Monday, December 24, 2012

Split paths

Near the end of the train ride home, I felt someone watching me, and I turned around to see a smiling local girl watching me play a game. I found a save point and turned it off so I could talk with her.

She was a cute girl and pretty nice, but she didn't know much English, so we spoke mostly in the local language. I told her where I was from and about my company, and I asked her where she had learned her English; she went to the same school I taught at during this and last year. She was holding a can of tea, and when I pointed it out, she offered me a sip. I politely refused, because my stomach was a bit wobbly from some black coffee I had had earlier.

The train quickly came to the last stop, and she got in line to step off, throwing glances back at me several times. She got off first, and waited for me as I came outside. As we walked to the pay area, I asked her name and she gave it to me, and as we walked out of the station, she walked closer to me. At that time, I told her that my ride was in the opposite direction, and she smiled and said goodbye.

So I didn't ask for the cute young girl's number or anything; I just went home. The place where I had chores to take care of, and another in a long string of sexless nights since that time in October or November when my wife and I last had sex.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Then and Now 54 - Mall Concert

Then and Now 54 - Mall Concert
Time: Mid-2007, at my bud's aunt's place.

My bud and I went out to the roller coaster mall one day, and we spent a good deal of time walking to a bus stop to take us there. I had already been there before in Then and Now 2, so I was absolutely ready to walk there in about thirty minutes or so, but my bud wanted to take the bus because it was blastingly hot that day.

Just before we got to the waiting area, we stopped at a local convenience store to get some drinks. There was a separate display for each cash register, and looking at the wrong one, I was confused as to why my drink cost so much. When the lady pointed me to the correct one, I sheepishly apologized and said I had just arrived in the country recently. This was the point where the happy drunk appeared, the one I mentioned in my Problems post, and it was kind of unnerving, so I'd rather not repeat myself in a Then and Now.

My bud and I left the bus stop, and the whackjob, and went to a coffee shop just a few blocks away. It was another jazz themed place, with some comfortable lounge jazz coming in through the speakers. There were even little statues of the greats around the place: Count Basie, Duke Ellington, even a near-life size statue of Louis Armstrong, his feet glued to the wall and pointing his trademark trumpet downwards. I picked up a local newspaper and tried my best to pick out the words I knew, and happily drank my black coffee when it arrived.

When we were done with our drinks, my bud and I realized that we had waited for that bus to arrive for almost an hour while the idiot drunk guy accosted me. So, we decided to just walk over to the mall to see what was going on. By the time we had made that decision, is was starting to get a little late on in the day, and when we finally arrived at the mall, the sun was barely over the horizon and casting glistening light over the fountains outside of the mall.

My bud and I went in and I showed him the crystalline figure store, with sculptures of animals, people, and even the country itself on shelves around the place. After that, we headed to the roof to see the amusement park, but neither he nor I had any money to ride anything, so we just watched some screaming kids on the little roller coaster, then went back downstairs to head home.

On the way out, we saw a gathering of people in front of a newly erected stage which wasn't there when we walked in. There was someone with a mic up there, introducing crowds of high schoolers and college kids doing dance routines together to blasting music. We watched one group bust a move, from that awkward part in the beginning where they're all standing still and waiting for the music to start, to the satisfying finish where they've put their best out there for everyone to see. As we were walking away, my bud smirked.

"What?" I asked.

"She just said, 'I see some foreigners in the audience. How are you guys doing?'" he replied.

"Really?" I answered. "Let's go back and say hello!"

"If you want to," he said.

By that time, though, the lady had moved on to some other topic and was introducing another dance team, so knowing I had missed my chance, I refrained. We continued on home to my bud's aunt's house to play Guitar Hero and watch the B-movie channel.

I felt embarrassed about not understanding the woman for that entire night. I had studied the local language for a few months before I entered the country, but I knew it was absolutely not enough, and "immersion" was not working. The very next day, I re-doubled my efforts at learning the local language and even gave myself homework every night. I spent the next two months memorizing the local language, but I'll get to that in another Then and Now.

As for today...

I woke up at 6:00.
I played video games.
My wife and son woke up, so I turned off the game.
I watched TV.
I watched DVDs with my wife and son.
I played cars with my son.
I roughhoused with him.
I played video games.
I watched DVDs with my wife and son.
I played blocks with my son.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I did the dishes.
I played video games.
I slept.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Then and Now 53 - Chased

Then and Now 53 - Chased
Time: Mid-2007, single and at the hostel.

