"Seeing Women": They live a cohabitation life that has nothing to do with love

"Team Life: Cohabitation Life Not About Love" is a book co-written by two Korean women, Kim Ha Neul and Hwang Sun Woo. It records the two people's meeting, becoming friends, discussing living together, looking at and buying a house together, decorating and making decisions together. What kind of garbage should be thrown out and what items should be kept, and the mental journey of dealing with conflicts together... Two single women in their forties thought about how to live their lives as single women in the future. Seeing the fun and reliability of each other as friends, they tried to live with each other. The two authors have very different personalities, and their imagination and yearning for life gradually get closer through their mutual understanding and integration. In this book, every decision about living together will be recorded in the writings of both parties - I think this is like a metaphor. In such a relationship, life is no longer like one person talking to himself or both parties holding their own opinions. It is a double one-man show of one's own opinion, but a real scene where two people have the opportunity to speak their minds and both people must listen to the other's voice.

Group life is also life

This book not only made me understand another form of love, but also made me understand the life I once didn’t want. To be precise, I better understood my parents’ “living together” marriage, and I also had a better understanding of this kind of marriage. Confused.

I know that many people of my parents' generation are also examples of "living together". Regardless of whether marriage is regarded as a tool of life, if you want to live together, all the big and small adjustments and decisions need to cultivate tacit understanding and communicate together. But what I saw in their relationship was endless heartbreak and sadness. Because I thought that they were together because of love. When I was a child, I almost thought that the union of opposite sex must be love. So when their love gradually faded away and their marriage survived, I could only see that they were living an insincere life. But maybe my parents are just living their lives like the two authors? (I’m so angry. I was deceived when I was a kid. I thought that if I fell in love with a boy, I would have love. But it didn’t work out! Maybe I didn’t like boys that much at all?)

So what's the difference?

I feel strongly that society as a whole is selling an inauthentic model of love. If people are superstitious about authority, then the law, which has an inexplicable sense of authority, makes marriage a legal institution and makes such insincerity a matter of course.

If you just want to live a good life, why can you endure a life full of quarrels, no negotiation, no freedom, restraint, and unwillingness?

If it is just to live a happy life, why does the background of this life have to be the pink of love?

If marriage is just an insurance system, then both parties need a lot of negotiation, running-in, and tacit understanding before entering into this joint contract. Although Kim Ha Neul and Hwang Sun Woo did not get married, they lived a family life that ordinary people would have after getting married. Negotiation is demonstrated throughout the book. That kind of negotiation may be verbal expression to each other, or it may be inner negotiation with oneself (to achieve self-consistency). With some consensus and commitments before living together, even quarrels have become a subject of continuous improvement for both parties:

What is the purpose of the quarrel? Should I use my sharpest weapon to hit the opponent's vitals and kill him with one blow, or should I hit him until he can no longer stand up and then step on him a few times? No, quarrels between people who live together or will live together in the future are future forgetfulness. We take a shovel, dig a trench, let all the emotions flow down the trench, and then bring it all back to where it started. This is the purpose of the quarrel.

What this book showed me is that two women are reversing the expression of "love". If there is true love, why must it be a pairing between opposite sexes, and why must it be bound by a "sexual" relationship? Is it because I want to be lazy and use marriage and sex to bond the relationship on the verge of breaking down, instead of using more proactive thinking, decision-making, and actions to repair it?

It’s not about love, but it’s more about “love”

"Although there is no legal document to prove our relationship, she is really a family member who lives with me."

I chose this book not only because the two authors are women, but more importantly, they practice a sustainable family life that is not connected by sex or blood.

In the environment where I live, an important part of most people's default programming for their lives is the need to find someone to love, live with, grow old, accompany and take care of each other, and perhaps have the complicated matter of having children. Things are mixed in. The "person in love" is often a person of the opposite sex; later, same-sex marriage was legalized in some places, and some people may also choose a person of the same sex. The only thing that remains unchanged is that the other party and you must have a so-called "love" connection to support the subsequent cohabitation life. In society's default values, that kind of union is often marriage (and possibly childbirth).

