Seeing Women”: They are living together without any relation to love.
When I was reading, I peeped into their lives — not the gooey kind full of love and affection, but something almost like it. And from that, I realized that I wanted to chase a love that’s more than just words on a page or a means to an end. Love is something you work on and explore. I’m totally convinced that “bonding because of love” is what really counts, and getting hitched is just one of many paths you can take on that journey. It’s not the ultimate goal. When it comes to being in love and loving life, women can totally pave their own way and own it.
Check out this book called “Life in a Group: Cohabitation Life Without Love” by Kim Ha-neul and Hwang Sun-woo, two awesome Korean women. So these single ladies in their forties were like, how do we live our solo lives in the future? They both saw each other as fun and reliable friends and decided to live together. But, you know, it ain’t always smooth sailing. They had to figure out how to deal with conflicts and even how to take out the trash. The wild thing is, these two authors have completely different personalities, but they managed to understand each other and adapt. They wrote about all their decisions about living together, and that’s like, pretty deep, right? It’s like a one-man show, except with two people who gotta listen to each other’s ideas and opinions.”
Group life is also a life
This book not only made me understand another form of love but also made me understand the life I didn’t want. To be precise, I understand the marriage of my parents’ “living together” better, and I am more confused about this kind of marriage.
I know that many people from their parent’s generation are also examples of “living together in a partnership”. Regardless of whether you regard marriage as a tool for life or not, if you want to live together, you need to cultivate a tacit understanding and communicate together for that big and small running-in and decision-making. But what I saw in their relationship was endless heartbreak and sadness. Because I thought that they were together because of love. When I was young, I almost thought that the union of the opposite sex must be love. So when their love gradually faded away and their marriage survived, I could only see that they were living an insincere life. However, maybe parents are just living their lives like the two authors. (To die of anger, I was deceived when I was a child, thinking that if I fell in love with a boy, I would have love, but it didn’t work out! Maybe I don’t like boys at all?)
So what’s the difference?
In fact, I feel that the whole society is selling a model of insincere love. Marriage as a legal institution makes such insincerity natural.
If it is just to live a good life, why can we endure a life full of quarrels, non-negotiations, no freedom, restraint, and unwillingness?
If it’s just for living, why must the background color of this day be the pink of love?
If we say that marriage is just an insurance system, then both parties need a lot of negotiation, adjustment, and tacit understanding before entering into this joint contract. Although Kim Ha Neul and Hwang Sun Woo didn’t want to get married, they lived a family life that ordinary people would have when they got married. Negotiations are shown throughout the book. That kind of negotiation may be a verbal expression to each other, or it may be a negotiation between the heart and oneself (to achieve self-consistency). With some consensus and commitments before living together, even quarrels have become a subject of continuous improvement for both parties:
What is the purpose of the quarrel? Do I use my sharpest weapon to hit the opponent’s vitals and let the opponent die in one blow, or hit the opponent until he can no longer stand up, and then step on a few more feet? No, quarrels between those who live together or will live together in the future are future oblivion. We take a shovel, dig a ditch, let all the emotions flow down the ditch, and put it all back together. That’s what quarreling is for.
What this book allows me to see is that two women are flipping an expression about “love”. If love is true, why must it be a pairing between opposite sexes, why must it be bound by a “sexual” relationship? Is it because you want to be lazy, and want to use marriage and sex to bond the relationship on the verge of breaking down, instead of using more active thinking, decision-making, and action to repair it?
Nothing to do with love, but more about “love”
“Although there are no legal documents to prove our relationship, she is really a family member who lives with me.”
The choice of this book is not only because the two authors are women, but more importantly, they practice a sustainable non-sexual, blood-related family life.
In the environment I live in, most people have an important part of their pre-programmed life, that is, they need to find someone they love to live with, grow old, accompany and take care of each other, and maybe the complicated thing of giving birth mixed in. The “person in love” is often a person of the opposite sex; later, same-sex marriage was legalized in some places, and some people may choose to be a person of the same sex. The only thing that remains the same is that the other party and oneself must have a so-called “love” connection to support the subsequent cohabitation life. In society’s default values, that kind of combination is often marriage (and possibly childbirth).