Olivia was one of many girls who messaged my internet profile, and when I found the time, we met up at the main station. She didn't send a picture, so it took a while for her and I to find each other and start talking.

She was just barely entering college and had an innocent, somewhat naive outlook on life, and I would have considered her a candidate for dating... if it weren't for her weight. Standing just over five feet tall, and weighing just about what I weighed then, I didn't find her physically attractive at all. But she seemed like a great friend to mutually bounce ideas and language off of, and I wanted to see some local attractions and have a bite to eat with her; you know, show her a good time.

We started by going to the underground mall under the train station, which was a path with stores lined up on both sides. The mall went between a few different train stops for those who wanted to take a peaceful stroll to their destination while checking out a few stores. After turning only a few corners, and before even entering the shopping area, Olivia and I came across a musician in the corner, playing some music on the flute. He had his flute box open at his feet for donations, and a music sheet on a stand in front of him. I thought the music sounded beautiful and otherworldly, but as we walked by him, Olivia turned to me and pretended to play the flute like he did. I smiled nervously, even as I thought it was a bit rude, and motioned for us to move on.

As we walked, we spoke in the local language, because her English wasn't very good. She told me about hanging out with another foreigner a short time before, one who had rented a limo to take her around the city. They talked for a while until the man looked into her eyes and tried to kiss her, at which point Olivia told him she wasn't interested and left the car.

By that point, I wasn't surprised at all by the way foreign men acted here. I told Olivia that I had little respect for someone who came to another country and treated it like a brothel, and that people should be trying to get to know each other for at least a few days before taking things further. She agreed wholeheartedly, and I could almost hear her heart thudding as we continued on, like she thought she had finally found a catch. I just said it to be honest, though.

We walked through the underground mall for a while until we came to one of the eastern stops, and we rode an escalator to the top. We saw a poster with an elephant on it on the way up, and she said that it was her favorite animal. Up to that point, I had never thought of it as anything but a tough and proud beast, but the picture was pretty cute. Soon, we came up onto the street and walked past a gated school, covered in the shade of trees, then continued down the street, talking on the way.

Things get pretty hazy at this point, and all I can remember are swirls of images: walking past a park, talking about her going to college soon at a place in the mountains and the fact that her family was rich, just a couple of things here and there.

My memory picks up again when we came to a monstrous, horrible intersection that went in no less than six different directions, with confusing traffic lights placed in every direction. We stood on the southwest side facing northeast, and there was a little car dealership to our left. The sun was beating down heavily on us, and I noticed Olivia getting pretty sweaty and uncomfortable, so I knew it was time for us to start heading back. So, we crossed a horrendous trio of streets through three traffic lights, and came back towards the street that led between my hostel and the junction station to the east.

As we got to the busy intersection outside the hostel, Olivia looked like she was having trouble breathing, and she asked if we could take a taxi to the station. I smiled and encouraged her to keep walking, because it was only about a half mile away, and we could have been there in just ten or so minutes. She agreed with another smile, and we started our walk up the road. I had to wait up for her to sit down and catch her breath four or five times on the way, but I didn't mind; I admired her tenacity in continuing the walk over there, and I remembered being that out of shape when I first got to the country. When we finally got to the station, she looked happier, like she knew she had accomplished something, however minor it was. We said goodbye, and I headed back to the hostel.

Olivia ended up making several calls to me throughout my time as a single man, and would hardly ever try to speak English. Most of the time I understood her, but sometimes, we just couldn't communicate at all. The calls started getting more numerous as time went on, even three or four times in one day. In emails with my mom, I told her about some of the many things I was up to, including this day and the calls. She ended up telling my brother, who wrote back, "So... I hear you have a new 'friend.'"

Olivia and I met three more times: once was for a quick lunch, where she had cheese fries and I had some fruit. Another was a bank trip with her mom one night because they were in the neighborhood while I was out and about, and her mom's hand was bandaged from where she had been bitten trying to stop two dogs from attacking each other on the street. I admired her bravery.

The next and final time, Olivia met up with me outside of the hostel for a few minutes and gave me a present: it was a handmade wooden carriage, put together with carefully placed glue. I knew at this point that I needed to do something. When we got to a store, I opened my wallet to take out some money to pay for a drink, and slyly made sure that I kept it open so she could see a picture of Sammi, when I thought I still had a chance with her. Olivia asked who she was, and I said she was my girlfriend. Nothing showed on Olivia's face, and I felt relieved, like I had only imagined her wanting to date me, and that I hadn't let her down. I thanked her for the gift, then went back to the hostel to give it to the boss there, because it was a bit too bulky for me to carry around without a fixed address.

