It’s been reported that Singaporeans are more open to online dating, but four in ten singles have never been on a date.
This news report reminds me of a meeting I had with an English lady back when I was still at university. She mentioned that she worked for what was then called SDU or the Social Development Unit, doing what she considered the most unusual job – teaching young men and women how to approach each other.
The common reason why you have people over 25 proclaiming that they’ve never had a girlfriend or are still virgins, is that they are “concentrating on their careers,” and will settle down and have kids. Unfortunately, by the time they reach the stage of “established,” they’re usually too old to adapt to having normal human relationships.
Her reasoning was this, in any other country, a gathering of 100 young men and 100 young women would lead to the entire hotel being booked out. From her experience, it was simply strange to teach people how to act on what their natural instincts should be.
I will undoubtedly get a few brickbats for telling this story, but there is truth to what she mentioned. Singaporeans have been strangely preconditioned into doing things that everyone else might find unnatural.
As a matter of disclosure, I am not great with picking up women or seducing them. My mother has spent the last forty-odd years complaining that I prefer to wait to be picked up rather than chase what I want, hence many of my relationships have ended badly.
However, I’ve always enjoyed the company of “players,” and I’ve had the good fortune of observing them.
My “player” friends have one thing in common – they’re good company. These guys have found a way to be serious enough about life without being boring. As a rule, they have decent enough careers (you don’t have to top up their bus cards) but not to the extent that the career defines them as people.
These are the people that you can hang around with in any random setting without worrying that they’re going to engage any and everyone they encounter with a monologue of their CV and inventory.
Players have decent enough social skills and when they get flirtatious with the girls, they are not crude to the point that you worry that you might be called up in a sexual harassment suit (there is a difference between telling a woman she looks nice in a tank top and asking her to sit on your lap).
If you are at what I’ve just mentioned, you could argue that I’ve not mentioned anything particularly special. However, while I’ve not mentioned anything particularly special, the ground reality is that we have become so conditioned to deal with people in a certain way that what should be normal social skills have become unusual.
As anyone who has studied overseas will note – Singaporeans are great academically. We come up top in exam tables. We outwork just about every other ethnic group in the university. Yet, once we hit the real world, the highlight of every Singaporean’s career is to work for the white boys who didn’t work as hard or do as well in their studies.
While I don’t have hard facts, I do notice that many Caucasians tend to be socially more able than our local workers. How did this happen? I believe that a lot of it comes from the way our people have been trained from birth.
Success, we are told, is highly dependent on your academic results and parents make it a point to see to it that they do nothing else except study. Parents will do whatever it takes to ensure that their kids mix with other kids from the same background and in the situation.
It goes without saying that people, brought up in this situation, will continue this behaviour when they go to work. We have a situation in Singapore where people brag about, they work the world’s longest hours because this is a continuation of their school days.
This is compounded by external factors. Property prices are constantly rising, as are car prices. Social messaging states that you need a bigger and better house and car if you are to be regarded as anything respectable in society.
Hence, we have a population that does well when someone else gives them a job. It goes without saying that when it comes to things like “dating,” people don’t have time to date or to look at anything outside the textbook.
The common reason why you have people over 25 proclaiming that they’ve never had a girlfriend or are still virgins, is that they are “concentrating on their careers,” and will settle down and have kids. Unfortunately, by the time they reach the stage of “established,” they’re usually too old to adapt to having normal human relationships.
We shouldn’t need to have to “teach” people how to get along or to be able to act in social situations. Yet, this is precisely the situation that Singaporeans have been conditioned to do. It’s time that people be allowed to do what comes naturally without being pressured into acquiring things that won’t make a major difference in their lives.
A version of this article first appeared at beautifullyincoherent.blogspot.com
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