A
female
age
36-40,
*-Zac
writes:I'm not sure I know how to go about explaining myself and I'm sorry for making this too lengthy but it is a long story. Here it goes:Before you start there are a few things you need to know about me:1) I am from a culture where family is everything.. you can not disobey your parents, you can not go against their wishes. 2) Arranged marriages are a cultural norm but love marriages are now becoming acceptable, little by little. It's hard to explain.. but that's how it is.I moved to the US 3.5 years ago. I was unhappy about it because I left my entire life behind but I did not have an option. I moved into my uncle's basement and for the first 5 or 6 months I had nothing to do. One of the rooms in my basement was occupied by a guy who is also a distant relative. I had known him all my life but I never got to know him closely nor did i like him much because there was a lot of tension between our families. But since we were living in the same basement, we started interacting and i started spending a lot of time with him when he got home from work. In short, we were together all the time and we started developing feelings for one another. We fell in love but he told me that chances are very high that we won't end up together, I just shook it away thinking that things couldn't be that bad between our families and he would be able to convince his mother. Time flew by and finally he talked to his mother... she said NO. And that if he ever tried to marry me, she would never see him again.He started pushing me away but I wasn't ready to accept the fact that he would let me go over something like his mother saying no. I called up my mother, told her everything. She wasn't happy with it but told me that my happiness is her happiness. However, after lots of ugly incidents, i was beginning to see that it would not work. and I could not accept it. that relationship was the only real thing in my life and it killed me to see that i was going to lose him. He kept telling me he loved me but at the same time did his best to push me away and moved out into a friend's house. 1.5 years from the day i was with him, i found out he had involved himself in a long distance relationship with a girl he went to high school with years ago. I called him up and cursed him and swore at him and told him one day he would regret it and miss me. he told me it was all my fault and i brought all that upon myself. It was ugly. We became arch enemies.I thought of him constantly and cried. I tried to kill myself but it didn't work. Meanwhile a male friend of mine became my shoulder and started taking care of me. He was the only thing keeping me sane and helped me get out of this. Then one day he told me that he loved him. I was delusional.. i told him i did too. He was too serious about me.. he wanted to marry me. One day I told him i may not have been truthful when i told him i loved him and maybe one day i might be able to love him the way he loved me. He still stayed with me.. I don't know why. Slowly, the pain began to diminish, my life became better... i began to care for this guy and really love him. i became healthy.. i looked better.. i became confident. He motivated me to fulfill my aim of getting a PhD. everything became ok. but i still had nightmares about my previous boyfriend... it still hurt every time i saw him. i tried to find out as much about his life as i could, i don't know why. It was extremely hard for me to let go of the things he gave me so i kept everything. i always wanted an apology from him. Sometimes i missed him and cried other times i just wanted him to hurt like he hurt me and it was just a confused muddled mish mush of feelings but finally i was able to put it in the background. A few incidents related to him happened during the course of time and all this while i thought he hated me.Meanwhile, my second boyfriend asked me to marry him, i said yes. I told my parents, they weren't happy because it wasn't an arranged marriage. after lots of fights and unhappy confrontations my family has just given up on me and they are more or less like: Do whatever you want to, because I'm a total non-conformist and would never agree to an arranged marriage. Things began to work out.. until one day my sister told me that because of the bad economy, my previous boyfriend's employer laid off an entire department of web developers and programmers, and he was one of them. Because of this he now does not have a sponsor for his H1 work visa and will lose his house, his car, everything and will have to leave the U.S soon. I wasn't too happy about it but i wasn't too sad either because I had too much hurt stored up in my heart and i felt like he had built up enough bad karma to haunt him.A few days ago, (almost 1.5 years from the day we fell apart) i received a text msg from him begging me to see him and that he had never asked me for anything in life and he needed this one thing. I consulted my fiance' who wasn't happy about it but in the end he let me go. It was the hardest thing i ever did in my life. He sat there crying and told me that he had been trying to do this for the past one month. He came to my house and parked outside mustering enough courage to come in and apologize but he couldn't do it. He said he wanted to do this before he left the country and wanted to tell me that he was sorry. He had never stopped loving me but he knew he couldn't marry someone from a family that his mother hated so much, so he used the other girl as a rebound to get over me and to make it easier for him to leave me. But after 1.5 yrs of trying, he still couldn't get over me and now that he felt like i was stronger than before he wanted me to know that he will always love me because he didnt want me to hate him forever thinking that he left me for another girl. He said so many things that completely broke my heart. I was sitting there... and the roles were reversed... he... a man with unimaginable pride.. sitting there crying and me... a weak-hearted person, sitting there not crying... not knowing what to do. I asked him if he loved that girl he was with.. he said No.. but i know her and i know she loves him a lot so i told him to stick to her.. he said he will... he told me i started a relationship with my fiance because i wanted to get over him and i should rethink it because i deserve better. i told him that i now, love him. He asked me to stay in touch, but i know my fiance will leave me if i do... we talked for 45 mins i said good bye and told him i will pray for him and that i have forgiven him... and drove back home.but i couldnt stop thinking about him and i sent him a text msg and he told me to email him because his girlfriend goes through all his telephone bills and email accounts to see who he's talking to :S so i wrote him an email and sent it to an email account that she doesnt know about and i poured my heart out. i complained, i cried, i told him he shouldnt have left me and i went through every incident in the time we were apart. He called me up the next night and we talked, like old friend.. it was so great to talk to him.. and yet there was something so sad about it. But since yesterday, I've been crying.. the one guy i loved to death... the guy i died over.. the guy who couldn't take a stand for me....the guy who i thought left me for another girl... comes to me and tells me after 1.5 yr that he never stopped loving me...I'm not sure why i am here... i am not sure why i spent the past one hour trying to explain all this.. i am just broken hearted.. i am sad... i was absolutely sure i got over this guy.. i am marrying another guy in two years.. someone who absolutely and completely loves him. someone i can never ever ever hurt. someone i will give any sacrifice for. ..but i can't stop thinking.. what could have been.. what could be... what should have been... will never be... It hurts. I don't know what to do.Please give me some insight into this matter..