A few days later, I got a call from Olivia at 2 or 3 in the morning in the local language, asking me what I was up to. I was a bit annoyed at being contacted so late, so after a quick conversation, I hung up and texted, "Please don't call me so late, you scared my girlfriend."

A few minutes later, she texted back, "Fine! I won't talk to you anymore!" I recognized that symptom of Borderline style behavior immediately; I had been in that position when I was younger, on both the giving and receiving ends.

I never heard from her again. I felt bad friend-zoning this girl because of her weight, but that and a bad attitude are my two no-gos when it comes to a relationship, because both aspects of a person usually show self-control issues. The final text I got should have been proof enough of this. But I still hope I didn't hurt her too bad when she stopped talking to me; I did try my best to be good friends with her.

This was the first time in my life that I had ever been chased by a girl, and I was playing the part of every woman who had rejected me back in high school and college for being a loser. I certainly didn't feel happy having to be the one to reject someone at that time, but at least, this experience was a clear showing of how far in life I had come, and other opportunities that could have been in store for me if I had continued to be unmarried.

As for today...

I woke up at 7:30.
I went to work by train, and played video games on the way.
I taught students.
I came home by train, and played video games on the way.
I ate lunch.
I hung up wet laundry.
I surfed the net.
I went to work.
I taught students.
I came home.
I ate dinner.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I watched internet movies with my son.
I slept.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Then and Now 52 - Odds and Ends 7

Then and Now 52 - Odds and Ends 7
Time: Before I got married.

For the sake of this Then and Now, I'm going to refer to my wife as my girlfriend.

A few months after I started my job, I had to go to some work training with a few people from the school. I wasn't looking forward to it, knowing how companies love to overcomplicate and micromanage everything about themselves, and especially when I had already taught for so long and knew exactly what they were going to explain. I got to go with my co-worker Natalie, and she took me over there on her bike. At first I held on to her belly, because I was unconsciously mimicking my ex-girlfriend back in America doing the same with me. But when I realized that I was putting my hands in a danger zone (and acting really feminine), I quickly yanked my hands back, put them on the back of the bike, and apologized. She was cool about it.

We drove through many, many streets on our way to the training hall. I remember going under a freeway overpass, over a very long bridge over a sparkling river with high-rise buildings a few blocks from its banks, and between the shining windows of a thousand office buildings. When we got to the training area, Natalie parked, and we got a quick bite to eat at a sandwich shop, where I got a meatball sub. We talked for a while about work and life, then we went to the training hall: a huge building surrounded by a rolling fence, like it was the UN or something.

Soon after we entered, the training started. I spent the whole time doodling on my handout, and pretending to listen as the speakers endlessly repeated themselves and explained things that I had mastered years before. The only thing I took away from the two hours I was in there was treating an English sentence like a train, where the capital letter in the front was like the engine, and drawing this picture for beginning English students to learn capitalization more quickly.

Hours later, the godawful training was done, and Natalie and I took a walk around an outdoor market across the street. There was a video game shop there, a place that she shopped at before, and she surprisingly told me that she was into Guitar Hero. She had to leave soon enough and I didn't stay too long, but I used that little tidbit of info to give her one of my guitar controllers for her birthday later. Horribly enough, before I gave it to her, she was using a regular controller to play the game.

-----

I had just arrived in the main terminal of the main station, and I saw a huge commotion there. There were people everywhere: both locals and foreigners from every country imagineable all grouped together in hundreds of groups with dozens of people in each one. I let myself get carried away listening to others' conversations, one after the other, as I walked through the throng of people. Some languages I could understand, others not at all.

One source of all this popularity was just outside, at a huge fair being held in front of the main station. There were booths lined up one after the other in the central courtyard of the station, sitting between the station itself and the multi-lane road across the way. Walking up and down the aisles between the stands, I enjoyed the sights of many different kinds of clothes and DVDs, the smells of a multitude of sweet and breaded treats, and the sounds of hundreds of people enjoying themselves on that hot day.

I was still saving money at that point so I didn't buy anything, but I still had a friend to meet that day, so I headed back into the station to meet up with her and enjoy another day abroad.

