“Why have we ended up like this, after being so loving before?” This was a line spoken by the female lead Rain in the TV drama. She seemed to be asking herself and also asking her husband Samuel, whom she had lived with for seven years.
After ending their seven-year marriage, they met for the first time post-divorce to discuss selling the house.
Rain thought that having a house would make their life better and their marriage happier and lasting. But even with the house in the big city, they couldn’t handle the challenges life threw at them or overcome the constant tests in their marriage.
No matter how hard you try, life and marriage always have hidden flaws that you can’t completely get rid of.
After all the wiping and scrubbing, everything became worn out and lost its shine. Even the initial fantasies about love vanished.
It’s ridiculous how destroying a relationship and splitting two people can be as simple as enduring a tough life.
In the drama, Rain and Samuel were in love and naturally progressed to marriage. They firmly held hands and stepped into marriage with countless dreams and confidence about building a family together in Seoul, living a simple and happy life.
To settle down, you need a home. So, they took out a loan of 600 million Korean won to buy a house.
The high interest rates, mortgage, and depreciating property felt like mountains crushing them day by day.
To pay off the loan, they tightened their belts every day, avoiding any luxury or indulgence.
In the scorching summer, they endured without air conditioning, just fanning themselves. In the freezing winter, they gritted their teeth against the cold. Their meals consisted of the same few dishes, hardly any meat throughout the year.
Along with the declining quality of life, their desires for each other also faded away.
Although living under the same roof, they had long stopped sharing a bed. Coming home after work, they avoided talking to each other, not even touching each other when passing by, just silently moving away.
To reignite their past passion, Rain put on carefully selected lingerie to be intimate with Samuel, but he coldly rejected her, nearly causing an argument.
She forced a smile, ran out of the house, and sat on the stairs sobbing uncontrollably.
She couldn’t even remember the last time they went out for a meal, strolled, or had a date together. In these years of marriage, they were more like roommates sharing a house and paying off the mortgage together than a loving couple.
How many marriages end up like theirs, slowly drifting apart despite starting out in love?
Towards the end of the drama, both the male and female leads betrayed each other.
Samuel had developed feelings for their female neighbor long before, emotionally distancing himself from his wife. Rain had been physically intimate with one of her exes much earlier, leading to the final rupture between them.
When the truth came out, they stood in a room amidst pouring rain, accusing and cursing each other. The secrets they once shared intimately became sharp knives stabbing each other’s hearts, destroying any hope and belief they had for a shared future.
After the rain, they could never be a couple again.
After watching the drama, I wonder how many marriages end up like theirs. Can we only choose between life and love, never having both at once?
I don’t have an answer right now.
Life is more complicated than I imagined. Just when things seem to be getting better, more challenging situations arise. Love is the same, filled with obstacles and surprises.
We don’t know how many hurdles we need to overcome, how many enemies we must defeat, to sustain both our livelihoods and love.
We are so small and fragile, and love seems like a luxury we can only pursue when everything else is in order.
Like a prized possession in a boutique’s display window or the moon high in the sky, love can be admired from afar but not easily attained.
Over these years of dealing with life and love, it seems like we are always the ones compromising and surrendering.
We struggle to live in the moment and fail to hold onto the people around us.