A Filipina's Guide to Making the First Move (An Introduction)

As promised, I have prepared this series of post in time for Valentines' Day. Actually, I have been doing this post series since early 2013, but I've been putting off posting this series because of a lot of editing that this has to go through and because of a lot of things happening in my life in the latter part of the year.

This post series was inspired, partly by my own love story, and partly by my closest officemates back in my former workplace to whom I shared my story with. They became curious when they found out that I (somehow) made the move for my now-boyfriend to court me and eventually be together.

When you come to think of it, a lot of women in the Philippines believe (a) that the guy should court the girl, (b) that the girl should wait for that guy to court her, and (c) that the guy should undergo numerous tests for the girl to determine whether he is worthy of her 'matamis na oo.' All of this despite the modern times and more modern ways of getting into a romantic relationship (ie. textmates, chatmates and F-buddies) -- and I believe most of the girls who engage in these means would say that they prefer the 'traditional' means if they have it their way.

In terms of preferred courtship style, I'd like to classify myself as somewhere in between these two -- I'd like to be courted, but without all the fluff and emotional hoopla. Yun bang may kilig kahit simple lang. And since I'm not the kind of girl who encounters many suitors, I'm open to 'making the move' if the need calls for it.

Case in point: my current boyfriend.

To make the long story short, my current boyfriend has been through many failed courtships, so he'd like to experience how it feels like to be courted by a girl. But because I also wanted to be courted, I just made a few moves (intentional or otherwise) to nudge him into courting me. The rest is history. (story supplement here)

Just a bit of disclosure before I begin with this series: I'm not, by no means, a love or relationships expert -- in fact I'm far from it. As a young-woman-aged-24-going-on-25, I still have a lot to experience when it comes to matters of the heart. All the things that I'll be disclosing in the next posts are based entirely on personal experience and observations in my environment. You may not agree in some of the points that I'll be discussing here, but I'm pretty sure that at the very least you could relate with some here.

In the next posts, I'll discuss some of the things I learned from this experience, starting from some points to remember before taking the plunge in this endeavor.