-----

I mentioned this place briefly in my Vacation post, but I'll go into more depth here. I was wandering around the main station when I found this place: a combination public garden and interactive museum with old barracks and houses within. It was about two or three blocks away from the station, and past a tunnel that led to underground parking under the station, and the garden/museum sat on a city block surrounded on all sides by roads. The place was also surrounded on almost every side by a stylized wall with small, curved cuts in the stone to allow looks inside. Welcoming visitors at the entrance was a huge statue of one of the country's heroes, smiling broadly.

Going past what looked like a small guard room, I entered the place and found a miniature scene of country life. There were two mini lakes surrounded by a stone path, and they were split up by a bridge between them. In the lakes swam large and colorful fish, and as I walked around the lakes, they seemed to be following me and waiting for bread to be tossed their way. I took a few pictures of the place, standing between or behind trees to find perfect views of the peaceful area.

I left shortly after, and went a few blocks past the garden house so I could wander around the shopping area. I found a DVD store with a ton of movies sitting on shelves with tons of locals around, and I came back to buy "Batman Begins" for my girlfriend just a few months later, as she had never seen it. It was probably a bad gift for a girl, but she was extremely happy to receive it back then.

-----

I'll never get back those two lost weeks at my bud's aunt's place, just like I'll never get my life as a young single man back, but at least those lost weeks served as a counterpoint to the great life I had quickly made for myself. Those weeks were a way of contrasting that best time of my life by comparing it to the lazy depression that defined my early adulthood, the same lazy depression that almost consumed me again when I first went abroad. Shortly after I decided to never be that kind of loser again, I quickly found my life improving a hundred fold in just a few days.

I already talked about the construction walk to the mall and the long walk with my friend after this critical turning point, which were longer experiences, in Then and Now 2 and 10. But this one was just a quick piece of fun that I had after I decided to be happy.

It was a hot day, and I decided to take a walk by the ocean to get some sea spray and ocean wind in my face to cool down. My bud decided not to come, so I went alone. The sea was relaxing and calm, and I saw a few other people walking on the beach and flying kites as I stepped on the warm sand in my sandals. After I left the beach, I turned left onto a street and walked in some random direction, and passed a park to find a collection of outdoor fruit stalls.

The bosses were really nice, but I'm glad they didn't talk to me, because I was barely twenty or thirty pages into memorizing the dictionary, so unless their conversations involved aardvarks or ants, I wouldn't have been able to respond. After that, I walked down some more narrow streets and past a bunch of fenced-off houses, until I found the main road that led back to my bud's aunt's place.

-----

One day of traveling and meeting friends all around the main city, I was absolutely dog tired. I could hardly stand, the world seemed a bit fuzzy, and I was sweating pretty badly in the heat. But I still had another person to meet that night: a girl that I had met on the internet and scheduled a 5:00 meet-up with. I was honestly feeling too tired to go out with her, but I had made a promise to her, so I absolutely wasn't going to cancel, regardless of how I felt.

I was in a train station with a lot of advertisements for classical music concerts and ballets going on in the main city, and it was soon apparent as to why: the station was connected to an underground concert hall. I had a quick blast of euphoria there: I thought to myself that I could go to one of those concerts in just another month or two, when my finances were up. That blast of euphoria also got me pumped to meet my new friend, and I quickly found the strength to meet up with her.

It turns out that there was no need. After I got to the top of the station's escalator and had waited for about five minutes, my new friend called me and said she couldn't make it. She apologized a lot and said we would talk again someday, but she never followed through. I was relieved, but a little disappointed, so I went out of the station to take a quick look around the area to finish up the day.

The road was busy and there were a couple of buildings quieting down in the fading light of the day, and while I was out there and still sweating, it started to quietly drizzle. It looked like the plans I had for my new friend and I would have been ruined anyway, and the rain helped solo me to cool down after a long day of travel. Soon enough, I went back to the subway to take a car home.

As for today...

I woke up at 8:00.
I played video games.
My wife and son woke up, so I turned off the game.
I did a puzzle with my son.
I watched TV.
I ate lunch.
I took a nap.
I woke up.
I went to work by train, and played video games on the way.
I taught students.
I came home by train, and played video games on the way.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I started a load of laundry.
I showered my son.
He fell asleep.
I played video games.
I slept.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Last fight

I've had some difficulty losing weight over the last three or four years. I've never been obese or anything, but I still needed to shed some weight: a year ago it was thirty pounds that I needed to drop, and now, it's around twenty. I realized that the biggest problem was that my wife kept feeding me high calorie food almost every morning, and even when I asked her to switch me over to vegetable drinks or something else, she would keep cooking for me.

