In light of people gossiping about a potential girlfriend for Jae on AKP this month, I've been thinking a lot about some of the things he's said over the years about his love life. I'm a dedicated Yunjae shipper, but as I said in my other blogs, I don't make myself blind to other rumors or believe my way of thinking is the only way, or that I'm in the slightest bit right. I don't K-Pop ship very often-- Yunjae is my only ship-- but when I consider other ships, I keep a few rules in mind:

1. Not everyone is straight
   
    

2. Not everyone is LGBT
   
    

3. The idols that are LGBT cannot talk about it openly under any circumstances that can't be dismissed as a joke. The culture itself will not allow for it at the moment (case in point-- Infinite's Hoya recently talking about being harassed for being gay only because he played a gay character in a drama). If this rule is kept, fans can say whatever they want about an idol's ual orientation, and other fans will automatically say they are not LGBT because they have said previously that they like the opposite . For.every.single.idol, even the ones who have hinted at being LGBT quietly.
   
    

4. A lot of the straight idols also cannot talk about their love lives openly at the risk of hurting their fans
   
    

5. Thus most idols will lie, be evasive, or simply not talk about their real love lives at one point or another

6. This is usually done to protect themselves, their career, their happiness, their lover, their fans' image of them, etc, and not because they don'twant to be truthful
   
    

So, at the end of the day, K-Pop shipping can be quite tricky because even if some fans would accept a pairing, many others wouldn't and would cause trouble-- as we've seen in cases like Baekhyun/Taeyeon, Jonghyun/Sekyung, and even Sulli/Choiza. Some people don't want their idols to date at all, others have rival pairings (Khuntoria vs Khunfany, and in gay shipping recently Hanchul vs Gunheechul), so coming clean about even a straight relationship is hard enough on its own. So whether Jaejoong is straight, gay, bi, panual or whatever, there is no way everything he says about romance in his life is 100% true, or else he has a messed up brain that regularly contradicts itself. I'm not calling him a liar by any means, just that he has things he needs to protect, same as other people in the industry.

Me before Yunjae: I can't ship real people, it feels too weird~~~
Me after Yunjae: Screw it, I have seen the true face of love
 

Most of the time, we get one of the following attitudes from Jaejoong:

“I'm lonely”

This kind of loneliness comes in two different kinds. 1) The loneliness he jokes about to his fans about his girlfriend-less state and habits or 2) the seriously treated loneliness in the same vein as his post lawsuit tweets and lyrics of his songs

Luckily, we've been seeing a lot more of number 1 in his behavior lately. Jae is the kind of person who when he's feeling the second kind of loneliness, he tends to speak up about it online, so if it's something he can joke about, that's generally a pretty good sign for him.

“I need to get married”

The older second generation idols are getting to that age where the expectation is there, so we'll be hearing this a lot from them. Sungmin has been one of the few to actually do something about it, but who knows who will be next.

“I don't need a girlfriend/don't need to get married”

See what I mean about contradictory?

Most recently, Jaejoong brought up the last attitude in his interview with Harper Bazaar. “My parents will probably be heartbroken if they hear me saying this, but I'm considering not getting married at all.” The context for that statement is pretty interesting. He was discussing his fans when he says it, but I sincerely doubt that at his age he's subscribing to the “I don't need true love, I'm married to my fans” ideal that most idols start out saying in their rookie days. While I do believe he is saying that he doesn't need to be in love because being a singer and having fans brings enough happiness and that his love for them is fulfilling and special, it still seems like a bit of a stretch that the same person who wrote such beautiful, heart-wrenching love songs about an enduring love would outright dismiss wanting romantic love in his life. Of course, these days love and marriage don't go as perfectly together as a horse and carriage. Some people can't get married, and others choose to stay with their lover without needing to formally get married, so him considering not getting married does not automatically kick the love out in that sense.

If he wants to insist upon marrying his fans, I won't say no, though

Still, in a culture like South Korea's where getting married does still go along with a serious relationship, it would be odd for Jaejoong to question his desire to get married if he were in a committed relationship with a woman behind the scenes or if he thought he might be in the near future. Unless Jaejoong happens to be the “I can't seem to get a girlfriend, so SCREW MARRIAGE! kind of guy, which isn't out of the question, though I'd sincerely laugh at him if he gave in so easily.

In my eyes, Jaejoong is either contradicting himself deliberately or really just has no idea what he wants at this point in his life. I mean, we've all heard his jokes about being single, wanting a girlfriend, not being married, etc, so you'd think it would be something he could consistently commit to wanting. But yet we have him waffling about the idea in interviews, saying he doesn't really need a girlfriend after all, that most of his drinking partners are men, and that his explanation for spending more time with men is: “Is it because I don't have an interest in girls?” THEN he goes and says he wasn't interested in kissing his female co-stars and didn't feel anything while doing it. Of course, it would have to be creepy as an actor to go over the moon about kissing another professional as part of your job (as a female, I would be disturbed by a guy who was supposed to be equally professional talking about being excited about kissing me onscreen), but at the same time, why would he choose to say that in an interview for no reason if there wasn't something bigger to take away from it?

