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Not the best idea to read this essay in front of your significant other. Also not the best idea to read it before you spray on perfume and leave for your Valentine’s Day dinner. Find a safe space. Pour some wine. Some cheese on the side, maybe. Empty your mind because you’ll need it to process the hard- and fast-hitting questions around the topic of love. Or maybe you are in a stable and supportive relationship, and this doesn’t concern you because how could a lone essay floating around the internet possibly shake the foundation of your romance? Either way, read. Or don’t. I’ll be in the aisle where they’re marking down the price of assorted chocolates.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, allow me to throw “Would you still love me if I were a worm?” out the window with the following:

How much can you love the right person? What about the wrong person? What about the person you believe is right for you but your parents think is wrong? How much can you love someone who grew up in a different country from you? How much can you love someone who prays to a different god than you? How much can you love someone whose income is far from yours? How much can you love when there are traditions and societal expectations in place? We’d all love to feed into the belief that our love is special—that we will not be reduced to some measly statistic. 

I suppose what I’m asking is simply this: How much are you willing to betray for love? Ultimately, that’s what love is, isn’t it? An act of betrayal—or even the wish to betray. I don’t mean betrayal of your loved one, but rather the betrayal of your parents, your traditions, your religion, your country’s laws, and even yourself sometimes.

The trickiest element of all is that love doesn’t ask for permission; it would be too easy if it did. Instead, it crashes into your house uninvited, rearranges your furniture, puts its legs up on the table, and refuses to leave even if you’ve mobilized all forces at hand. Yet, despite its chaotic nature, tradition insists on playing bouncer at the door. Family, culture, religion, and class don black ties and stand by the velvet ropes with batons—but who hired them in the first place?

Tradition’s sole claim to the baton is that love is larger than two people; it is about legacy and culture preservation, about maintaining the status quo. Fluff words for “stick to your own kind and what we’ve always known.” But is there such a thing as a fair fight when personal choice comes face to face with generational expectations? How many people have to have a stake in your relationship before you are forced to surrender? What would the Montagues and Capulets say?

Now, I’m walking on eggshells here, but religious boundaries are likely the oldest bouncers in the game. Most faiths see marriage as a covenant with the divine rather than a simple union of two, and choosing a partner outside of your faith could construe the fraying of tradition’s threads. So, should love kneel before doctrine? If god truly loves all, as many religions claim, why would divine approval hinge on a membership card? Now, if god resides in a Costco… 

But I digress. Race and social status are two more bouncers who patrol the front door with utmost vigilance, often forcing love to sneak in through the backyard. These two categories have historically been weaponized by society to determine who is “appropriate” for us to love, baselessly declaring that some races or classes are too ‘low’ or ‘different’ or ‘other’ to mingle with. Even in this supposedly progressive and modern age, some families still react to interracial relationships as if their child had asked for a pet anaconda for Christmas. And—oh, we’ve all heard this—“love won’t pay the bills” being used as an argument against dating someone in a lower-wage occupation or of a lower class. In some cases, rejection of the partner could have nothing to do with how much they’re earning but their job title in itself. I could be with a six-figure-earning janitor and would still probably be met with my father’s signature frown. At what point do these oppositions cross a line? Are we expected to bend to the will of tradition that has been around for millennia and our elders who taught us we are capable of love in the first place? How low do we bend until we break our spines and hearts? 

What sparked this article was my increasing observation of more interracial, inter-religion, and LGBTQ+ couples in my inner circle. Before moving abroad for university, observable relationships on the small island of Penang, Malaysia, were safe, to say the least. As far as I could hypothesize from those I knew or knew of, people tended to date within their races and religions, and, well, there isn’t much choice when it comes to sexual orientations. 

I don’t claim to have heard it all, but to this extent I have: A breaking up with B because A isn’t willing to convert religions in the long run. C is cut off from their family upon insisting on being with someone from another race. D and E are forced by E’s parents to separate because the parents are convinced E’s sexual orientation is ‘just a phase.’ F hiding their entire identity from their parents just to be with their partner. G keeping their relationship a secret from their parents who will undoubtedly criticize the life of their partner. H coming clean to their family about dating a girl of a different race only to be frowned upon by their grandparents. 

