I have spent the last few days inside 6,214 messages of goodnight moons, unanswered questions and one grown woman slowly negotiating herself down from girlfriend to permitted visitor in her own flat.
You are not dating. You are not even in a situationship. You are a fully furnished rental unit with a lovesick landlord, and the tenant’s entire contribution to the household is a toothbrush he asked you not to throw away.
Let’s go through the tenancy agreement.
Who Was Doing What in This Flat
Shalini: The Unpaid Girlfriend Intern
You have done four months of a girlfriend’s job on an intern’s contract, and the company has not even given you a lanyard. You remember his mother’s birthday, you track his performance review like it is your own bonus, and you made him a Netflix profile called K before he had agreed to watch anything with you, which is the streaming version of buying a wedding dress for a first date. Then there is your signature move, the calm, unbothered patience of a woman sprinting in heels:
no rush lah, whenever you're ready to talk about us 😊 but like roughly when not rushing!!
You declared there was no rush, demanded a schedule and denied the rush, all inside ninety seconds, like a woman filing a missing persons report on the man asleep on her own sofa. Your whole strategy is to be so easy, so useful and so cheap to keep that he promotes you out of guilt, and it has the success rate of leaving biscuits out for your landlord. You did not get played, Shalini; you wrote the game, printed the rules and handed him the controller.
Kenneth: The Weekend Squatter
Kenneth moves into your life every Friday at six and evacuates every Monday morning like the building is on fire. From Monday to Thursday his whole personality is busy rn, a phrase he uses with the gravity of a CEO and the workload of a lifeguard at a drained pool. When you finally asked what the two of you were, he produced the defining work of his career:
why do we need a label 😂 you know how I feel about you anyway prata sunday?
That is a man declining a relationship and ordering breakfast in the same breath, delivered with the warmth of a hug from someone reading his phone over your shoulder. The worst part is that he does like you, because a man who did not care would leave, and a man who half cares just keeps renewing the cheapest lease in Singapore. Kenneth is not afraid of commitment; he is a commitment tourist extending his visa one goodnight emoji at a time.
The Trap: The Noodle Diversion
Every serious question in this chat goes into the machine as what are we and comes out as where shall we eat. You ask where you stand and he suggests dinner; you ask what he wants and he sends a song; you ask when he will decide and he offers a table at the zi char place instead. I call it the Noodle Diversion, and he runs it like a man who has never once had to finish a sentence that starts with us.
Your half of the machine is the Shrinking Ask. In July you wanted to be his girlfriend, by August you would settle for exclusive, and by late September you were asking permission to keep asking, which is not a negotiation, it is a woman bidding against herself at an auction nobody else turned up to.
He never had to say no, because you kept shrinking the question until yes cost him nothing.
Your Private Dialect, Translated
Busy rn means I have seen your message and I am pricing the cost of replying. Will call later means the call is cancelled but the sentiment is on file. 🍜?, sent on a Thursday at 9pm, is the renewal notice for the weekend tenancy, to be accepted by return. And you know how I feel means please stop asking me how I feel.
Your side of the dictionary has one entry, and it is a liar. No rush lah has never meant no rush in its life. It means I am sprinting silently, in a font he cannot see, towards a finish line he never agreed to build.
A Live Reading: 8 August
At 4.10pm you asked the smallest question a woman can ask a man whose toothbrush lives in her bathroom:
ok can I just ask, are we at least exclusive
I'm not seeing anyone, why would I
that's not really an answer
it's literally an answer 😂
It is literally a description of his calendar, and he knew it, which is why he parked a laughing face at the end like a getaway car. Five hours later the same man came back with this:
eh you free 22nd? cousin's wedding. come as my friend, my aunties are a lot
ok can 😊
As my friend. He wanted you at a family wedding as a human shield against his aunties and still would not put your title on the invitation, and you said ok can like you were agreeing to split a Grab. Then you bought a new dress for it, which means you paid money to attend your own demotion.
The Timeline
20 June. He leaves a toothbrush at your place with don’t throw ok, a three-dollar investment he has been describing as the future ever since.
12 July. You ask so what are we and accept a Friday noodle dinner in exchange for the answer, which is the worst exchange rate in the history of noodles.
8 August. Exclusivity is declined at teatime and you are invited to a wedding as his friend by dinner.
28 September. You ask can we just keep going like this, he says of course with a moon, and the lease is renewed on his terms without anybody reading them.
What You Each Wanted
Shalini, you wanted to be chosen without ever making him choose, which is like wanting to win a race you are too polite to enter. You wanted him a little afraid of losing you, and you spent four months proving there was nothing to lose.
Kenneth wanted the girlfriend experience on a no-contract plan: the Sunday prata, the remembered deadlines, the flat with his toothbrush in it and no form to sign. He found the one woman willing to sell it at that price, and he has been paying in moon emojis ever since.
The Ruling
This is not going anywhere, because it never left the car park. He told you in July that he did not need a label, and you have spent every week since hand-stitching one for a man who keeps it in his wallet like a coupon. You are not his girlfriend, Shalini, you are his loyalty card, and he is one stamp away from a free relationship with somebody else.
