Cream & Sugar

If you asked me two weeks ago what I thought I’d be writing about in my next blog post, I would have guessed it would be about doing work from chic cafes and going to see Buddhist temples here in Chiang Mai. As it turns out, that’s not far off, but it’s not spot-on either.

There have been some very pleasant surprises.

I’ve been enjoying living here a lot, and I’ve settled in nicely — more on that later. It’s been relaxing, and I’ve been doing my thing, working my remote freelance copywriting job from countless different beautiful, tasty, and inexpensive coffee shops, much as I’d expected. On the other hand, I haven’t been going to nearly as many temples as I might have guessed; I’ll write more about that in another post.

As for surprises — well, her name is Ketmanee (and her nickname is Cream), and we’ve been seeing each other everyday since shortly after I got to Chiang Mai. She’s wonderful, and is unlike any girl I’ve ever dated before in a very good way.

She’s been a big part of my life for the past couple weeks, so I’m going to talk about love, dating, and commitment in this post as viewed through different cultural lenses. I’m going to make some generalizations, comparisons, and inferences that are not objective at all, so I apologize in advance if you vehemently disagree with anything. But hey, it’s my blog, not yours.

Caffè Americano

I’ll start with my reference point and then we’ll come full circle with some observations and examples from my relationship with Cream. Simple enough, right?

I’ve dated a lot of girls back home over the years. There’s something fun and enjoyable about being with someone, but dating in America is peculiar in its own way. American culture is so individualist that it’s common and even expected to only see your partner once every few days (at least in the early stages), regardless of if you wanted to see them more or less often. Outside of that, you’d go about your busy, complex, first-world-capitalist-country “important” life, and they’d go about theirs.

This isn’t a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just a thing. I think the right amount of independence, space, and temperance are really healthy and needed. But often, a lot of selfishness and entitlement comes with American individualism, and I was painfully aware of this in almost every relationship I ever had. “Dating” was really just a fancy word for getting intensely scrutinized by someone trying to decide if you were worth their time and love, and only seeing each other once in a while was often a reflection of this guardedness. I think that’s the wrong way to approach it because genuine love and happiness are infinite, curious, creative, and only want to be shared, sort-of like what I mentioned in my last post about ehi passiko.

For me, it’s not usually the other person that challenges me to stay in a relationship; rather, it’s overcoming my own neuroses. By staying with someone and riding out negativity, I develop equanimity (upekkha) and do deep internal work, and the relationship becomes more meaningful and loving. That’s why committed, long-term relationships are both more rewarding and more challenging than short-term ones, and the same is true of all other commitments including sobriety, a stable meditation practice, or creative work. You get out what you put in.

On the other side of things, entitlement is rooted in the belief that the world should bend over backwards to suit someone’s needs without ever requiring them to take risks, be vulnerable, and grow.

In my experience, the problem in America is that we’re not sure how we feel about that last sentence. Is it good to never have to take risks, be vulnerable, and grow, or is it bad? Deep inside, I think we crave the challenge to risk, adapt, and grow into our full potential, but we live in a society that tries to sell us easy solutions and safeguards so that we can live a life of relative stability (*cough* and stagnation *cough*). Many people seek the perfect partner, the perfect career, the perfect friends, the perfect products, and the perfect routines as a way to make their lives easier and to avoid challenges, and even to make committing as risk-free as possible while attempting to reap its rewards; namely, the socially accepted ideas and images of happiness that we’re sold.

The fact that we ride this line at all is only occasionally recognized and acknowledged. Who wants to settle? The problem with dating in America is not that people want a fantastic partner; instead, I think it’s that people are too quick to react and cast judgement on the other person, and aren’t willing enough to recognize and work through their own challenges. This prevents them from emotionally investing, committing, and trusting someone — three things which might generally be considered the “goals” of dating, but that don’t actually happen until after you’ve dated someone for a while.

