kiss

Yeah he was showing off a bit in front of the other guys. All the Korean guys there were single. Something that I’ve noticed is that Korean guys tend to be more vocal and expressive about being single and wanting a girlfriend or even wanting to get married. Sometimes in Western culture, single guys can say a lot of derogatory things to their friend who is married, like marriage means you are locked up forever or something. For Korean guys, once they hit 30 they can be quite anxious to get married. There is the outside pressure from family, friends and society to settle down, but also personally, in general, they seem to want to settle down once they reach a certain age and it’s not seen a bad thing to desperately want to get married.

For example, while not all Australian guys are like this, there is a culture here where men act like they are always forced into getting married. Even if they really wanted to, there is this act in front of single friends about being tied down and all those type of jokes.

When we hang out with my husband’s friends who are a similar age to him and single, they will say a lot, “I’m so jealous of you guys. I want to get married too.” I’m often surprised at this honesty and their openly displayed jealously at friends who are married. Part of this is because they want it to be very clear that they are looking for someone, as they are relying on their friends to introduce them to someone. I’ll talk about that type of matchmaking in a future post though.

Sorry that this comic is a bit messy. I was travelling for a lot of yesterday and I’m now at my parents’ house and had to do this post quickly last night. My husband is still in Sydney because of work, so we’ll be apart for at least a week 🙁