View related questions:
fell in love, fiance, long distance, moved in, moved out, text Reply to this Question
Share |
Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, Miamine  +, writes (3 December 2009):
 Oh dear... what a pickle.
Ex-boyfriend.. You was willing to fight to save your love, you wanted him and was willing to make your family unhappy. He was not willing to do the same, his family comes first and he will never have the courage to stand up to them and choose you. This is how things are, I doubt they will ever change. He loves you, ok, that's nice, but loving someone and committing to them are two different things.
It's nice to be totally in love with the person you marry, but that dosen't happen in all cultures, for some people the love grows and comes later as you walk through life together and support one another all the way. Your fiance is willing to do this, but your heart dosen't seem to be there.
What can you do? What do you want to do? Can you make this man a good wife? Will you be loving, kind and supportative. Will you be faithfull to him always. Will you be glad that you choose him? Or will you slowly hate him and blame him because you can't love him, and dream about somebody else.
These questions we cannot help you with. It's your life, your choice. The ex boyfriend is a weak man, he's not right for you, and I'm not sure about the guy your with at the moment. But only you and you alone can make this choice. Your parents have accepted that you now have western ways and must make your own path. It is your choice to make, and neither them or us can help you. Sorry.
A
female
reader, I-Zac +, writes (3 December 2009):
I-Zac is verified as being by the original poster of the questionYes i do realize that this site is very accomodating because people answering questions are not 18 year olds or skinheads who form an opinion about you, fail to see things at a neutral level and then publicly bash you about it. Bashing isn't advice. It just makes the person asking for help feel worse. As for talking to a therapist, there were several times that I wanted to but I didn't have the resources and I was somewhat ashamed of talking to someone I didn't know. I felt like I would be judged and considered a morally and emotionally weak person. As for posting my problems online, I never really thought I could do that and I would find supportive people, but I'm glad I did this. I also feel like i have matured through my experiences a lot. there are a lot of things that i would tackle differently if i were in a bad situation now. I know that arranged marriages have a higher success rate but it's also because one person ends up making way too many sacrifices and that is usually the woman. The entire generation before me in my family had arranged marriages, even my parents and I've only seen one divorce in the family but most of it is because of the inferior role of women and their co-dependence on their husbands. 95% of these women don't work and there's a huge social stigma attached with divorce in our society, so it was never an option for them. Or in some cases, they stayed together for the kids. However, my problem with arranged marriages is that I prefer making my own decisions and when my decisions go wrong, i accept them and don't blame other people for it. So if my arranged marriage goes bad, I don't want to point my finger at my parents and tell them that it wouldn't have happened if I had been given the opportunity to pick my own partner. And I grew up with a very different mentality .. i just can't imagine being with someone i don't know.. someone I'm forced to fall in love with because I didn't have another option. I don't think that love is all the hype that is created out of it. Like you said, there's a lot more than you need. The thing is, neither I, nor my fiance' want to move back because both of us have unique fields and have better work opportunities here but he's in the U.S on a diplomatic visa and has a contract with his military. If he chooses to marry me here and doesn't go back, he will not be able to re-enter his country becauses he will be arrested for violating a government contract. and neither of us want to do that because his parents and his entire family live there. He wants me to get my PhD and is willing to wait for 5 years... but there are several things.. No matter how strong your relationship is with a person, distance makes things really bad. Specially if it's thousands of miles and even meeting once a year is too hard. Talking on the phone and exchanging emails can only get you so far.. things start to become difficult and a lot of these relationships never work. Other than that, 25 is the farthest that my parents will push my marriage. The average marriage age in our society is 20-22. I don't know, it's a crazy thing I'm in. I can't talk to my family and friends because that's just not how they think and education isn't on the top of their list. And I can't talk to my american friends, because there's this entire cultural barrier and I fail to communicate all these things to them.