Espresso Ristretto

Let me suggest an idea here for an alternative way to do things. In personal development and coaching over the years, one concept that has stuck with me is “You can skip most of the things you don’t want on the way to the thing you do want.” The time spent doing things you don’t love can easily sap your motivation and prevent you from reaching the thing that you do love — so try to cut out what’s unnecessary as much as possible.

For example, if your dream career is to be a freelance writer, how are you going to approach it? Will you spend years preparing, perhaps even putting yourself into debt to earn a degree or credential? For a handful of careers that’s necessary, but for most, you don’t need to prepare much; you can just start doing what you want to be doing. Experience is the best teacher, and preparation without experience seldom holds its value anyway. If you want to be a writer, my advice is to just start finding small, simple writing contracts, and work up from there — after all, that’s what I did.

Start before you’re ready. You don’t need experience or preparation to get started, and you won’t know what “ready” means anyway if you’ve never even tried. From the beginning, you can do the same type of things you’ll be doing down the road, rather than building up to them with excessive and tedious training and theory. The more you risk, the faster you’ll learn.

I like this idea, and it isn’t only applicable to careers. Why should relationships be any different? If you want to have a long-term relationship, maybe it’s possible, perhaps even beneficial, to settle into that dynamic from the very beginning, rather than repeatedly going through this impossibly selective judging process (“dating”) and never letting things get to where you want them to go because you and/or your partner is looking for perfection and stability. Instead of trying to decide if someone is worth your time and if they deserve your love, why not take the opposite belief and assume they are until proven otherwise? Start from where you want it to go, and work back from there.

By settling into a long-term dynamic and committing to someone, I’m not saying you should tell your date all of your deepest secrets and biggest flaws the first time you meet them. To do that would be missing this point too because this dynamic doesn’t involve so many bursts of drama. Instead, I think meaningful long-term relationships are about calm, supportive partnership where you trust the other person and they trust you, and you don’t let stupid, petty things bother you and prevent you from wanting to be with them. Things take time to develop, yes, but I firmly believe that you can have that commitment right from the beginning, when you approach the relationship with a curious and playful “let’s see where this goes, together” mindset rather than a selfish and exacting “this had better be perfect” one.

All this means that it’s okay to want a great relationship and a great partner, but don’t let attachment to your idea of what that should look like prevent you from jumping in with your full heart, trying new things, taking risks, and being surprised. Even if it doesn’t go as well as you might have hoped, you’ll learn a lot faster and instantly develop more meaningful connections with people than if you had played it safe and never risked much.

กาแฟ ไทย (Caffè Thai)

I can’t confirm how accurate this is, but from what I’ve heard, dating and starting relationships in Thailand essentially happens like this:

1. You meet someone.
2. You go out a few times to see if you get along.
3. Assuming you do, you commit to each other and are now boyfriend/girlfriend (or whatever combination of labels suits you).
4. You see where things go from there, with the important implication that you’re together and it’s not casual anymore.

I have a few Thai friends that I talked to when I started dating Cream. Whenever I asked anything, different people consistently gave the same advice: “Man, just don’t worry. Don’t get your hopes up. Let it happen if it’s gonna happen; if not, don’t be upset.” Generally speaking, I think this is pretty good advice. We should all chill out a bit.

As I kept going out with her, though, my friends started inquiring “So are you guys in a relationship yet?” And when I started saying “Yeah, we see each other everyday and we’re really close” they said “Congratulations!” as if a threshold had been crossed and now, suddenly, things were very serious and “happening.”

My interpretation is that in Thailand, people commit to trusting, long-term partnerships much faster and more openly than in the U.S. Once you decide you want to be with someone, you’re with them, and things don’t easily get sabotaged by an entitled-to-perfection paradox-of-choice mentality like in America. From the beginning, there’s a lot less selfishness and a lot more trust. It still takes time to develop an emotional connection and to get to know someone, of course, but the feeling is one of acceptance and support rather than judgement and rigidity.

