Say you’re dating someone, and it’s going great. You’re both in love, committed, and serious about each other. How long would you expect to wait before someone gets down on one knee with a ring? 

What if there’s never any ring at all?

This was the debate ignited in response to a Singaporean woman’s recent TikTok describing her “culture shock” experience of moving to Sweden to discover that many couples are happy to settle down together long-term without ever tying the knot.

In her Sep 9 video, Ms Wynnette Yip, having moved to Sweden on a sambo visa, called it “crazy” that she was able to move to a new country “based on a relationship” without getting married. “Sambo” or “sammanboende” is the Swedish term for co-habitation.

Ms Yip also attributed her shock to her coming from Singapore where romantic relationships are “very linear”: “You date, you propose, you get married, you have kids.”

Within three days, the video had racked up over 180,000 views. 

A barrage of responses flooded in with their own take on Ms Yip’s experience, but surprisingly, many of these seemed to skip right over a simple observation of sociocultural differences and instead leapt to an opportunity to perpetuate sexism. 

MARRIAGE: YAY OR NAY?

One camp of comments endorsed the “un-Singaporean” practice of putting off or avoiding marriage altogether. 

Let's be real, many said — set free from the requirements governing Build-To-Order (BTO) flat applications, there are no actual benefits to marriage. “In many Western legal systems, divorce will drain men's money to the last drop,” said one Facebook user, Trie Haryanto. “No marriage means no divorce. No divorce means no money lost.”

But another group of commenters disagreed. BTO or no, the institution of marriage still has its practical uses in these modern times, this camp argued.

“Marriage protect(s) women legally,” said another Facebook commenter. “(Without) marriage, the man can walk away without having to be committed to the woman and her kids.”

Most people in the first camp portrayed both marriage and divorce as events where the scales are inherently tipped towards women no matter what.

Many in the second camp seemed to be responding from a base assumption that women, as a rule, can't function independently without husbands.

Very few across the board seemed to consider that divorce laws don't “favour” women, but rather protect lower-income earner in the marriage — not just in Singapore, but in many other countries. 

Almost no one wondered why the lower-income earner so often turns out to be the woman in the first place. 

Many commenters went a step further, insinuating that Ms Yip's eight-year relationship with her partner is based only or largely on sex. In this vein, staying unmarried is definitely the winning choice for the man, said some. 

On the other hand, others said this is exactly why Ms Yip is making a mistake in allowing her relationship to continue without a marriage certificate — after all, women “need” marriage because their “market value” only depreciates with age, read another comment. 

Perhaps most interestingly, both camps of commenters were populated with responses by both men and women.

THE MOOT POINT OF MARRIAGE

At its core, Ms Yip’s original video was straightforwardly pointing out the fact that many, many other countries beyond our borders have much more relaxed views of marriage. 

And it’s not just about public housing requirements (though this does tend to top the list of concerns for many Singaporeans). Healthcare and insurance, caring for dependents including children and ageing parents, even relief for hiring domestic help — these are just some of the things that become drastically less burdensome in Singapore once you and your partner take a trip to the Registry of Marriages office. 

There’s also the consideration of cultural values underpinning and interwoven through such structures. What “should be” in Singapore doesn’t and can’t look exactly the same as in Sweden. 

(You may recall the #Swedengate drama of 2022, in which droves of Twitter users were aghast to discover that Swedes don’t typically serve food to guests in their home, not even other children visiting for a playdate. Singaporean aunties and ah mas would never.) 

But regardless of where any of us come from or where we live now, marriage is not an all-inclusive guarantee that our needs will be taken care of, whether or not it thrives or ends in divorce. This is true no matter what laws, structures or even morals and values are operative in our social environments. 

You enter into any romantic or domestic partnership with your partner, not with a government or with a culture. Whatever recognition or status granted unto your union by a state, it’s highly unlikely to make your relationship fundamentally better or worse.

You could be in a happy, fulfilled relationship with no ring. You could also just as easily be in an unhappy, unfulfilled relationship with a ring. 

At the end of the day, some people may still prefer to keep an ear out for wedding bells, and that’s all well and good. But keep in mind that a trip down the aisle is not a destination, but rather a single step in a bigger journey.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Melissa Lee Suppiah is a deputy editor at TODAY where she oversees commentaries.