With the quarantine in full swing, it feels right that during this period of mandatory reflection I describe in detail how some of my romantic relationships can be understood by the title tracks of Weki Meki. I’m a 32 year old Nigerian born English woman, who works in Digital Marketing in the Video Game industry. Weki Meki is a South Korean kpop girl group with eight members, with ages ranging from 22 to 17. As you can see there are lots of similarities between us. Now you understand why I had to write this.

This post is absurd but you’re reading it which means we’re in this together. I’ll link the YouTube video of each song and there are English subtitles (turn on CC). I recommend you give them listen if you enjoy fun and happiness. Stan Weki Meki.

Tiki-Taka (99%)

This is the song of most of my 20s and it hurts. Please add claps in-between the words in the next sentence.

Stop wasting your time with people who don’t know what they want.

On the surface this reads as a love song to encourage someone to take that step and tell you how they feel. You’ve brought the 99, now they need to bring the 1 to make it a hot 100. Sometimes all someone needs that nudge, but wow all I could think about was the literal years I wasted waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for him to finally get it together. Even now, years later I still remember how hard it was to accept that no matter how much work I put in, no matter how much I loved him, we were always short that 1% that he would never add.

There’s a lyric that says, “You’re perfect to me baby, Except just one thing” and I love that because that’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way. You have to trust when people show you who they are right now. People can change, actually scratch that people will change. But there’s nothing wrong in realising that it may never happen and walking away.

Picky Picky (2019)

With mystery bachelor number 2, I knew from the beginning that he was not the kind of person that I truly wanted to be with. But! He was a nice guy, and I liked him a lot so we dated. He was sweet, charming, I loved his family and they loved me. He was everything I thought I should want, but we weren’t happy. I remember chiding myself for being picky picky (I will not apologize) but when we finally broke up I realized that just because something is good doesn’t mean it’s for you.

That is why I embrace the this song in its entirety, it is perfect. If you want to get picky picky (this is your life now) the lyrics describing what the girls’ want in a partner is a lot. The lyrics read as vapid, naive, self centered and a bit greedy. How could anyone expect someone to live up to all that?! Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that these lyrics are a blueprint for life. Don’t misunderstand me, you absolutely should be flexible and open to compromise. But be picky picky (embrace it), be choosy, know what you want in a partner and search for those qualities. It isn’t wrong to know what you want, what you don’t want and for the qualities you look for in a partner to really only make sense to you. You’re the one who has to wake up with that person forever, so be picky… picky.

I don’t like your Girlfriend (2017)

Well, there’s a lot to unpack here. Just from the title alone, I feel like this is one lots of people can relate to – the person you like has a person they like and that sucks. This is one I feel in my soul not just because I’m terrible at picking romantic partners, but because I high-key self sabotage by daydreaming about the unattainable. You can’t get hurt if you literally have no chance with the other person right? Nailed it.

So I liked the guy I couldn’t have and I wasn’t even mad at his girlfriend because it was so much easier and emotionally safe to like someone I have zero chance with. I liked the idea of him than actually dating him and I used my crush as an excuse not to put myself out there because I was, ‘working on managing feelings’ that I had absolutely no desire to act on. I told myself that being self aware to understand what was happening made it okay. Obviously it doesn’t.

Dazzle Dazzle (2020)

This song is all about wanting to be wowed by your partner, wanting them to break out of the norm and ordinary to dazzle you. Who doesn’t want that? This song describes two men in my life, one who dazzled me and one who did not. We’ll call them The Dazzler and Not-The-Dazzler.

Meeting The Dazzler was like a whirlwind of chaos. I’m normally considered  the wild one in my friendship or relationship, but in his world I was tame and I loved that role reversal. He’d show up with ‘just because flowers’, we’d wake up and have impromptu picnics on road trips to nowhere. We’d take sick days so we could go to the park lay on the grass and look at clouds together. We visited cultural heritage sites, braved IKEA and somehow came out of it stronger? He always knew the best places to eat, places to explore and experience. He made normal life an adventure and we were always, always on the go. It was electric. You know those romance montages like in dramas? It hand to Yoongi felt like I was living in one when I was with him. Ultimately, we broke up because his personal brand of chaos meant my personal boundaries were trampled on. I was gaslight and constantly disrespected. In the end, I realised that even though I said I wanted, “more adventurous than safe”, safe is good, safe is safe.

But not too safe, and that brings me to Not-The-Dazzler. We had known each other for years, liked each other, but nothing ever happened. So when we finally did start being romantic I expected that rush of electricity, that movie moment. We’re both legitimately fun people who enjoyed doing fun things and each other’s company, yet there was zero fire. There were no butterflies, no anxiously checking if messages were read. It was like we’d skipped the first five years of a relationship and got to the part where you’re so used to each other, you take each other for granted. It bummed me out and truth be told I think it bummed him out to. We didn’t even officially break up we just sort of both realised that being together was not fun so we stopped.. being together. 

I literally think back to it and I laugh because it was so weird how it all transpired.

I hope you enjoyed reading through this as much as I did writing it. I don’t normally really listen to kpop girl groups anymore, so I wanted to understand why I was so drawn to Weki Meki that went beyond, “songs are bops”. Music is art and I use it to help me make sense of the world around me. In this instance, it helped me understand why I love the way I do. 

Love is silly and if it wasn’t abundantly obvious by now, I am very silly.