Therapy started six weeks ago, triggered by a series of unfortunate decisions but actually for some long established and deep seated communication issues. Last January I got married and today, our first anniversary of all days, I decided to start a blog/journal/diary. The reason being that I've been suffering a low for the past year and thought this might help quicken my trundle through it. Or at least gain a different perspective on the matter.
I'll start with how I met my wife, middle with my spiral in to debt, and will finish with why I've ended up in therapy and very few friends to speak of. You may think here that I'm fishing for pity or wallowing in self of it. That's utterly untrue, this is merely a snapshot of my little life that I'd like to immortalise here in bloggerty world.
As a person who has (as far back as I can remember) always struggled to make conversation and thus forge friendships, I turned to the world of online chatting and dating. After a long string of failed dates around five years ago, I found my then future wife (Moroccan and living there) on probably the only site I had joined with no intention of finding a date -
Meet women or men, rate singles at HOT or NOT!. Its main use being: you upload photo, other users rate your looks out of ten, the end. But in my case not the end...
After a few harmless message exchanges we started phone calls. Boring but relevant aside: I ran up a fair few fat mobile bills as a result. Anyway, we communicated on and off throughout 2006 and 2007, including my threatening but failing to visit her twice. All the while I was regularly sending money to her with the understanding it was to help with bills and her family. Eventually I mustered up the courage to meet her in January 08.
In all honesty, I can't remember much of how I felt on my first visit but in short she showed me around a bit and there was some intimacy in private which I later found out was not enjoyed. Calls/chats continued and I visited again in July. On my return I started having doubts and called things off and looking back now I should have left it at that.
Then I felt as though I would never find anyone given my previous poor history with women and dating. So once again I convinced myself that she was the one. Having tied the knot in Jan 09, she eventually moved over to the UK in July and it's at this point that the nightmare really began.
She's a plain difficult person to live with. Her health isn't great but she doesn't seek medical help for it, doesn't get on with the family - she tends to separate herself and causes tension, always seems to be playing the victim. She would shout at me several times a week, some times hurling breakables at the floor and was often physically in my face with aggressive body language. This all happened during the first six months of her being here, after which she took a month's break in Nov/Dec 09 to see her family. Having reached rock bottom I sought therapy and it's around that time that things began to change.
Although I'd always thought I was being mistreated, it was only now that I started to defend myself and put my foot down. You see I'd been struggling financially having to pay for the both of us and even sending money back to her family. Worse still, she was running up big mobile bills on top of not finding a job to help out. So it all stopped - no more supporting her family, international calls blocked, no more central heating on all day. And several other bits and pieces. And rather than take her shouting I answered back whilst pointing out that it had to stop.
So things have calmed down over the past month or so, however I don't feel close to her, with little chat and no hugging, snuggling, kissing or any kind of physical closeness. Come to think of it there never really has been which I guess is a warning sign in itself. Thankfully she has found a job working 4 nights with 4 days off. What with me having a 9 to 5, we're not seeing eachother nearly as much - which could indeed be the reason why things have calmed down. But I believe that my putting down of the foot was also a factor.
As it stands, I feel I'm just at the beginning of an up curve in my graph of happiness. A strangle hold has been applied to my debt which is finally being paid off (about 1000 over the last 6 weeks). As to the state of our marriage, I honestly don't know what the next step is for us but I'm beginning to realise that we're just not right for one another. I'm giving it a few more months so see how it goes but honestly neither of us is going to change - at least not to any great degree - so it may be a pointless exercise.
To anyone who has got this far, please leave your comments. I'd really like to hear other points of view and experiences - similar or otherwise.
Is it working?
