Runaway brides in Singapore: Janice’s story (part 1)
(Correction made 3 Jan 2013 to Ken's age - he is 25. There was a
typo error in Janice's text responses to Y! SG when we asked for
their ages. )
Amid falling birth rates and higher rates of divorce in
Singapore comes another worrying new trend – that of young engaged
couples calling off their big day right at the final moment.
Marriage counsellors Yahoo! Singapore spoke to have seen more and
more of such cases of young “runaway brides”. Is it the fear of
missing out on that choice HDB unit or simply the immaturity of
youth? Yahoo! digs deeper to find out the startling truth.
To everyone else outside of their relationship, Janice, 23, and
Ken, 25, appeared to be the perfect fairytale couple. Secondary
school sweethearts, their relationship outlasted the trials and
tribulations of National Service and getting their degrees. They
were an item for a whopping nine years before Ken proposed in early
2012 after they found out that their BTO flat would be ready soon,
and Janice accepted.
So it came as a huge shock to all their friends and family when
five days before their wedding at a five-star local hotel in
September 2012, Janice called it all off and took a flight to
Thailand to “escape” her fiancé and disappointed guests.
“The pressure had been building since the day he proposed, but I
didn’t realise that I was truly not ready until about a week
before, and I panicked. Everything had been planned, paid for, the
invitations and guestlist confirmed. It was a nightmare, but once I
knew I couldn’t do it, there was no point going ahead,” said a
still-emotional Janice during a two-hour long interview at her home
in the East with Y! Singapore last December.
“Yes, I was a coward. I couldn’t bear to tell Ken to his face
that I wanted to call off our wedding, so I booked a flight and
called him just before boarding then I switched off my phone and
didn’t talk to anyone for days.”
“But why?” was the question on everyone’s lips when she finally
returned four days later, ashamed and terrified. Was there a third
party, everyone wanted to know?
Yes -- in a way.
“You could put it like this – the third party was HDB. I feel
like I was forced to decide to get married early because if I
waited until I was, say, 30 and ready to settle down, to wait
another three to four years to get a BTO flat would leave me no
time to start a family. Everyone told me that Ken and I had to
hurry up and apply for a flat together and then quickly get married
once the flat application was successful,” said Janice, who just
started work as an accountant last year.
“It wasn’t important to them that I still don’t know what I want
with life, and I don’t know yet whether I want to spend the rest of
it with Ken. It seems selfish, but it’s my life, and it’s more
selfish to get married to Ken and later change my mind – divorce
would be ten times more painful.”
As it turned out, their BTO development took just over two and
half years to complete and not three to four as they had initially
expected, leading to a rush proposal.
In January 2011, The Straits Times reported that flats under the
BTO scheme in 2009 and 2010 were completed in 32 months on
average.
In September last year, HDB announced that to meet demand, a
total of 7,055 flats would be launched under the joint BTO and Sale
of Balance Flats exercises in 2012, on top of another 6,400 flats
which were launched in November 2012.
Trend on the rise
According to marriage counselors here, Janice is not alone. All
three marriage counselors Yahoo! Singapore spoke to said
that cases of young women and men backing out of marriages at the
last minute are on the rise by as much as two times in the past two
years – and most cases were because they were not ready but forced
to commit in order to secure a home in advance.
“These girls, mostly aged between 21 to 26, come to me as late
as three days before their wedding and tell me they are terrified
and want to call it off,” said counselor A. De Souza, 42, who
counsels couples through a religious organization.
“When I ask them why, the answer is almost always the same – ‘I
said yes because we needed to hurry up and get a flat first, and I
thought we could work things out in between and I’d be ready
later’,” said De Souza, who along with her husband, has been
helping young couples for about 10 years.
“I would say that I am now seeing at least double the number of
such troubled brides. It used to be that most of them split up just
before because of third party issues or quarrels over financial
matters, but now it’s always “I wasn’t ready” and “I felt forced
because of my flat”,” said De Souza.
“It’s a serious problem – these young people are so worried
about practical concerns like getting a home that they neglect the
most important question – are they emotionally prepared?”
Marketing executive Marianne Wong, 24, counts herself lucky to
have “realised” earlier on in her engagement that she was not
prepared to settle down yet.
'Suddenly overwhelmed’
In 2011, Wong and her 33-year-old bank officer ex fiancé had
already successfully balloted for a five-room flat which was
expected to be completed by 2013. They had paid deposits totaling
about $20,000 to a contractor and interior designer but had not
booked their wedding banquet or photographers yet.
“About one year before our wedding, we went for a marriage
preparation course. There, we had to discuss issues like financial
planning, future children and so on, and I was suddenly so
overwhelmed. I looked at my ex and I realised that I could not
really see him as the father of my children and a life partner,”
said Marianne, who cried many times during the hour-long interview
with Yahoo!.
“I was so scared I couldn’t breathe, but I knew I had to do us
both a favour and call it off. Before the course, I was so caught
up in his “idea” of getting a flat – everyone was saying how
difficult it was to get a good unit, horror stories about a five
year wait stuck in bad rentals, I just got carried away, I
guess.”
“I told my mother, and she was 100 per cent supportive that I
should not get married unless I was completely sure – that helped a
lot.”
Janice, however, who called her family “very strict and
traditional”, did not dare to tell them about her misgivings about
getting married.
Instead, she summed up the courage to call it off after going
online to forums like
Flowerpod and SingaporeBrides
and finding out that she was not alone in her turmoil. Entire
threads devoted to "pre-wedding jitters" and "brides with cold
feet" are active and full of young women confiding in each
other.
Source:
http://sg.entertainment.yahoo.com/blogs/singapore-showbiz/runaway-brides-singapore-janice-story-part-1-035439074.html