Learning from love

Having just presided over a mass wedding of over a hundred couples on Valentine’s Day, Manila Mayor Fred Lim had a message for his audience at the Bulong Pulungan sa Sofitel. “Watch out,” he said, “tonight you might feel an earthquake.”

Making the earth move is just one way Pinoys observe Valentine’s Day.

Making a surprise visit to his fiancée with a bunch of roses on Feb. 14, my son said the sidewalks of Makati were crowded with “women with bouquets in their arms or messengers on their way to deliver them.” At Eastwood City for a dinner for my sister-in-law Bel, whose birthday falls on the Day of Hearts, every other table was occupied by couples, the female half inevitably armed with a bouquet or a single rose. Much to our disappointment, we didn’t witness a single proposal, even as we surreptitiously monitored our amorous neighbors. Despite our overt show of curiosity, none of them seemed to notice us.

We’re even in the throes of a national obsession with President Aquino’s new love, TV announcer and radio personality Grace Lee who trumps her predecessors with her media savvy. But a former presidential flame we met recently says that while she understands how “exciting” it could be to be courted by or to be dating the most powerful man in the country, “she should stop talking to the media.” Her reason? “It’s not just to maintain her privacy, but also to respect the person and the office.”

Wise words. But when passion fuses with attraction, will sanity still prevail? Jullie Yap Daza in her latest book “Mistresses Play, Men Stray, The Wives Stay,” declares that “Love is foolishness or it is madness or it is sweetness, but over and above all, ’tis a gamble.” In our lotto- and jueteng-obsessed society, it seems that lovers are the biggest gamblers of all.

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Almost required reading in this country where divorce remains illegal (the only one in the world) but where men stray with habitual frequency it’s no longer funny, journalist Daza’s book is a collection of stories of relationships gone awry, served with a dollop of advice, background information and trivia on love, loss and getting even.

A game to be played while leafing through the pages of this slim volume is guessing the identities of the anonymous couples and their satellite significant others. Many appear to be politically powerful, or else well-known in social circles or the business community. Sometimes, the attempt to disguise them is so shallow that, based on old gossip, the reader can easily identify the principals. Other times, especially when the story is juicy, one is tempted to call up Jullie and ask outright who the cast of characters are.

Entertaining as well is the sheer variety of relationships documented in the book. Apart from the “conventional” arrangement of philandering husband, long-suffering wife and playful mistress, there are stories about supposedly “celibate” lovers, couples uncoupling after a same-sex liaison, threesomes living under the same roof, mistresses “returning” an old (and presumably spent) lover to a reluctant wife, and even vengeful children who make life horrific for a surviving girlfriend.

One is convinced that as long as Pinoys love, they will find ways to breach the shackles of conventional arrangements. And how creative their solutions are! Of course, for the most part, it’s the men who manage to create alternate arrangements, mainly by taking up with other women. But the wives are just as creative, eking out a way to salvage their position, their dignity and their security while wreaking revenge or, for the really saintly, a modus vivendi.

Don’t judge them, just read their stories, and learn from them, whether one be a wife, mistress or husband with a roving eye.

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Adultery, and the pain it leaves in its wake, is the subject of the movie “The Descendants.” George Clooney plays Matt King, a lawyer suddenly confronting the truth of his wife’s affair even as he keeps watch over her as she lies in a coma.

Set in Hawaii, the story plays out against the backdrop of “paradise,” in a place where, King comments trenchantly, “even the most respectable men look like beach bums and stunt men.” The movie even takes viewers on a road trip (or better, an air trip) to the “big island” of Hawaii and to Kaua’i, where the King family holds trusteeship over the last parcel of “virgin land” in Hawaii and which the family must dispose of before the trust runs out.

It is also the story of a father and husband working out his guilt over neglecting his family. Elizabeth was “lonely,” her best friend says, explaining the affair. While his daughters Alex (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller) cope with their grief with anti-social behavior, including asking Sid (Nick Krause) to tag along even if he serves no obvious helpful purpose.

Rightfully, Clooney has earned Oscar-worthy buzz for his performance. And it’s a role that calls for him jettisoning his superstar aura for what has been described as a “wuss,” a middle-aged lawyer who goes around in shorts and printed shirt and runs funny. But as Matt, he is human and vulnerable, working out the right way for everyone to bade his unfaithful wife goodbye, and searching for the best compromise between preserving his family’s legacy and answering his relatives’ financial needs.

The bare outline of the story may sound rather grim, but in truth “The Descendants” is actually funny, thanks to witty ripostes and ironic voice-overs. Director-scriptwriter Alexander Payne makes movies (“Sideways”) that give “everyman” characters unexpected moments to shine and emerge as heroes. In Matt King, he has created a conflicted hero whose moment of heroism is as unexpected as it is quiet.