The Joy of Ex: Breaking up in Hong Kong

Relationships are a minefield that can blow up for seemingly trivial reason. P.Ramakrishnan finds out why.

Illustration by Harry Harrison.


Statistically, nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, so you can imagine that in the preceding dating game, those figures are stratospherically higher. Some of the reasons why people get dumped, binned and thrown out at the curb are less obvious than norm; he cheats, she spends too much, he talks to his dead mother’s ashes in an Egyptian urn…

Shopping at grEAT at the basement of Pacific Place, Regina*, 32, socialite, throws into a cart a can of Beluga and flicks back her coiffed curls to shoot out, “The way he danced. Main reason for dumping the one before last. Such a pity and I pursued him for ages. Used to turn up at events knowing he was there with perfumed cleavage.”

Perfumed cleavage?

“Yep. Mixed Asian origin like me, great skin, was a runner so no Buddha-belly, an advertising exec who dressed sharp and had a law degree or something and he was a great speaker. We were at a friend’s reception, wedding thing and I saw him on the floor,” she sighs. “Electrocuted spasms. Shocking. Had to be let go.”

That seems rather superficial doesn’t it? Just because he wasn’t Travolta to music. “How a man moves to music is indicative of a lot more, believe you me!” Point well scribbled in a writing pad.

And the last one left at the falter?

“Well, he was great. But... he was an aerobics instructor at **** gym. Clearly not the marrying kind. But on the yoga mat, he could…”

Too much information.

Why Angie* left her last near-fiancée seems even more spurious. “He wanted to move to the States. I didn’t. Living in middle-America is just not an option.”

As centipede-al queues spring out of the American consulate, it’s peculiar to find someone willing to give up a gilt-edged green-card and boyfriend. “No maid. No social life. Driving for hours every day to reach a mall that doesn’t have half the brands you get in Hong Kong. My family. My life-long friends and give it all up to become a nobody in the middle of nowhere?” she rolls her eyes and scoffs. “No thank you!”

At 28, there is familial pressure to get hitched but the bone-thin marketing manager for one of the biggest brands in Asia, Angie's got prospects dotted around Hong Kong. She has options she says and she’s well aware of it. “Maybe pre-97 I would have jumped at the offer to move to the US but, I was 19 then and would have moved just to be near the cast of 90210… but not for a guy!”

Psychologist and hypnotherapist Melanie Bryan, says that rejecting relationships for seemingly shallow reasons isn’t uncommon among young singles, who tend to be less forgiving.

“Younger women are looking for romantic love, defining love in a very romantic notion, and defining love in very romantic terms,” she says. "Without much experience, they may be more inclined to end a relationship when the demands are too much or if their expectations aren’t met.”

But this may change once they’ve had painful break-ups and their hopes and expectations have been tempered by life experience, after which they have a tendency to evaluate potential partners quite differently.

“They make some effort to try and change, or work with, or work around, what they define as unsatisfactory behaviour,” Byan says. “If that behaviour continues - if its flirtation, for example, an infidelity issue, or excessive drinking or drug addiction, at different stages, you are inclined to stay longer, if children are involved, you might stay for financial reasons and so on.

“But when you’re not as evolved emotionally, then you’d rather opt out. The more mature you are, the reasons for leaving a person become more grave, it is not an instant decision correlating with instant dissatisfaction.”

Michelle, 40, a hotel fine-arts consultant, says she and her boyfriend seemed to have a lot in common. “We talked and talked for hours about art, books, everything. When we talked, it was like an instant coffee mix. We melted into one.

“He was a good person, well balanced, smart, sexy, and no bad habits. I thought - this is someone I’d really like to be with. After a few months of dating, I started to feel like I was handicapped.

“He was overly concerned for me and it really started to get under my skin. Like, when I was crossing the street, I had to be held so I won’t run off like a child, and when eating, his chopsticks were constantly in my bowl. He would call about 10 times a day to see if I’m OK and if I needed anything.

“He’d buy me gifts on a no-reason occasion and I was expected to understand the thought beneath the surface of the gift. It was tiresome.”

Bryan says Michelle’s experience is a text-book case of over-indulgence. “This is a classic example of someone confusing possessiveness with security – not realising they can’t possess someone in order to feel secure. Some people like a lot of breathing room. Times have changed as women are no longer economically dependent on men.

“Funnily enough, there are many women who would love to exchange their partner with this one. They want the attention, the long stemmed roses and the calls.”

Michelle agrees - in principal. “Most women might think I’m mad to give up such gem of a man, but he drove me away with too much attention. I like my space; I am able to pick up food from the dish in front of me. If I can travel across the world, I surely can cross the street without any assistance from my boyfriend.”

Bryan says many people split up because they hold that early romantic love stage as the criteria. “In romantic love, in the throws of intensive hormonal changes, the person they become involved with becomes perfection. They can hardly live without them, they can’t think about anything else. And when this tapers off – and it will, when you’re over-estimated the qualities of the person, and when reality comes in through the door – the person seems like a different person.

“At a later stage, there’s a difference between romantic love and deep attachment. Women feel more independent. They’re not willing to put up with nonsense.”

The break-up of Bonnie* and her Porsche-driving first husband made many a tabloid headline in the 1990s. Over lunch at Ye Shanghai, while sipping jasmine tea, she recollects, “I knew the instant that it wasn’t working out,” she says now, nearly a decade later. “We drove to Repulse Bay beach and he parked his car, got out and was twirling his keys as he went off - leaving me in the car. He hadn’t opened the door for me, which was fine, but he didn’t turn around once to notice if I was beside him, behind him or anything.”

“They say playing with keys is a bad omen and I just knew as I saw him walk off that I would be the one walking out of this marriage.”

Taking a pause to digest this last anecdote, Bryan says Bonnie’s feelings were insightful. “The romantic stage was over. She had been won. He was getting back to his usual way of operating. Men will go through a stage, it becomes the challenge. They put their work consideration aside to some extent. Women assume that it’ll always be that way. Once the challenge is won of course they’ll go back to the prime interest of their life. Which is work… or other women.

“He saw her as someone who doesn’t require attention any more. Or it could be that she needed a lot of attention.

“People have to work at relationship. Most haven’t graduated emotional college – and it’s a tough course.”

* Pseudonyms to protect the guilty!

My notes:

Had so much fun writing this back in the day for SCMP, as I got to discreetly spill the beans on famous Hong Kong splits... er, without getting in trouble. Thank God most of Hong Kong society doesn't read.