Hot Or Iced

Cream works in marketing for a local kombucha company and is incredibly busy, working 9 am to 6 pm six days each week, plus being on-call for a number of hours everyday. As an ambivert who needs a healthy dose of recharge time myself, I told her when we first met that if she’d like more time alone, it doesn’t bother me if she doesn’t always want to see me — after all, I’m used to that and I don’t take it personally. I completely understand if she wants to balance her life and her priorities (including me) however she wishes.

To my surprise, she said “Yes, I’m busy, but I still want to spend my free time with you.” For the first few weeks of knowing each other, we’d see each other everyday, usually beginning with dinner. She works in a pretty central location, so most days she wouldn’t even go home before coming to pick me up on her scooter.

Cream was ready for someone to be in her life, and when I showed up, she immediately welcomed me into it as if we’d been together for a long time. She didn’t have the excessive overeagerness that’s usually a red flag; instead, she was prepared to share her world and build a meaningful relationship, and she had the courage to make it happen. She was ready to jump in with me and see where it would go, and she’s very emotionally mature.

It’s a completely different relationship than any I’ve previously had. It’s unusual for me to be with someone who doesn’t immediately react towards me whenever they’re stressed or tired, and who genuinely wants to invest and be with me. I don’t feel judged, nor do I feel like there is any unrealistic expectation that I would need to be unwaveringly perfect; instead, I feel cared for, accepted, enjoyed, and even celebrated.

I feel like I can really rely on her. We’re very peaceful together; there hasn’t been any drama so far, and I’m confident we’ll handle differences in a mature, communicative way when they inevitably come. We understand that we’re on the same team, and neither of us is particularly selfish. Each of us genuinely wants to be with the other and there’s an unspoken commitment and loyalty, recognizing that it’s not a casual thing and that neither of us wants anyone else. I’m very grateful for her, and she’s told me the same.

How Do You Like Your Coffee?

So, what do you think: Is it naïve to start with love and trust, rather than building up to it as you get to know someone?

Ultimately, I think this is a matter of personal preference, and there’s nothing wrong with taking it slow. But as I’ve often suggested on this blog, don’t make decisions based on fear! If you’re being patient (or impatient, for that matter) because you’re afraid of opening your heart, the decision will not serve you.

For my whole life, I’ve never had much fear of other people, and I like to live with a “what’s the worst that could happen?” mentality while diving into things as quickly as I can. I’m a firm believer that the vast majority of people are not intentionally shitty and that you can trust them, so good things will happen when you let go of fear and just jump right in. The same has applied in my relationship with Cream.

Now that I’ve mentioned that, let me tell you about something pretty funny that happened.

Cream lives in a house just north of downtown. She has a roommate, but I later learned they were in the middle of a fight when she and I met for the first time. A few days later, Cream told me that her roommate screwed her over and had unexpectedly decided to move out, so she was looking for a new place since she couldn’t afford to live there alone. You probably see where I’m going with this.

I had an accommodation lined up already: I was planning on staying at a condo, rented through Airbnb, that I had reserved months ago and got a sweet deal on. (Fun fact, Airbnb has monthly and longer rentals which come with big discounts, plus the lack of tourists due to COVID has made accommodation here quite cheap.) But, as my move-in day approached, my host was unresponsive. Eventually, move-in day came, and I still hadn’t heard from him or received any details. My reservation got cancelled and I received a full refund.

At that point, I had already been seeing Cream everyday for a week, and I floated the idea to her a day before the condo fell through — hey, if things don’t work and you want to try it, I could live here with you for a couple months. She thought about it and said yeah, let’s do it, I want to see you everyday and you’ve been sleeping here every night anyway; let’s just keep doing what we’re doing.

So, long story short, within a month of arriving in Chiang Mai, I’m dating a beautiful local girl who I’ve now been living with for over a week. Life is good and I’m very happy.

