Venus versus Mars

Her point of view...
"I'm waiting at the hotel lobby like an idiot. He is more than 2 hours' late for my belated birthday celebration. I rushed all the way from Putrajaya and, accommodating his usual tardiness, I even arrived an hour after the agreed time. The clock keeps ticking and... finally, I have to cancel our lunch booking as the buffet will be closed in 30 minutes. The only thing stopping my tears from falling is that I don't want to ruin my make-up. When I call him, he says he is still working on mock-ups that they are submitting to a client, the deadline is today. But, I smsed him last night to re-confirm our lunch time, he was okay, no mention of struggling to meet any deadline. In fact, I called him before I left just now, he asked for 45 more minutes (not 2 hours), which is fine with me."

His point of view...
"I'm rushing for these mock-ups, this is good business for us. I better do my best. I planned to finish this during the weekend, but with the outstation trip with my children, not much could be done. Even this morning, I thought I could still finish it before noon. When she said her meeting was running late and it would take another 30 minutes, I had no idea that she would rush straight to the hotel without calling me again. My partner asks me to leave the final touch to him and go and meet her asap. I am reluctant, this is important, I'd like to see the finish product before it reaches the client. But my partner insists, she spoke to him just now and that got to him, I guess. I just cannot get the mock-ups off my mind."

Let's see...

After waiting for 2.5 hours, at the peak of anger or sadness - I'm not sure which one - I got into his car just now. I was silent. He mirrored it and just drove around aimlessly. It was past 3pm and I was damn hungry. This is weird but I was also close to bursting into laughter. Yeah, he wasn't going to budge and it was getting ridiculous, so I had to talk. And the sight of his lack-of-sleep face, reddish eyes, purplish eyebags, a bit of glue also got into his eyes from his fingers... that softened me, man! We are in the same industry, I do not understand where he is coming from. But I am just a human being with emotions, not a robot. Him not considering my feelings hurts a lot. I'm not sure if I could live with that.

When we first knew each other, I probably caught him at a very vulnerable stage, he was carrying his emotions on his sleeves. I found that raw and attractive. He was very youthful, like a kid. It was refreshing, especially at a time when I just want to slow down and chill. Despite being 4 years younger, I felt like I was the more adult one.

As we get to know each other and face one disagreement after another, I realised that that is not the case. He turns out to be assertive, decisive and rational. The two main women is his life had been strong, in-control characters, maybe that's why he became the less-dominant partner. I may be a strong character too, but I don't want to queen control. I think a man should be a man, not a wimp. I don't want to be in-charge. Maybe a combination of his budding business and 'my way' sort of led him into taking the role of the adult, and yes, lately, he seems more mature than I. Before he could go into his I-don't-want-any-complication speech again, I asked him to spare me the lecture. That made him laugh.

This is still a very early stage. I'm letting things run naturally and observing the trends. Though his job is unpredictable, I'm beginning to see a pattern slowly unfolding. Over time, I shall decide whether it is manageable or not, and more importantly, whether he is worth it or not. Note that he asked me to bear in mind that he was very late for the birth of his second child. That despite his ex-wife delivering on the scheduled date and his ex-boss asking him to drop work and just go. So, it was a lousy way of his to say that it was nothing personal.

In fact, I only shed tears when I read his sms after he got home at 8pm and was about to cover his lack of sleep. He stopped to meet up with his partner on the client's feedback before that, maybe that calmed him down. His sms reads: 'Mid next week we hang out @ night time for coffee ok.' Hmm... are things going back to the way they used to be before he teamed up with his business partner? We sure had a lot of fun then:)