There is an article from the guardian that came out last month titled "why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?" It has caused quite the stir, but the article is not actually about sex at all, it's more about why japanese people have stopped dating and/or having relationships.
It's worth talking about because the reasons for this in Japan, are the same reasons for Taiwan. But as I will tell you later, Taiwan's result is much different.
A lot of the reasons focus around traditional gender roles. Men in asian cultures are very much tasked with being the breadwinners. The problem is that most men feel very uncomfortable because of the unstable economy and the lack of any long term job security. The idea of supporting a family is just too daunting if at any moment you could be laid off.
Another reason that men cited was that modern men now have a lot of interests and hobbies that they want to be involved in, and the idea of working 80 - 100 hour weeks just isn't very appealing.
For women, their traditional role is caretaker and homemaker. Meaning that for a lot of them they are pressured to give up their careers and a part of their lives to be a wife/mother/girlfriend. Even if they want to keep working, in Asia it's very common for business to stop promoting women who are married as they think you will quickly have babies and leave the job.
Women work very hard in their careers, achieving their own goals, and they feel that any relationship is a hindrance to this. It's unfortunate but in Asia it's even harder than western countries to have a career and be a mother. And while it can be done, usually young kids are watched by grandparents, but when the kids get a bit older, if the mother is still working, she will be looked down on.
So for Japan, the way to solve this problem is just to not date or having any serious relationship. That time doing that is taking away from your hobbies, passions, and goals. With marriage especially being viewed as the death of happiness, freedom, and/or career.
However in Taiwan there is a different action. People have boyfriends/girlfriends whom they never see. There are many people who have a bf/gf whom they don't talk to much and rarely interact with. This is viewed as having the best of both worlds. You can have your freedom and concentrate on your goals, but you can also pacify all of society's and family's pressure by having a gf/bf. You think this would stop when people get older and there is pressure to marry, but recently Taiwanese have even found a way around this. I have known many couples who get married, and then go back to their normal lives. Meaning the man goes back home to live with his family, and the woman goes back home to live with her family, and they are back to rarely interacting with each other.
This way they are able to keep their freedom and peace, while having the comfort of being able to say "yep i'm married." They can get away with this by saying that it's because they can't afford their own apartment, which is usually true anyway since apartment prices here are absurd. However since this is a relatively new scheme that husbands and wives have come up with, I don't know how long it can last. Eventually there will be pressure to have kids, and while the excuse of "we don't want to raise a family without having our own apartment" is one reason why the birth rate is so low in taiwan, I don't know if every couple can get away with this. It seems the only logical next step is they will have a baby, and still live apart and push the other one to have to raise the child. I actually do know two married couples who have done this. Sigh, all to try and find some peace to satisfy society's pressures while trying to live your own life.
The picture today is not perfect for the topic, but i think it's as close as I can get, as i don't know who exactly to photograph a married couple living apart. It's by a chinese artist who lives in London, who I like very much. A lot of her art address the themes found in this painting. While I could happily wax poetic about her art, I'll shut up and just let you take it in and come to your own conclusions.