Most people would call me naïve, and for seemingly good reasons. I know that I’m jumping a lot of guns here. There are plenty of notorious stories where foreigners get roped into bad situations through “love” that, surprise surprise, turns out to just be manipulation. Perhaps you expect me to become a victim of this too.

And yet, living with her has been fantastic in every way. The trusting partnership vibe I mentioned before has only deepened. It’s bizarre and surprising to get along so well with someone after knowing them for such a short time, and I’m really happy spending so much time with her.

It’s a wonderful feeling to go to bed and wake up next to my girlfriend everyday, rather than just once in a while. She gets up a little while before me and makes me coffee, which I then sip in bed while she showers and gets ready for work. At 8:30, we get on her scooter and drive into town, occasionally stopping at her favorite breakfast stand where we pick up some tasty meat skewers and sticky rice for a fraction of a dollar, stopping for just a fraction of a minute. We each go about our day and then meet again for dinner, and occasionally lunch too. I feel like I’ve been here and known her for a much longer time than I really have.

Cortado (Other Tidbits)

I’ve met Cream’s best friends a few times and it’s been fascinating to hear them speak Thai together, so quickly and with so much inflection. I don’t understand much of what they’re saying, but it’s easy for me to tell how they feel. They’re all fluent in English, but they enjoy speaking both languages. Occasionally I’ll hear a word a few times and ask what it means. I’m learning slowly.

Speaking of which, I also take daily one-on-one language lessons. I’ve learned to read and write in Thai, which feels like a huge accomplishment, considering their alphabet has 43 consonants, 28 vowels, five tones (man, those are hard!), and all sorts of funky sounds like “ng-” and “euuh” that are hard for me to make. I can read and pronounce everything at this point, but I still don’t know what most of it means. We’re switching the focus to vocabulary and grammar soon. My friends and my teacher are all very impressed; a handful of foreigners learn to speak Thai, but not nearly as many learn to read and write it, and I’ve picked it up very quickly. My friends have been teaching me Thai swears, too. We had a good laugh when I mixed up “getmeh” (“motherfucker”) with “Ketmanee” (my girlfriend’s name).

It’s fun hanging out with people and getting to know them, especially when their lives are so different from everyone I’ve ever known. I’m always out and about, grabbing a meal or coffee with Cream and new friends, or working at a café or coworking space.

It feels like home here. I’m not in the fast flux of travel anymore; instead, I’ve settled into a more stable routine, particularly with my language class at the same time everyday (2:30 pm). When I first got to Thailand, it didn’t really feel like I lived here yet, which made everything feel a little more overwhelming and lonely. But now, I feel normal. It’s a new and very different normal than normal in the U.S., but I feel peaceful and calm, letting me sit back, enjoy the ride, and appreciate this beautiful new life. My friend Shane put it perfectly: “It’s the same here, but it’s completely different.”

A few days ago was the one-month anniversary of when I got to Thailand. It feels like it’s been far more than a month, because so much has happened. I’m already a very different person than the one who sat at JFK airport just five weeks ago. It’s been exciting, incredibly stimulating and novel, and enjoyably challenging. I look forward to seeing where things go — after all, what’s the worst that could happen?

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are able to move beyond fear to enjoy the aliveness and connection that comes with taking risks, both big and small.

I challenge you to start at whatever level you’re at. If you’re very scared, see if you can take a small risk today; if you think you’re fearless, see if you can find and do something that genuinely makes you uncomfortable. Otherwise, life can be awfully boring and cynical. Have faith in other people and they’ll almost never let you down.

With peace & love,

Andrew

P.S. Feel free to share your risk-taking challenges, and what you learned from them, in the comments below, no matter how big or small they are!

P.P.S. I don’t promote it much, but since this post made so many references to coffee, I’ll direct you to my Buy Me A Coffee page if you feel like sharing one with me sometime!