Our lives as a family, has been a series of comedic, if not tragic timing. My father had, at several different points in his life, prominent career that seemed to point towards the ideal of success. He was once a manager of human resources at RCA of Taiwan, subsequently owned a very successful company with a few partners. I don’t think my father was ever a business genius of any sort, rather his rapid ascension at almost any given opportunity had more to do with his genial personality. Family might be his priority, but friends were a close second to the extent of seemingly eclipsing the first. However, that forgiving personality would prove to be his flaw as well.

I never questioned much about my father’s past, as I’ve never been a person who’s particularly interested with history. Although I’ve overheard that my father’s company eventually failed because of the misplaced trust in one of his partners, resulting in the loss of their IP and the manufacturing plant. It’s a theme that plays out in several different occassions in his life, because by nature, he trusted people until they’re proven untrustworthy.

Dad’s decision to pursue higher education in America came shortly after that. We became a long distance family, while dad pursued his degree and worked hard to eventually migrate us over to United States, mom brought us up on her own with help from various family members. Dad would come home during summer vacation, only being able to stay for two to three months a year.

During one of those summers, we went to pick up Dad from the airport. I remember searching for Dad’s old driver’s license at home the night before, because I had forgotten exactly what Dad looked like (a sort of condition that persist today, I consistently have problems remembering people’s faces). At the airport, I saw this man that vaguely resembled my dad from the driver’s license (he had shaved his mustache, which made him much harder to recognize); I walked up to him and asked, “Are you my dad?” He cracked a big smile at the time and laughed at my silliness, but even at that young age, I thought that I might have unintentionally hurt his feelings.

Dad’s feelings were important to me, although he was gone for most of the year at that point in my life, there was never a question to how much he loved us. Those summer vacations when he was home, were still some of the most memorable part of my life. There as no particular moment in those time that stood out, but it was the most normalcy that existed in our family. We went out, we went shopping, we went to restaurants, we hung out. The most simple part of life was the most treasured, and those months that we had to spend apart just made those moments we spent together even more precious. Dad would place his hand on the back of my neck when we walked down the street, his hand was rough, ridden with callus, and the most wonderful warmth for a little boy.

Dad’s plan was to move the entire family to America, but by the time he got us all green cards (a process which took years of work), my brother was already over the legal age at which males are allowed to leave the country without first serving in the army. Instead of the entire family moving over, my mom had to stay in Taiwan to take care of my brother. The choice to come to America was never forced upon me, but somehow Dad knew that I would’ve enjoyed life here, much more than the life I had in Taiwan.

Even then, the plan was still to move the entire family to America. Timing again foiled my dad’s future, as he finished his Ph.D. at a period of economic downturn with an extremely tough job market, especially tough for a man who spoke English with a heavy foreign accent in a very competitive field. We spent a year traveling & interviewing for jobs in various locations. We would find an apartment here, stay with a friend there. Dad would take trips to visit different university campuses in hopes of landing somewhere, which took anywhere between a day to a week at a time. In that single year, I went attended four different schools, and eventually Dad realized the best opportunities for him is still back in Taiwan.

For better or worse, I ended up being the only symbol of achievement for his years of struggle. Once again the choice of where to stay was left to me, and I chose to stay here. After all the plans fell through, I remained mostly intact to what Dad really wished for. Still, I did not become a doctor as he wished, but I lived a life that’s relatively well-to-do.

The funny thing about having a long distance between Dad and I, that’s probably the thing that made our love the strongest. We didn’t have much time to fight or argue, we barely had enough time to love.

Timing would be my dad’s nemesis for one last time.

As my brother was expecting the first child of this generation of our family, I had made plans to visit them after the baby was born, and spend some quality time living at my parent’s house pretending to be a twelve year old again.

Two days before my brother had his first child, our family’s first grand daughter, my father passed away.

It was sudden and without warning, as his air passageway finally collapsed from years of smoking. We knew he was having problem breathing for a while, but it was under control for the most part. One moment he was just sitting there, watching TV and relaxing with my mom. The next, he couldn’t breathe, and there was nothing we could’ve done about it. It was already too late by the time the ambulance arrived.

I guess everyone always wished that they had more time to spend with their loved ones before they pass away. There is never enough time. It just seemed even more painful because I knew exactly when I was going to book that flight to see him, and that I just spoke to him four days before wishing him happy Father’s Day*.

By rough estimation, there were anywhere between 500 to 800 people who attended Dad’s funeral. Friends, colleagues, family, and hundreds of students from current and years past. For weeks leading up the to funeral I had been calm and comforting my mother whenever possible. Despite my best effort to be the voice of reason and acceptance, I completely lost it when I had to address the crowd. I don’t know if what I said came through as anything more than a series of incomprehensible sobbing.