It’s simple to stand your ground and vow to go to any lengths to keep your love alive, be it overriding the wishes of parents or giving up the practices you grew up with and the beliefs you were raised on, but standing your ground is one thing—living with the guilt is another. 

I wouldn’t be doing my job as a writer if I didn’t inject myself (appropriately) as an example in this essay, but I’d like to preface this by saying I have reached the point of understanding why my parents might hold certain beliefs, though this is not to say I agree or disagree with those beliefs; neither is this to slam them or say they don’t know what is best for me (in short: I love my parents). 

Without a shadow of a doubt, if I were to go home with a Chinese Malaysian guy, my parents would ask about his familial background, occupation, income, alma mater, grades, and more. Trust me, every Asian parent has an exhaustive mental list that is nothing short of a job interview. Now, if I were to go home with someone whose skin color is a couple shades darker than mine, I would not make it through the door. However, if I were to go home with a white man with a strong passport? I suppose the same questions will be posed, but more leniency will be lent to the answers. 

So how do I choose between (hypothetically) being with someone my parents and tradition might not necessarily approve of and living the life my parents want for me? It seems I might be sitting on this fence for a while.

And it isn’t all about sticking to your own kind, is it? There is a caveat: if you manage to climb the metaphorical societal ladder and reach someone on a higher rung, why, all bouncers pack up and leave, there is no more ‘danger’ here! Upon putting down roots in the UK, a handful of my Malaysian friends have become part of the Oxford study. Now, this is a phrase I use lightly and am in no way insinuating that Asian women have a preference for white men over men of color. Still, among some families and communities in the East, there is an unspoken agreement about the West’s superiority. Look, every Chinese aunt loves having a white man in traditional wear show up at a family reunion—I don’t make the rules. But who agreed to this? Where is the law or scientific research that states dating a white man will make your daughter’s life better than dating a man of color? Show me this ancient text on a scroll! Times are changing, and politics of race metamorphosize on a daily basis; is there even the smallest of ways one can ever justify judging someone’s capability and social status by their skin color?

As much as I hate to admit it, some of the elder generations still carry prejudice toward certain races, religions, and communities. Some of them have been through national wars and personal disputes, and when social interactions have been deeply ingrained in your psyche, how do you erase that? Prejudice and discrimination are never justified, but to what extent can we attribute them to the fault of the elders? 

Take this analogy: My grandmother is a smart woman who grew up predating the smartphone. To this day, she refuses to switch to a smartphone even though she can very well learn to use it. Her reason? She has lived most of her life just fine with an old flip phone, so why should she change just because the rest of the world is accustomed to iPhones? 

Is there a point to which you can live and say that you refuse to change your worldview any further because the beliefs and traditions you’ve held all this time have sustained you this far? If my parents have lived and worked as upstanding, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens while raising their children all these decades, can we say they’ve done their job and leave them to their own devices and beliefs so long as they are not radically enforcing them onto the wider population? How detrimental could it be if they were only to pass on their opinions and ideals to their own blood? I suppose this article has asked more questions than it has given answers, but isn’t that what love is sometimes? Irrational? Illogical? Unanswerable? 

The crux of the issue is control. Love is supposed to be inconvenient and sovereign. It does not adhere to a script. It does not ask if god will still open the gates for you, if your grandparents will nod in approval, or if your relatives will side-eye you during Chinese New Year. And this terrifies those who have built their identities around structured societal expectations. If love is allowed to run wild, what happens to the careful hierarchies that keep cultures and families in neat, predictable boxes? 

At the end of the day, however, love is going to be in the air. So go catch it. Stop trying to be the greatest and most perfect love story of all time; that award has already been won (Orpheus and Eurydice, I’m looking right at you). Sometimes, you need to disappoint somebody else just a little bit for a lifetime of happiness.

Happy Valentine’s Day, dear reader. If you’ve made it this far, I love you (platonically) an inconvenient amount.