Category: Relationships (Page 17 of 22)

Relationships with Koreans- friendships and romance

Talking

2013/01/25 / Nic / 12 Comments

We really love spending time together. We have our own friends and interests but we are happiest being together. However, there are times when we are apart. He has been back to Korea a few times and I sometimes go to my home town, so there have been times where we are separated. Usually just for a week or two, but I think the longest we were apart was 5 weeks. It’s just something you learn to deal with.

When we are apart we usually only talk on the phone for short amounts of time. We don’t have huge conversations because we are used to talking face to face and it’s just not the same. My husband will stumble over English and I don’t like talking on the phone that much in general. He is even worse at chatting online so we only do it for short amounts of time. So when we are not together we usually just have short check ins with each other once or twice a day and that’s it.

It means when we are together again we have so much to talk about and it can take hours to get through everything we want to say.

Kiss

2013/01/15 / Nic / 22 Comments

Yeah he was showing off a bit in front of the other guys. All the Korean guys there were single. Something that I’ve noticed is that Korean guys tend to be more vocal and expressive about being single and wanting a girlfriend or even wanting to get married. Sometimes in Western culture, single guys can say a lot of derogatory things to their friend who is married, like marriage means you are locked up forever or something. For Korean guys, once they hit 30 they can be quite anxious to get married. There is the outside pressure from family, friends and society to settle down, but also personally, in general, they seem to want to settle down once they reach a certain age and it’s not seen a bad thing to desperately want to get married.

For example, while not all Australian guys are like this, there is a culture here where men act like they are always forced into getting married. Even if they really wanted to, there is this act in front of single friends about being tied down and all those type of jokes.

When we hang out with my husband’s friends who are a similar age to him and single, they will say a lot, “I’m so jealous of you guys. I want to get married too.” I’m often surprised at this honesty and their openly displayed jealously at friends who are married. Part of this is because they want it to be very clear that they are looking for someone, as they are relying on their friends to introduce them to someone. I’ll talk about that type of matchmaking in a future post though.

Sorry that this comic is a bit messy. I was travelling for a lot of yesterday and I’m now at my parents’ house and had to do this post quickly last night. My husband is still in Sydney because of work, so we’ll be apart for at least a week 🙁

The Board

2013/01/14 / Nic / 16 Comments

He is really into this sort of thing. I tend to be the more cynical one, but he is sincere in everything he does. He loves being inspired by things and planning things for the future. Sometimes I have fun with that and deliberately do things to annoy him.

Okay dinosaurs can’t go on the ‘Vision/Inspiration board’ apparently. But I like dinosaurs!

I drew one while he was at work and stuck it on the board:

Hehehe.

Seriously though, it is one of the things I love about him. He has big dreams for the future and actually takes steps to achieve them. I get really frustrated at the type of person who is a “dreamer” and talks big but then never do anything about achieving their goals. I know my husband is not that type. He has already achieved a lot already, so I know that his inspiration/vision board is something that does really help him. It really motivates him.

But for me, maybe I do want dinosaurs in my future!

Train Station

2012/12/11 / Nic / 33 Comments

So I spent a few days at my parent’s house and came back to Sydney yesterday. My husband always meets me at the train station and walks me home (and carries my bag), but this time…

If I hadn’t been so tired and grumpy I would have realised he was just setting me up for a surprise. But I really believed his message about him not coming to the station so I was so shocked when he was there with roses and my favourite drink! Unfortunately the train had been 30 minutes late (CityRail curse you!) so he has been waiting for a while. And he got thirsty so he drank some of my drink….haha. It was my favourite EasyWay drink: Taro Milk Tea with lychee jelly. I didn’t mind though, was just happy to see him.

Hungry

2012/11/20 / Nic / 17 Comments

So I thought we could go swimming before lunch… that was a bad idea. Some people just completely change when they are too hungry… I might get a bit irritated when I’m really hungry but I don’t turn into a completely different person! He doesn’t even realise, like even now, after I just showed him this comic he is swearing he wasn’t like that at all. But he was! He was like a grumpy robot that doesn’t talk.

The quickest thing I could make was a toasted cheese sandwich, so he was happy after that. I always do the cooking because his cooking skills are… somewhat limited… but he does most of the cleaning (because I hate cleaning). Perhaps people who don’t cook much get even grumpier when hungry because they have to rely on someone else and feel out of control?

Do you get grumpy when hungry? Do you turn into a different person?

Have a baby

2012/10/08 / Nic / 21 Comments

I can put it back for a few years after I’ve had a look right? hahaha

We get this question a lot. It’s just funny that people urge us to do a really big and life changing thing so they can see how cute a baby would look. I’m sure they don’t mean it exactly like that, but that’s how it often comes out. So sometimes I troll them…

Actually we are just as curious as others to what our children will look like. We talk about it a lot. It’s just we are not in a financial position to have a baby yet. We haven’t been married for long either and we want to have time to ourselves before we bring a kid into the world. There are also other considerations like my husband’s parents. We’d like them to be close by when we have kids and it takes a while to organise for them to move to Australia.

There is that pressure though, a lot of Korean friends assume because we are married we’ll have a baby right away. One of my husband’s friends asked at our wedding reception when we will have a baby! Geez, let us have a wedding night first! It does seem to be more common in Korean culture to have a baby right away, but we’ve decided to wait for a few years because our circumstances are different to most other married couples.

We live in an area where most of the children seem to be half Asian anyway, so we can get a pretty good idea of what our children might look like. So many cute kids everywhere! Sometimes it’s hard to stick to our plan of waiting.

Oww My Toes

2012/09/03 / Nic / 5 Comments

It was Sunday and we were like “Yay let’s make Korean pancakes together!” Unfortunately my excitement ended when my foot collided with the stupid wall.

I think I ‘cry wolf’ too often because he wasn’t too concerned, even with my very loud wailing. Okay sometimes I act too dramatic about minor hurts but this one was bad! You know the feeling of bumping your elbow and knocking your funny bone and the pain is like aghhhhhh? It was even worse than that. All my toes! I swore all my toes were broken!

He was sympathetic but when he saw that nothing was broken he continued to the kitchen but I had to lay there for a bit longer. Ow!