He may not get excited about kisses, but we all know how he feels about someone's hugs~

To me, Jaejoong seems to be doing this a bit deliberately. He knows the age he's at, he knows that it would be odd to have an interest in dating and marriage at his age, so he fits the mold he's supposed to fit and acts like he's going to live up to those expectations. And then, recognizing that he can't build it up so much and not follow through, he goes back and says that it's not important to him after all. It's almost as if he's covering his bases so that if/when it doesn't happen, his fans aren't disappointed or sad for him. There is still the argument that he just doesn't know what he wants, but then again, this is the guy who was so dedicated to his stance that he was willing to risk his place in the group he loved and risk having a stable career in both Korea and Japan. Jaejoong is 4D and seems a little bit out there at times, but I do believe he has a good idea of what he wants better than we think.

As for Jaejoong's being lonely at times, I believe that is genuine. Honestly, you can't read that guy's (now deleted) tweets and not believe it's true. Still, Jae has been complaining about not having a girlfriend since the beginning of time. Even the forever-in-the-I-Need-A-Girl-image Taeyang had admitted to having a girlfriend at one stage, but as Jae pointed out to his fans (after Yunho's dating rumor, amusingly) he doesn't even have any rumors invented about him that actually make official celebrity news sites. Yet, there's no way that Jaejoong has been single over the past eleven years. I'm not saying that based on the assumption that everyone needs to date in their twenties, but that there's simply no way he could have written his catalog of heart breakingly emotional and very personal songs about losing and waiting for someone he loves if he's never been in love with anyone. And as I've already mentioned in other blogs, he's said a few things about those very same songs: 1) They are about past memories and love 2) They were inspired by someone 3) They're about the sorrow of parting 4) He's never written a song for a woman. So I think most of his initial loneliness was exactly the loneliness he was describing in his songs-- being parted from someone he loved. Nowadays, based on his more optimistic attitude, I'd gather that he was feeling a different loneliness-- having the people he cares about busy, being busy himself, and knowing that he'll have to leave his fans and career for awhile to enlist. Not quite as depressing of a loneliness, but still bittersweet all the same.

There is one thing Jaejoong has said that has struck me for a long time now, so I'll leave it for everyone else to consider as well if they've never heard it before. It's from Jaejoong's musical essay in Their Rooms not long after the lawsuit:

“I want to go back to the time when
i was simply a 15-year-old youth, full of passion, travelling to Seoul alone just to fulfill my dreams.
But. In a corner within my heart, there’s sorrow and oppression, a pain i cannot put into words.

when i’m older, perhaps some day, i will be able to say it…
i’m waiting cautiously for that day to come.”

There are of course different ways of understanding this statement. On one hand, the rest of his essay is about the fear/excitement he has of figuring out what comes next now that his situation in life has changed, as well as how people once told him that he would be less self-centered when he grew older, and he's then realized how right they were. The “In a corner within my heart” statement could refer to his 15 year-old self, or his self right now. It could be that the sorrow and oppression is talking about is what happened to the group and what he was going through then being blocked by SM and Avex. Then again, JYJ has always talked about that to a degree. They've respected Yunho and Changmin by not going in depth into any personal conflicts that happened or by digging into exactly why Yunho and Changmin wouldn't join the suit, but they've all been fairly open about how they've felt about what SM has done to them and how much they struggled through not being able to promote. I do not think Jaejoong would be waiting so cautiously to spill some more truth tea about his former label and members. To me, it seems like it's something else, something he's been dealing with for awhile. Something he could not actually get away with saying out loud, for some reason or another.

One theory is that it's his uality and being unable to talk about it, but still waiting cautiously if a time ever comes. It makes sense. You can technically spend your whole life closeted if it helps keep you safe, but that doesn't keep it from feeling restricting and as if you're not free to become yourself in front of people. It would certainly be something you'd need to be super cautious about in South Korea, and something he 100% can't say now though he may be able to say further down the road.

It also could have to do with the pain of separating from Yunho, if I'm not delulu as a shipper. Not that I think he'd be in any rush to disclose personal details for Yunho's sake, but I think he'd at least want people to understand exactly why it was so painful for him and what exactly he was giving up. Still, he's said as much in his songs without naming names, so that perhaps doesn't hit on what he's waiting cautiously for.

Whatever the case is, here's to wishing our Jaejoong some love and peace for whatever awaits him ahead!