each other's acceptance  and sometimes even feel terribly gloomy. This acceptance shouldn't be undervalued.

Even we see a house that has to be cleaned, many other things have to be organized, and the partner, who looks as fatigued and bored as you feel. Logical question: "That's it? That WAS it?"

And suddenly, we experienced the third stage and learned why it's worth the ups and downs. Maybe we men don't mention any more, how incredible she looks, but we enjoy bleating and grousing at her spending innumerable hours putting her together. But then, suddenly, we men unload the garbage without being asked for it.

Although no marriage is continually blissful - it can be pretty good most of the time. When we last through arguments, money worries, and kid's problems or slowly but surely coming up mid-life crises, we should face reality that our relationship is not always a big day celebration.

It's because the fundamental  reason for a marriage has outlasted the craziness of day-to-day living: we love each other. That's MY idea of "Happily ever after, indeed!"

Valentine's Day is not around the corner. No guys, don't worry! And by the way, this one and only day  should not be a reason or a sad excuse to bring flowers for our partner and invite her to an amazing lunch or hotel overnight stay. As I said, I am very much old fashioned.

Before, behind, between, above, below love

My column in Mindanao Daily, BusinessWeek Mindanao and Cagayan de Oro Times

OUR whole life consists of innumerable fabulous and non-existing parts. We all carry myths into our life and bring our share of unrealistic expectations taught and shaped by education, media, church, and culture and our friends or parents. And? We all experienced it in different situations: suddenly these dreams give way to unhappy nights and terrible realistic mornings. Marriage life, i.e., loses it glow and ardor. Which sets in? Sure: foil, frustration, disillusionment, misanthropy, and many times cynicism become main parts of life.

Spouses  start thinking they may have made a big mistake and married the wrong partner. Some become fidgety and uncertain and - look for another, maybe "very special one", who might fulfill their faded hopes and uncertain dreams. Others rather than risk the temptation to look outside of he relationship for "fulfillment" , moving forward gradually deaden their hearts and deny the desire of something more. Bearing with patience becomes the goal of life. The dream of enjoyment fades into a faint glimmer of the past.

"Finally I got someone at my side who will meet my needs!". How many times we have these outspoken thoughts in mind? Sorry to say, many Filipinas got these thoughts after having met a foreigner... . This myth comes out of a self-centered preoccupation with a terrible egoistic touch.

But listen, didn't we forget, that marriage and every kind of dual partnership should be viewed as a "we-relation' and not as a "me-relation"? This myth explodes with the realization that a health partnership needs two understanding people, who are committed to be there for each other. There should NOT be two individuals seeking for self-fulfillment!

This and that... . It's not easy to write a weekly column in a daily, while many people and important events pass my path. The "Common Myths About Marriage" has to be continued, although they are are heavenly belong to my daily life thoughts.

Romantic feelings rely on a complicated concoction of chemicals and psychology. But as part of our series on Life’s Big Questions with The Conversation, we ask, can they wear off?

Author Parashkev Nachev wrote this on Valentines' Day 2020:  I have recently fallen head over heels in love, but my cynical friends keep telling me that love is nothing but a cocktail of pheromones, dopamine and oxytocin, and that these wear off after a couple of years. The thought scares me, it makes the whole thing seem meaningless. Is love really just brain chemistry? 

Before, behind, between, above, below love! It is no accident that arguably the most erotic line of English poetry is all prepositions. The essence of love, at least of passionately romantic love, is revealed in its very grammar. We “fall” in love, not “wander” into it. And, as you say, we fall “head over heels”, not dragging our feet – often at “first sight” rather than on careful inspection. We fall in love “madly, blind” to the other's vices, not in rational appraisal of their virtues.

Romantic love is overwhelming, irresistible, ballistic. It is in control of us more than we are ever in control of it. In one sense a mystery, it is in another pure simplicity – its course, once engaged, predictable and inevitable, and its cultural expression more or less uniform across time and space. The impulse to think of it in terms of simple causes precedes science. Consider the arrow of Cupid, the potion of a sorcerer – love seems elemental.