At the start of this month, I just decided to tell her to not cook anything for me for a few months, and that I would take $100 off of her monthly payments from me (my food budget) while I got back down to a good weight. It worked very well for the first two weeks of this month, and I lost almost ten of the last pounds I wanted to lose, but then my wife started cooking for me again.

Today, she asked me for more money this month, $60, citing the fact that she had made food for me a few times. I said that I was already giving her over $100 for her Christmas shopping, so she should make do with what she had. She went quiet for a moment, then said that she felt uncomfortable, that a family shouldn't be quibbling over specific amounts of money like that. She was, of course, completely ignoring her own hypocrisy in bringing this issue of $60 up in the first place. I locked my eyes onto her like cutting lasers, and spoke deeply and strongly:

"You can't pay for everything with $1200 a month? For the last four years, I've given you over $1200 a month to pay for nothing but food, clothes and insurance, and that still isn't enough?"
"..."
"I paid my way back at my apartment with $700 a month, and that included rent, bills, taxes, food, everything. Why is it that you need to spend almost twice as much for just food and insurance?"
"I don't know."
"Over $1000 a month, every month, for four years. Just one month I give you $1000 exactly, and you can't pay. What are you spending it on? Considering that you seemed real happy to make this out to be my fault in the first place. What are you spending it on?"

She counted up all the costs, and came up over $1000 short, so she started adding in things that I pay.

"No! I pay the bills, I pay the taxes, and I pay our son's college fees. You pay your mom and our rent with your salary. That leaves $1200 I give you for food, insurance and clothes. What are you spending it on? What have you been buying, every month, for four years?"

She tried to change the subject and say that I had to pay her more the previous years because she tutored, and she paid the bills with that money.

"That has nothing to do with what we're talking about! And by the way, I still pay you the same amount of money every month that I did back then, even though I pay the bills now! So what have you spent $40 a day on, every day, for the last four years? I get barely $3 a day of my money to spend on gas and food. I wish I could spend $40 a day!! So what are you spending it on?!" I demanded.

She cited our son's milk, about $100 a month, and toiletries, barely $50.

"That still leaves over $1000! What are you spending it on?!" I roared.

She got quiet, and then came over to the Angry Chair to do some calculations. I went back to watching TV until she stopped writing and went back to the floor to wrap up Christmas presents. I took a quick look through the checkbook, which she religiously writes in for thirty minutes a day, implying that she should know exactly where all the money is going. She stopped $800 short, and she didn't explain any further.

I hate acting like a blasted ape. But I have no choice: when I'm nice to my wife, she presses her advantage and treats me like garbage. When I try to reason with her, she gives me the silent treatment for hours on end, then explodes later. It's only when I'm forceful after she is completely wrong that she backs down. And does this compare at all to what my life was like before I got married?

My wife is an obstacle, in every sense of the word. She stands in my way on everything: money, emotional support, my sex life, she even blocks doorways with her enormous girth. Everything I do in life has to be done around or through her. When I tried to treat her like a princess for the past four years, hoping she would understand just how much she gets from me as her husband, guess what? She started acting like a princess. And she never listened to me when I asked her to stop treating me badly or acting badly to our son. It wasn't until I started treating her like a wife that she began to settle down on the drama.

I want to treat my wife like my friend, as I did when we were dating, but the permanent and draining institution of marriage led her to be a fat, demanding shrew when I tried to be nice. She basically got tenure the second I signed on the dotted line for this "job," and nothing she does will ever get her fired, so the only way I have to keep her from acting up is to make her as uncomfortable as possible when she tries to start a fight. It's like raising a second child.

So now, I have to be someone I don't like being, just to keep the stereotype that is my fat, hairy, frigid, irritable and money sucking wife in check. And with our son relying on us to stay together and provide a good home for him, I have nowhere to go, and I still have over 14 years to wait until I'm free.

Then and Now 51 - Christmas Shopping

Then and Now 51 - Christmas Shopping
Time: Late 2007, dating my wife.

For the sake of this Then and Now, I'm going to refer to my wife as my girlfriend.

So here's something absolutely new to me: not only was this the first time that I ever had to go Christmas shopping on my own, it was the very first time that I actually enjoyed myself at it.

I headed to the underground mall near the train station for my big shopping trip, and I wasn't feeling very up to it going in. I'm a typical guy: when I want something, I find the place with the lowest price, go directly there to get it, then get home as fast as possible. So the thought of getting presents for all of my family and friends that night seemed like a night ruined to me.