In the life of getting along with the opposite sex in the past, I deeply felt that most of the time I and the other party were like puppets of the patriarchal society, as if they were always playing the role of a girlfriend. Many of the contradictions and anxieties were always referred to as “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus” The pseudo-scientific truth persuades people to give up fighting. I don’t want to make myself a slob because the patriarchal society always condones heterosexual relationships too much. Heterosexual hegemony not only constantly reproduces gender stereotypes and covers up the truth, but also always indulges people with the logic of “with a sexual relationship, there is love, and there is a guarantee for future happiness”. Evasion of responsibility for consultation and reflection.
I don’t want this kind of guarantee, I don’t believe in this kind of promise. (It is true that some people like it very much, but I don’t want it!!!!) “Life in a Group” gave me the inspiration to subvert this commitment. This is not to say that there is no commitment between them, on the contrary, the commitment between the two authors consists of a love that exists outside the false patriarchal relationship. Just like the “practice” emphasized by Fromm in “The Art of Love”. Through observing and understanding each other, through negotiation, and through understanding each other’s expectations for the future, they gradually build a cohabitation life.
Since gradually exploring my sexual orientation, I have naturally accepted that I like girls. However, what troubled me was: How can I prove that my love for the other party is sincere enough? I can escape the tragic fate of “pretending to be a male girlfriend”, so can I also avoid “acting” myself as a female girlfriend? I want to love her sincerely, even if she is not a girlfriend, even if she does not love me in the way women are disciplined, and even if she will grow into something else, I want to be the one who can continue to correct for her when I communicate people with bad habits.
I like this book, it changes the definition of “love” that can be used to support people to go on supporting each other. They introduce their practice of life, contract, and love to the world in a sharp and delicate way.
Kim Ha Neul and Hwang Sun Woo have been single for many years, and they experienced a lot of friction after they decided to live together. One is a hoarder, the other is a clean-up expert; one is extroverted and talkative, and the other is relatively introverted. Even as friends, there are countless conflicts that need to be resolved; even if there is no marriage as the foundation of maintaining the relationship, there are countless compromises and considerations that can be practiced.
“I set a big principle in the renovation project: as bright as possible! Of course, this is a decision made in consideration of the woman Huang Sunyu of the sun. This house was purchased under my persuasion, so I will also try my best to make Huang Sunyu not happy. Regret it, and love it here.”
Seeing Women: Creativity Filled With Love
What do we want is a better life? Or do you just want to get married and live together?
I understand that things can be described as “a dead cow with one neck on one side”, stubborn and rude. When I judge whether a person is worth living together, there is only one standard: when problems arise, is the other person willing to talk to each other and resolve the grievances in their hearts together? In the stories of people around me, I can only see that women choose marriage because of the pressure exerted by the patriarchal society, many people only get promises on their lips and proofs written on paper, but they do not get real in life. steadfastness and happiness.
I feel very uncomfortable that these thought processes that really affect people’s happiness are simply erased.
Writing about the reading experience is the process of clarifying what I think is important. I spend a lot of space on how much I care about what I appreciate about love. Because I saw this between the two of Hwang Sun Woo and Kim Ha Neul.
I hate that relationships are taken for granted because of blood or sex, and love is kidnapped and taken for granted. What I love is personality, every picture is when a person thinks, makes decisions, and acts, not a character or a script.
I absolutely love this book. Because this is the first book I have read that goes beyond family ties (family relationship) and love (sex), and takes friendship as the main axis of life. I don’t know if it’s because of my personal life situation. Over the past few years, I have paid more and more attention to the existence of friends, and I am obsessed with this mutual trust relationship based on tacit understanding and similar perceptions of the world. There are not many obligations and moral disciplines between friends, and friendship can be in various forms. I don’t think which kind of love should really be prioritized, but this move of putting friendship before family and love makes me feel that the matter of “love” has become more vital.
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