Yet love is not easily conquered by science. Let us look at why. Sex pheromones, chemicals designed to broadcast reproductive availability to others, are often quoted as key instruments of attraction. It is an appealing idea. But while pheromones play an important role in insect communication, there is very little evidence that they even exist in humans.

Of course, even if we could identify such a substance, any message – chemical or otherwise – needs a recipient. So where is the letterbox of love in the brain? And how is the identity of the “chosen one” conveyed, given that no single molecule could possibly encode it?

When romantic love is examined with imaging of the brain, the areas that “light up” overlap with those supporting reward-seeking and goal-oriented behavior. But that parts of our brains are set ablaze by one thing does not tell us much if they are just as excited by a very different, other thing. And the observed patterns of romantic love are not that different from those of maternal bonding, or even from the love of one's favorite football team. So we can only conclude that neuroscience is yet to explain this "head over heels" emotion in neural terms.

Do we simply need more experiments? Yes, is usually the scientist's answer, but this assumes love is simple enough to be captured by a mechanistic description. Each reproductive decision can be neither simple nor uniform, for we cannot be allowed to be guided by any single characteristic, let alone the same one. Universally attractive though tallness might be, if biology allowed us to select on height alone we would all have gigantism by now. And if the decisions have to be complex, so must the neural apparatus that makes them possible.

While this explains why romantic attraction must be complex, it doesn't explain why it can feel so instinctual and spontaneous – unlike the deliberative mode we reserve for our most important decisions. Wouldn't a cool, detached rationality be better? To see why it would not, consider what explicit reasoning is there in the first place. Evolving later than our instincts, we need rationality only to detach ourselves from the grounds for a decision so that others can record, understand and apply it independently of us.

But there is no need for anyone else to understand the grounds for our love, indeed the last thing we want to do is provide others with a recipe to steal our object of desire. Equally, in ceding control to recorded cultural practice, evolution would place too much "trust" in a capacity – collective rationality – that is, in evolutionary terms, far too young.

It is also a mistake to think of instinct as simple, and inferior to careful deliberation. That it is tacit makes it potentially more sophisticated than rational analysis, for it brings into play a wider array of factors than we could ever hold simultaneously in our conscious minds. The truth of this stares us in the face: think how much better we are at recognizing a face compared with describing it. Why should the recognition of love be any different?

Ultimately, if the neural mechanisms of love were simple, you should be able to induce it with an injection, to extinguish it with a scalpel while leaving everything else intact. The cold, hard logic of evolutionary biology makes this impossible. Were love not complicated, we would never have evolved in the first place.

That said, love – like all our thoughts, emotions and behaviors – rests on physical processes in the brain, a very complex interplay of them. But to say that love is "just" brain chemistry is like saying Romeo and Juliet is “just” words – it misses the point. Like art, love is more than the sum of its parts.

If the honeymoon is over, and the dark clouds if our daily life erase the pink-tinted illusions, must one faces such as: Where is the scratch on the side of my car? Why must we discuss topics like money, sex, in-laws, friends and such things...?

Real-life 'Glorious'

Female celeb who are at least 20 years older than their partners

Ai Ai delas Alas believes it’s about time stories about older women in relationships reach mainstream popularity, so the viral hit that was the trailer of “Glorious” was welcomed by the screen veteran, herself with a partner decades her junior.

Screen veteran Ai Ai delas Alas and husband Gerald Sibayan have a 29-year age gap. Instagram: @msaiaidelasalas

Delas Alas is nearly 54, while her husband, Gerald Sibayan, is turning 25 this month, making their age gap nearly three decades.

A similar situation is portrayed in “Glorious,” starring Angel Aquino and Tony Labrusca — one of the first original movies made for ABS-CBN’s revamped iWant streaming service.

“Yes! 50 is the new 20! Super relate kami,” delas Alas told PEP.ph, quoting a tagline from the film’s viral trailer. “Dapat noon pa may movie na ganyan. Dati ko pa ‘yan gustong gawin! Wala!”