But when I got there, I began to feel happier to do it. This was Christmas of 2007, and in my entire life, I had never been richer. I think my net worth at that time was around $5000 from work and light living, and I hadn't taken my Christmas trip back to America yet, so I was living high off the hog. It felt good to live a life of plenty, and to be able to share that success with the people around me. I was in the underground market with a couple hundred dollars to spend, and began my search, store by store, for the best presents for everyone.

I came across my younger younger sister's present first at a little custom accessory shop: it was a little bracelet with her name written on the side. The shop had a front area with bins of accessories and a few machines (sewing and the like), and the boss was working in the back. She came out when she saw me, a nice lady in her 40s who spoke English rather well, and I chatted her up. We mixed our languages talking about my fun time in her country, my life back home, and the fact that she wanted to try living in America at some time in the future. She kept trying to introduce her daughter, who had come back from school, to me, but the daughter was too shy to say much.

After that, I found another store where I bought my girlfriend a cute little rabbit doll that was holding a carrot in its paws, because I liked to call her "Bunny" sometimes. Later, she removed one of the threads on the carrot so only one side was attached to the doll, and she used it as a "carrot gun" to playfully shoot me at my apartment when I stepped out of line. She loved it back then, but I don't know where it is now; it might be at her mom's house.

Next, I went to a cards and collectibles shop to get something for my stepdad, and found a huge box of Magic cards written in the local language. I never really liked the game because every time I played with him, it would take an hour for me to set my creatures up and one card for him to kill everything, but I thought it was a fun gift to give him. The store had a couple of cases of figurines and games, but the place smelled like funk, so I left as soon as I could.

For my mom, I went to the very end of the underground mall where there was a very literal tiled wall that stopped any further progress, and it had very little foot traffic. I felt sorry for the stores back there: one was an ice cream place, another was empty, and the last was a store that sold ceramic pottery. I bought a miniature smiling rabbit for my mom at the last one. The lady who ran the shop didn't speak any English, and she was pretty old, so I only complimented her on the beauty of her art pieces before I left.

I later went to a music shop to get some local rock music for my older younger sister, who is a huge music fan, and who loved the Ella Fitzgerald CD I bought for her a few years before.

For my grandma, I bought an angel doll that could be plugged in to light up, because I knew she liked collecting Christian-themed goodies.

At another game shop, I got a plush 1-UP from Super Mario Bros for my brother, seeing as how he rode a motorcycle and was going to Iraq back then. He loved it so much that he made it an ornament on his rear view mirror in his truck, and his friends asked me to get them some shrooms, too.

At the same store, I got a plush Donkey Kong for my best friend, because he and I were huge Kong fans back when we played Super Smash Bros on his N64.

Finally, I got a miniature Vash the Stampede figure for my other friend Oscar, but nothing for my bud, because I wanted to give him my collection of Resident Evil novels back home, as I knew he loved the series.

With everything bought, I went up and out of the underground mall and back onto the streets. The night was somewhat cold and the road was dark, but in front of me was a huge department store, towering in the darkness. I turned around and fished out the 1-UP, then took a picture of myself holding it, smiling happily as I headed home with my swag.

As for today...

I woke up at 6:00.
I played video games.
My wife and son woke up, so I turned off the game.
I played cars with my son.
I watched TV.
I went out to tutor students.
I came home.
I started a load of laundry.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I played video games with my son.
I hung up wet laundry.
I slept.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Then and Now 50 - Tina Warms Up

Then and Now 50 - Tina Warms Up
Time: Mid-2007, single and at my apartment.

This was the first time I had with Tina after her apology email in Then and Now 39, where she needlessly said that she was sorry that she didn't speak up more often. When I met her on this day, the change in her wasn't night and day, but it was still significant. She and I met up in the train station, and she smiled brighter than I had seen her smile before. Together, we went to an underground mall which went several miles from one part of town to another.

One of the first things we went by was a man playing a violin in a corner, collecting some money from passerby. Beyond a little fountain, we came to the dancing kids area that I saw in Then and Now 16, but that day, Tina and I only saw some families resting by little fountains. We passed by several hundred stores down there, including a local video game shop, a kids' book store, a bunch of clothes stores and a pottery shop, talking all the way about life and fun we'd had in the past few weeks, until after about an hour, we popped out of the underground market and back onto the street.

Outside was a movie theater that played movies that had been out for a while, only at a discounted rate. There wasn't really anything I wanted to see back then, because I had already seen Harry Potter 5 back at my bud's aunt's place in Then and Now 24, but I made a note of the location for later.