Up until that moment, I don’t think I’ve ever fully comprehended my dad’s accomplishment since those years when he came back to Taiwan. Seeing all those hundreds of students that all held Dad in such a high regard, realizing how Dad had influenced the lives of so many, filled me up with pride and sadness all at once. I knew at that moment, he loved them all, just as he’s always loved all his friends. They were all Dad’s surrogate family.

I had to wonder, if Dad had lived 20 more years, faded into the distant memories of these students, would they still remember him if he had passed away then?

For once, time did not forsake him. If there was the perfect way to pass through this life, Dad had picked the perfect time. He passed away gloriously, enveloped by the love of all those who will always remember him.

*:Father’s Day in Taiwan is on August 8th.

I found her article on the beginning of her open marriage fascinating:

Portrait of an Open Marriage

You can also find her blog here at My Open Book, she has posted the first chapter of her upcoming book on the website. I’ll find sometime to read it in the next few days, maybe.

Although, there are some things I should clear up. Usually any information, discussion on open marriage and/or open relationships comes from the perspective of a participant. I think the media portrayal of these people is more or less connected to what people think of college frat parties. A bunch of horny, young folks under heavy influence of various chemicals, doing, well… you know the rest.

The reality of me:

• I am not an extremely handsome guy, average at best. Which also means I’m not picking up women at different bars daily and engaging in all sorts of fun activities.
• I am introverted, shy to strangers, and generally don’t enjoy being in huge crowds.
• I am extremely picky in my relationships with others (not just in a love sorta way, I’m even picky about everyday friendship). I have “years” of gaps between intimate relationships.
• As a result of the shyness mentioned above, no, I haven’t dated very much.
• “Haven’t dated very much” is probably an overstatement.
• Oh yeah, lastly, I give off that “a girl’s best friend” vibe, which means for the most part, women cry on my shoulder when their terrible boyfriend had just done something horrible to them. I’m almost always on the side of, “Too bad nothing can ever happen between us, because we’re just such good friends!”

So as you can see, I certainly don’t fit into the media stereotype of a “open-relationship” participant. However, I don’t have to fit that stereotype to consider the evolution of relationships in society. I also think that even if your next-door, all-American-from-the-60′s-sitcom neighbor was in an open-marriage of some sort, you might not ever realize it. Unless you have some voyeuristic habit of your own. (TMI?)

Even though “web 2.0″ could be considered some sort of a revolution, depending on one’s definition, the reality is that web 2.0 perpetuated the communication protocol that was already available. All we did was broaden the base of communication medium. For example, anyone can start their own blog (*cough*.. including yours truly) and attempt to spread their own form of propaganda through the internet. We took what traditionally required years of struggling & attempting to get oneself published in credited medium, and spread that power to anyone with a minimal amount of technical knowledge. It did liberate authors from the traditional pathways of reaching an audience.

Therelies the problem though, that anyone can be an author, but not everyone has content & stories to tell. Numerous blogs are being added to the “blogosphere” all the time, but only a few of them contain meaningful content. Most of the news blogs don’t actually do investigative reporting, they take the same AP wire feeds from traditonal outlets and attach their own viewpoints. “News blogs” don’t bring us news, they talk about news that’s already been brought to us by the good old standard. So even with this supposed revolution, almost all of our content is still based on what we long considered archaic.

So what does all this have to do with love?

I have a profile on Match.com. A supposedly revolution towards how people can find potential dates, and hopefully long-term, meaningful relationships that can extend into the far beyond. However, just as I stated above, Match.com isn’t a revolution in how people can find & relate to each other; it is an evolution of the good old dating services that used to occur through agencies, phones & otherwise. The same personals ads that you can post on Craigslist isn’t that much diffferent in concept as those personal ads that people used to purchase in newspaper (one main difference, is that you no longer have a strict character limit on how much you can talk about yourself, which is ultimately mixed blessing at best).

The evolution here, just as blogs give everyday joe the ability to publish their thoughts, internet dating allow people to broaden their base and discover a much large population. Within the traditional market though, this isn’t all that interesting. Match.com’s existence allows me to see more profiles & potential dates than I would have otherwise (and spending less time at bars), but it also opens up a much higher number of potential competitions. All in all, it’s a good evolution that probably comes out to be a zero-sum game of sorts.

The more interesting evolution with internet, is how this broaden of base and enabling of communication allows what used to be “niche” to become mainstream. For example, linking up D&D geeks across the country through AOL (yes, good old American Online, oh, how I miss the hundred dollar bills for overage from you. Cellphone carriers has nothing on you!), or newsgroups that allows almost any special interest group to exist as a community across hundreds of miles.