...............................
A
female
reader, I-Zac +, writes (2 December 2009):
I-Zac is verified as being by the original poster of the questionFirst of all I'd like to thank you guys.. specially you "big sister" I never thought there were people out there who would actually take out the time to read through this long story and actually make an effort to give me some advice, specially such a detailed one. Secondly, I did need a practical one. Friends and famiyl mostly sympathize with you but don't help you to see the flaws in you or they end up telling you that you are whiny.
I would, however, like to comment on a few things and answer a few questions that you asked.
The part about killing myself.. I threw that in to give the reader an idea about how hurt i was because of this whole thing. Secondly, it was never a way to get attention because nobody ever found out about it. I had a lot of suicidal thoughts but i never made them obvious and no one around me knew what was going on in my head. Even when I made the attempt, I got control of it and nobody ever found out what I tried to do. I do consider myself stupid and foolish for that and I will never try to do anything like that again. Nobody is worth killing yourself over.
Cultural resemblance is with middle east but I'm from southeast asia which includes countries like bangladesh, india, pakistan, sri lanka etc. I don't want to pin point the exact country because a lot of times people form biased views about me based on my nationality.
The thing about my mom. Well for my ex, she finally said yes because i begged her too much, i cried too much and i was losing my health and i guess she realized that i needed it that bad so she just gave in. For my current fiance' the opposition was stronger due to several factors. She believed i was with him to sort of get back at my ex or to prove something to him. The other problem is that althogh i'm not from a flithy rich family, there's a huge social and financial gap between my family and my fiance's and it will put some sort of stigma and will hurt her pride if i marry him and people will say things. I, on the other hand, don't care about these things and have no love for money.
You also said this in your advice: "You say you would never hurt the guy you ARE going to marry and sacrifice anything for him but that's just not true. If that were true, you wouldn't be going behind his back emailing the ex. Some would say that's just a given, not some big sacrifice. You seem to attach a lot of importance and emotion to over the top statements that really don't have much meaning because the actions aren't there to support them. You not only make these statements yourself but you also fall for them quite easily. "
and I respect that, I really do. I know that you are right to a great extent and I am not happy that I did it, but I needed some questions to be answered and I addressed those in the mail. However, like i said, I totally agree with the fact that it was wrong and I should not have done it and I'm not planning to do it again. But it would be incorrect to form a drastic judgement about me. I did not write much about my relationship with my fiance' because that was not the issue here. I have made a number of sacrifices for him. I'm an ambitious person but i put aside all my aims for him. He has military obligations and needs to move back next year. So in two years when i get married to him, I will be moving out of the US to be with him, which is something I don't want at all. I have also given up on my PhD because that would mean staying away from him for 5 years and he doesn't want that. So I'm killing my career and moving back to an under-developed country where you don't even have electricity for the entire day. I don't know if that sounds big to you but it is big to me. And please don't assume that I am bitter about this, he's my priority. I will leave this for him any given day. But I'm just giving you one example to show you that I'm not all words, I've made huge sacrifices for him in the past too and i will keep doing that in the future so don't judge me based on this one thing, when I'm not even trying to cheat on him. I wanted to get something off my conscience and I did.
Lastly, about the ex's intentions. I don't know. I am glad he apologized but i wish he hadn't told me he still loves me. He doesnt even want me back so I guess he just wanted me to not hate him? I don't know... the thing is i do realize it's all very melodramatic but he's a guy with an unfathomable amount of pride. He has never ever cried, even when people close to him died. He has always been too stubborn to accept his mistakes and he never kneels down... so him coming to me and apologizing and crying at the same time... the thing is it's too hard for me to doubt that sincerity of the action itself because I know the guy inside out and he would never do something like this unless he meant it.
Anyway, Thank you for the advice again. I feel much much better after reading it and there were a number of eye openers in there. Even though I forgave him, I should still remember that he left me when he didn't need me and now that his life is upside down, he has come to confess his love.
Thank you :)
...............................
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 December 2009): Things are NEVER the same when you go back to someone. You spend so much time pining for them and you hope that they will see the error of their ways and when they come back... all the pain of rejection goes away but what comes is ANGER and A LOT of it. My guess is that you will always feel like 2nd best given that he only came to you at a time that he NEEDED you. When he had a job and all was good then he never made the effort (based on his mommy's disapproval!). Be very careful with this one. Sometimes its best to keep looking forward. My advice is to treasure what you have and let bygones.... good luck and really I hope you make the right choice FOR YOU!! xx
...............................
|