Tina and I then went to lunch at a local restaurant. The door was open to the heat outside, but there were some fans inside keeping everyone cool. We got a table off to the middle-right, with a few people surrounding us in the front and back. I had some breaded meat, she had a simple bowl of soup, and we talked more openly than the times we spent together before.

Finally, after lunch, we walked around until we got kind of lost, and found ourselves alone in an alleyway with a couple of cozy houses around us. We sat down in front of someone's planter, and Tina pulled out a little book from her pocket to show me a trip she had taken with her friends. I was happy that she was finally opening up enough to share something more about herself.

The previous summer, she and several of her friends took a road trip to the other side of the country, where they stayed in one of her friend's vacation homes. She had a lot of pictures of this trip in her book. One was of her and her friends piling their junk into their friend's tiny car, another was of them all standing outside the cute little vacation house, and she also took several pictures of herself standing atop a cliff looking out on the ocean. I felt really happy at that moment, and not just because she was finally sharing with me. I felt that she, like I, was living her life happily with friends and journeys across the land, and really living life to the fullest. Her life was going as great as mine.

She showed me a couple dozen more photos, and recounted her experiences shopping and walking around in the beach town there, for a good thirty minutes. Unfortunately, she soon had to go, so we went back to the train station and said goodbye. I almost immediately met my next hang-out "date," but with the number of friends and acquaintances I had when I was single, I don't even remember her name.

As for today...

I woke up at 7:30.
I went to work by train, and played video games on the way.
I taught students.
I came home by train, and played video games on the way.
I ate lunch.
I drove to another school.
I taught students.
I came home.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I started a load of laundry.
I surfed the net.
I hung up wet laundry.
I slept.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Then and Now 49 - Rain Preserve

Then and Now 49 - Rain Preserve
Time: Mid-2007, single and at the hostel.

One day at the hostel, I was using my subway map to find random stops and places of interest, as I had done in Then and Now 18. One of the stops was a single stop that connected the two main lines, but there was nothing of importance written on the map. I assumed it was some kind of residential area and that it ferried a lot of people to the two mutually exclusive lines, but I had to go see it for myself before I could check it off the list.

I got to the station, and it was dead, absolutely dead. There were only maybe ten people, mostly parents and older people, and nobody was making a sound. The lights were kind of dim, too, making it seem like some kind of ghost station. I quietly stealth-footed out, with the tiny thuds of my shoes sending echoes off of the high ceiling, and I exited the station to the street above. Right as I came out, a little bit of drizzle started to come down from the grey sky above, but thankfully, it never got any heavier than that.

The street was very long, and there were few cars passing by. I was walking on the side of the street that had some non-descript buildings to my right, but to my left was a massive field of green that was surrounded by a wide fence. I walked for a short time until I came to a museum, and deciding to get my cultural fix for the day, I went inside.

The lady there told me in the local language that they would be closing soon and that I couldn't go in, but when I promised I would only take a few minutes, she let up and said I could look around. I smiled and thanked her, and as I was walking in, I asked if I had to pay anything. She said that because I didn't have much time left to look around, she would waive the fee. I smiled even broader and thanked her again.

It was very quiet there, too, simply because just about everyone had checked out. The museum was divided into about six floors, with each one carrying a different theme. I remember that one of the floors was an ancient history floor with some old pottery and stuff there, another was classic portraits of locals in traditional and modern clothes at work or play, and another was a collection of different kinds of tools and technology, and how they evolved as the country continued on through history.

The final floor, which I think was the sixth, was horrible. It was some kind of modern art gallery and absolutely nobody was up there, and I don't think it was because the museum was closing. Almost every piece up there was just flecks of paint on a white canvas, or absolutely blank (save for a single triangle or something in the middle), and other kinds of nonsense, done in five seconds "pieces" that had nothing of relevance to say. I went back downstairs seconds later.

I left the museum shortly after and headed across the street to a place where the buildings of that part of the city started to thin out. I came across a very high hedge that wound around a very wide city block, and wondering what was inside, I followed it until I found an opening. On the inside was another tall building with a roof that angled outwards, and with some kind of reflective paint on the walls. Beyond it was a very wide natural area, some kind of nature preserve or something. There was a little path that went around and through patches of trees, which many, many locals and their kids were walking on. And beyond the paths, just behind the strange building, was a very wide man-made lake with some ducks swimming in it.

