A long time ago in my first year at my hotel school, there was a girl I really hit it off with. Because the classes were so close knit because of the nature of our early curriculum, it was one of those things everyone can see and predict “Aha, they’re going to get together.” 

But we didn’t. 

She had a boyfriend at the time, which I later learned wasn’t serious, too late to do anything about it. When she broke up with him, I wasn’t aware of that until months afterwards because I was keeping a respectful distance (I didn’t like the idea of getting between anyone) and then even when I did know, I held back. 

Anyway, the point of this is that she’s a could-have-been. This bothered me a lot before but not so much now. The guy she ended up with at the time I didn’t like, though after a while I didn’t care enough to dislike him and the fact that they’re still together probably suggests a good thing. 

And in a way, that makes me ask “Wow, what would my life have been like if we had gotten together?” I ask myself this because they have been together for that long, and my life in the last 5 years has been driven quite a lot by the fact that I’m unattached and able to float. So it’s not hard to see how, maybe, she and I would have been together for that kind of time. 

But in a way, I don’t think I would like it. 

For example, he got a management internship in Dallas, and she managed to get one in the same city so they would be together. Neither were particularly happy at their workplaces and so he got a job in Santiago, Chile. And she followed him. 

I really don’t know how she got a visa, because he went there to work and she… just went to be with him. She didn’t find work there, couldn’t get a job because she didn’t speak Spanish though she started learning there… 

I have to wonder what she did all day. I saw her in Florida a little later while they were stopping over and she told me that she basically wasn’t working there… and it only occurred to me later to wonder what she did all day. 

She was, by the sound of it, a housewife without the wife part of it. That’s a nice trait for dedication to the relationship, but not such a great one, at least to me, in terms of… well I know we all have periods of not having jobs or being busy. I have lots of those. 

But mine tend to be out of my choices or my circumstances, not so much anyone else’s. I would personally have a very hard time with the idea of asking any girlfriend of mine to give up everything just to hang around me. 

She’s originally Korean, and this was actually a similar story to a Thai friend whose serious girlfriend was also Korean. She moved down to Thailand to be with him, and while he did work with his family’s business he was unsatisfied with his own sense of achievement and wanted to do something independently and just wasn’t making it, for whatever reason. His girlfriend just kept waiting and didn’t seem to mind waiting… but it bothered him. 

After a while he said that the reason they broke up was, at least on his side, that he didn’t see his life going anywhere and he felt really guilty to have her waiting, and waiting. But I think it also bothered him a lot that she wasn’t doing anything either. I don’t know her side of things. 

The point is that, regarding the girl I could’ve been with, her relationship with this guy has been extraordinarily long lasting, which is quite impressive. I suspect that part of it was just out of a simple sense of loyalty to stick by him no matter what, which is in turns nice and also not so cool. I don’t know if it’s what I perceive it to be, but if it is, it would bother me. It would bother me if my girlfriend didn’t seem to worry too much about her own career or ambitions, that it’s okay for her to follow me wherever in the world while I pursued my career. 

Ah well. Probably best not to make assumptions, especially about people I no longer really know and a situation I’m not likely to ever find out much about.