Watch more in iWant or TFC.tv

In one of the scenes shown in the trailer, the characters of Aquino and Labrusca openly discuss how outsiders perceive their relationship, including that it’s about leeching off the older woman. They agree that’s not the case.

“Meron talagang pag-ibig na hindi lang pera-pera,” delas Alas said. “Hindi naman lahat, pag may edad 'yung lalaki o babae, pera na agad. Puwede namang nagmamahalan din, ‘di ba?” 

Delas Alas and Sibayan are not the only showbiz couple where a woman happens to be much older than her male partner. In photos, here’s a look at other “Glorious” pairings, past and present, with at least 20 years of age gap:

Ai Ai delas Alas and Gerald Sibayan

Age gap: 29 years

Married.

Love and marriage

My column in Mindanao Daily and Businessweek Mindanao

I am old-fashioned. Since many decades, I love collecting old magazine and news paper clippings. Can you imagine how my two offices look like? 

Anyway, in a very old issue of PHILADELPHIA NEWS, columnist Larry Fields confessed: "I lead a life of wine, women and song (by the way, a wonderful waltz of the Austrian Johann Strauss!) - it's cheaper than petrol, food and rent!"

Is LOVE just an expression? Or love and marriage?

Some marriages are made in heaven. You know some? I do. The best of the rest is just simply down-to-earth. Maybe also yours? I am blessed and happy celebrating soon my 36th wedding anniversary this coming March 2019... .

Maybe, my dear readers, you remember this, "Then the prince swept the lovely young maiden into his arms and carried her home to his castle. And they live happily ever after!" Indeed, they did. Meanwhile, I met several couples, who would say: happily never after!

What I would like to see is an autonomous in home affairs study of all these title of nobility bearers seven years after their happily-ever-after marriages. Or even earlier, because the so-called darned and tricky seventh marriage year could be even the first one already.

The truth is that life isn't made up of the continual highs found in the initial stages of courtship. Of course, flirting is fun and a wide groove existing. But after a while our system needs a rest. Unanimously, we're in the second stage sooner or later and our marriage life needs badly a new outside coating.

All of a sudden, the partner prefers day and night watching all the sports channels, falls asleep while you're revealing your innermost secrets and even forgets the anniversary for the first or even second time . Just bear in mind: You've won each other's acceptance  and sometimes even feelings terrible gloomy. This acceptance shouldn't be undervalued.

Even we see a house that has to be cleaned, many other things have to be organized, and the partner, who looks as fatigued and bored as you feel. Logical question: "That's it? That WAS it?"

And suddenly, we experienced the third stage and learned, why it's worth the ups and downs. Maybe we men don't mention any more, how incredible she looks, but we enjoy bleating and grousing at her spending innumerable hours putting her together. But then, suddenly, we men are to unload the garbage without being asked for.

Although no marriage is continually blissful - it can be pretty good most of the time. When we lasted through arguments, money worries, and kid's problems or slowly but surely coming up mid-life crises, we should face reality that our relationship is not always a big day celebration.

It's because the fundamental  reason for a marriage has outlasted the craziness of day-to-day living: we love each other. That's MY idea of "Happily ever after, indeed!"

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. It should not be a reason or a sad excuse to bring flowers for our partner and invite her to an amazing lunch or hotel overnight stay. As I said, I am very much old fashioned. 

Angel Locsin Refuses to Marry this Year

Actress Angel Locsin denied the rumors that she refused to get married with boyfriend Phil Younghausband this year BECAUSE OF BAD LUCK!

"It has nothing to do with luck. The reason why we don't have wedding plans yet is because we're both focused on our work right now. We both have a lot of things we want to accomplish this year, so we're not in a hurry," said Angel.

When asked if she believes in numerology just like Isabel, her character in "Toda Max", Angel said that love love can't be measured by the ength and compatibility of names. "All I know is that Phil and I clicked without the need of numerology, "she said.

I strongly agree with you Angel... .