In my past love life with the opposite sex, I deeply felt that most of the time, I and the other person were like puppets of the patriarchal society, always playing the role of girlfriend and boyfriend. The many contradictions and uneasiness in this process were always regarded as " The pseudo-scientific truth that men are from Mars and women are from Venus persuades people to give up the struggle. I don’t want to make myself a slacker because the patriarchal society always tolerates heterosexual relationships too much. Heterosexual hegemony not only constantly reproduces gender stereotypes and conceals the truth, but also always uses the logic of "with sexual relations, there is love, and there is a guarantee of happiness in future life." It allows people to evade their responsibilities of negotiation and reflection.

I don't want this guarantee, I don't believe in this promise. (Some people do like it, but I don’t want it!!!!) "Life in a Group" gave me the inspiration to subvert this commitment. This is not to say that there is no commitment between them; on the contrary, the commitment between the two authors consists of a love that exists outside of a false patriarchal relationship. Just like the "practice" emphasized by Fromm in "The Art of Loving". Through observation and understanding of each other, through negotiation, and through understanding each other's expectations for the future, they gradually build a cohabitation life.

Since gradually exploring my sexual orientation, I have naturally accepted that I like girls. However, what troubles me is: How can I prove that my love for the other person is sincere enough? I can escape the tragic fate of "acting as a male girlfriend", but can I also avoid "acting" as a female girlfriend? I want to love her sincerely, even if she is not a girlfriend, even if she does not love me in the way women are disciplined, even if she will grow into something else, I also want to do something that can continue to correct her in communication for her. People with bad habits.

I like this book. It changes the definition of "love" that can be used to support people and support each other. They introduce their practice of life, contract and love to the world in a sharp and delicate way.

Kim Ha Neul and Hwang Sun Woo have been single for many years, and they experienced a lot of friction after they decided to live together. One person is a hoarder, another person is a tidying up expert; one person is outgoing and talkative, while the other person is relatively introverted. Even as friends, there are countless conflicts that need to be resolved; even if there is no marriage as the foundation for maintaining a relationship, there are countless compromises and consideration that can be practiced.

"I set a big principle in the decoration project: to be as bright as possible! Of course, this was a decision made taking into account the woman of the sun, Huang Shanyu. This house was purchased under my persuasion, so I also have to work hard to make Huang Shanyu not I regret it and love it here.”

See women: full of creativity for love

What do we want is a better life? Or do you just want to get married and live together?

I understand that things can be said to be stubborn and rude. When I judge whether a person is worthy of living together, I have only one criterion: when problems arise, is the other person willing to tell each other what is in their heart and resolve the issues in their hearts together? A grudge? From the stories of people around me, I can only see that women who choose marriage because of the pressure exerted by the patriarchal society, many of them only get verbal promises and written proofs on paper, but they do not get the real things in life. The stability and happiness of being here.

I feel very uncomfortable that these thought processes that really affect one's happiness are simply erased.

Writing my reading experience is a process for me to clarify "what I think is important." I've spent a lot of time talking about how much I care about what I appreciate about love. Because I saw this between Hwang Sun Woo and Kim Ha Neul.

I hate that because of the existence of blood or sex, relationships become taken for granted, and love becomes kidnapped and taken for granted. What I love is personality, every scene when a person thinks, makes decisions, and acts, not a character or a script.

I really like this book. Because this is the first book I have seen that transcends family ties (blood ties) and love (sex) and takes friendship as the main axis of life. I don’t know if it’s due to my personal life situation, but in the past few years I’ve become more and more concerned about the existence of my friends, and have become addicted to this kind of trusting relationship based on tacit understanding and similar perceptions of the world. There are not many obligations and moral disciplines between friends, and friendship can be in various forms. I don't think which kind of love should really be prioritized, but this move of putting friendship before family and love makes me feel that "love" has become more vital.