"Tokyo is like an old wife" and "Marriage begins with misunderstanding and divorce begins with understanding"

A Japanese business classmate came to visit on a business trip from Taiwan, where he is currently living, and we went out to have dinner.  He seemed to be a mirror version of me in his quest to have a family and settle down.  On the other hand, he is toying with three to four girlfriends at the same time in Taiwan.  He says he needs to settle down, so that the society tells him, but he doesn't want to settle down.  I am the same way.  I don't feel how settling down and having a family can guarantee it would be better than my single life.  Most of the couples are unhappy, how could I really be a sure exception?

Why not go back to Tokyo, what seems to be a natural destination for someone to find a place to settle down in a hometown?  He says because Tokyo is like an old wife, he already knows it too well.  Isn't it true with all of us that travel and live in different parts of the world, soon our relationship with a place is not unlike our relationship with the opposite sex.

There is a timeline, that sweet spot and then the decay, where statistically speaking most people get divorced at the seven year mark, in what is known as the "seven year itch."  I remember an older executive in one of my old firms told me that "Marriage begins with misunderstanding and divorce begins with understanding."

In some way it is cynical, but it is not devoid of some truth.  We all need a little bit of mystery to spice our imagination to lend more feeling to what is otherwise a boring existence.  When all is worn out, like when I know all of the freeways in a place, and how people think and act, where the WalMart is and where a career is headed step by step, or like when someone knows too well what his or her spouse would say the next moment and there is no longer any romance of the relationship, we begin to draw away and lose interest.

Rather than settle down, I adviced, perhaps it is better to find a mate to explore a new place together.  Shared experience can bring a couple together, whether it may seem better or worse at the time.  The horse trainer put it right this past weekend, "Often it is not the present that brings us happiness.  It is the memory and the anticipation."  In that sense, we shouldn't live in a place where it may seem better as a settle down place, but in a place where we can find hope and transformation.  A place that gives us a sense of mystery and empowers us to want to conquer it, to get to know it and become better because of it.