Where Match.com is a direct descendant of traditional dating, the impact of internet on the “alternative”, non-traditional, and thus, niche relationships is much more apparent. Sites like AdultFriendFinder has been around for years, for people who are strictly looking for relationships that emphasizes physical connection first over the emotional (or, sometimes nothing emotional at all). There are niche dating sites that targets specific demographics, goth groups, interracial dating, BDSM, and the list goes on and on. There are even sites like AshleyMadison which focuses strictly on martial affair, or open-marriage relationships.

The traditional, Protestant upbringing side of me says, “OMG, I can’t believe there are sites that promotes such sacrilegious relationships!!” The reality is, I denounced going to church when I felt betrayed, when these same people who preached tolerance and love decided to participate in public protest against gay marriages in San Francisco. At the time I was working in a beauty company with several gay co-workers. In particular, my boss at the time, with his partner of more than six years, were ecstatic that they can finally be married and receive that ever-so-important symbolic recognition from the world. Only to see his heart completely crushed when it was taken away from him again.

One out of two marriage licenses that we issue here in United States ends in divorce. Yet somehow, we felt righteous about taking away the right of two people, who have been completely in love for years, the the ability to be married; and gladly give that right to a couple that will end in bitter divorce. At the time I thought, if my boss & his partner can’t get married, what little justification do we have for any of us to be married at all?

I think that’s really the first time, that I had issues the traditional notion of a relationship.

It’s not until recently though, that I find myself realizing that these alternative relationship, ones that veers away from tradition, might be ones that makes even more sense than the gold standard held by society (which should also be noted, isn’t a standard across society of humankind as a whole, but each culture has their unique take).

A bit of wisdom from my best friend is the trigger. In a conversation, she brought up that there is no worse loneliness than being alone in a marriage. I’ve seen those type of loneliness in people that I knew, some of them managed to escape the grasp of that life, but a lot of them also stuck around because they felt that they just had to. Conforming to what society taught them was the “right” thing to do.

This conformist ideal is in line with another friend of mine, who’s much more emboldened in traditional value than anyone else I know. Quite literally, she would fit in America of the 1940′s much better than she would today. She attributes the rising divorce rate to people who aren’t willing to stick around and work things out, very much a tragedy in her belief.

Of course, I can’t agree with it. I’ve seen too many relationships where people stick around not because they had to, but because they thought they were in fact, stuck. They didn’t want to consider the possibility of taking that risk to better their life situation, it’s too scary, too daunting. It’s not that they were necessarily working things out in their own relationship, because sometimes, there is nothing you can do when people change. Sometimes they become someone who you are no longer in love with, and you have to move on.

I simply think that people today are more intelligent and more independent, that people no longer happy to simply being accepted by social standards. Some of those time, on the path to discovering happiness, you have to leave traditional value behind.

What the success of sites like AshleyMadison, AdultFriendFinder really shows, is that as a society we are realizing the viability of those alternative type of relationship. The only type of intimacy that the Bible allows us to have, may not be the only solution. Why can’t we love more than person at a time, why can’t we be intimate with multiple people in our lives? Why is marriage only limited to heterosexuals?

An affair is only an affair because of society’s definition. Eliot Spitzer was ousted for hiring prostitutes, which I had no problems with, the problem I have with him is the fact that he was busting prostitutes at the same time. It’s his conflict of interest, rather than his interest that disgusts me. However, it’s a pretty well publicized example of a man who obviously was looking for something else outside of his marriage, and he went through with it despite of the risks. What’s even more ironic, is that his replacement, David Paterson immediate admitted that he also had extra-marital affairs for years just so it doesn’t become a media circus. In his case, his wife also had extra-martial affairs as well.

I can’t help but think, if our society accepted an “open-marriage” of sorts, or just simply abandone the whole notion of marriage altogether, that these issues would never arise. In my personal relationships, I’ve always been very much loyal and devoted to only one person at a time. However, in that devotion to one, I’ve also managed to almost completely severe my feeling towards other people that were in my life at the time. At one point, it might have been shameful for me to admit that in middle of my dedicated relationships, that I had thoughts about other women. I have at those times, very forcefully closed off my communication with these other people whom I also felt a lot of affections for. Only now, I’m starting to think that maybe I didn’t have to, maybe “we” didn’t have to. Maybe this whole society doesn’t have to. Maybe it’s about time we stopped using marriage as a claim of ownership to another person’s heart.

Of course, very much like the internet’s non-revolution, these type of new ideals with relationship management is nothing new. Beyond the fact that AshleyMadison and AdultFriendFinder are simply expanded markets for existing niches, doesn’t anyone remember the 60′s?