I stood on the banks of that lake for a while, listening to the sound of the drizzle lightly hitting the ground around me, and watching the ripples it made in the peaceful lake. I couldn't help but smile.

After that point, my memory gets hazy. I remember walking down some busy streets and coming across a part of town that had something like five pet stores all on the same block, and one of them had a parrot chained to a bird stand outside, but otherwise, that's about all I remember of this fun trip.

As for today...

I woke up at 6:00.
I played video games.
My wife and son woke up, so I turned off the computer.
I watched TV.
I took my son out to get breakfast, then we went home.
I spent about three hours fruitlessly searching for my lost keys, and roughhoused with my son off and on.
I went to work by train, and played video games on the way.
I taught students.
I came home by train, and finished video games on the way.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away a mountain of dry clothes.
I played video games.
I slept.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Then and Now 48 - Road of Rock

Then and Now 48 - Road of Rock
Time: Mid-2007, at my bud's aunt's place.

When I first came here, I didn't have much besides my PSP and some clothes. I'm usually one to travel light, and I assumed that I could buy some stuff as time went on. Also, I wanted to wean myself off of video games at some point, so I only brought the PSP for the plane ride, and two Guitar Hero guitars so I could play with my bud, and maybe throw a party later. I didn't bring a PS2 because the one I used to use belonged to my family, and it was pretty broken anyway, so I planned to buy one here.

The PSP ended up getting used way too much as I went through my adjustment phase, but as I came out of it and set it aside, I still wanted to get a PS2, because my bud and I both loved Guitar Hero. It was the only game he ever came over to my house in America to play. So that day, the two of us headed out to find a video game store. His aunt told us that there was a shop about a twenty minute walk away, but because neither of us had walked the streets she was talking before, we got lost.

We headed under an overhang for a construction site and past some really big and busy streets on our way to the shop. There was a veritable maze of houses and businesses to our right and past the construction site, and to the left, we could see the bright waters of a river. After a few minutes, we stopped at a little shopping mall to ask directions.

Inside, there were maybe twenty or thirty stores. The mall was completely indoors, and every one of the stores was a cube between little walking paths that wound around them, or off to the side. All of the stores also had clear walls and dividers, so no matter where I was standing, I could look through one store and straight into another.

My bud went wandering on his own for a little bit, so I took the chance to peek in on some clothes stores. I also saw a card and miniature shop with a bunch of robot statues in the display, and even some pillows with pictures of girls on the pillowcases. After a bit, my bud and I met up again, and we found a metalworking shop. The boss didn't seem to weld or anything like that (or at least, I didn't see any welding equipment), but he did do engravings and other things.

He and my bud spoke in the local language for a while about where to find the game shop, and after getting directions, I used a very rough mix of poor local language and English to thank him and ask him about his store. He responded with his own language mix, but his English was a lot better. To thank him for his help, I paid for some dog tags with my name on them, and picked them up a week later. I still have the tags, the gift bag and the boss' namecard in my memories box.

So on my bud and I went to the game shop, which wasn't that far away. It was a lot smaller than I'm used to, and the boss was an older woman, so I was a bit surprised when I first came in. She was very professional, and allowed me to try out my copy of Guitar Hero and the guitar on her display model to see if it worked, and they did perfectly. In no time, I bought the system, and my bud and I were ready to rock.

On the way out, a pair of foreigners came in, a guy and a girl. I tried to say hello, but they both ignored me and went straight to the boss. I guess it was because they were both very overweight and feeling self-conscious or something. They asked the boss in English if she had a copy of Silent Hill 4. She didn't understand, so they had to pull out a picture and show her, but she didn't have it. Then, they left without a word. It was just another example of rude foreigners treating other expatriates like toxic waste, and not having the respect to learn the local language.

My bud and I were back at his aunt's house in no time, and we were rocking out that night. The volume had to be kind of low because we slept on the second floor between his aunt's business and bedroom, but it was still another great night in my single life.

As for today...

I woke up at 9:00.
I went to work.
I taught students.
I came home.
I prepared teaching lessons.
I roughhoused with my son.
I went to work.
I taught students.
I came home.
I ate dinner.
I started a load of laundry.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I surfed the net.
I hung up wet laundry.
I slept.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Turning point

My wife woke up and talked with me about changing her religion, from her local beliefs to Christianity. She told me that her reasons for doing so were because her mother and sister act badly and she didn't want to follow the same religion they did, and that she prayed all the time but never got anything from her current faith. I repeated the same thing I told her a few days ago in annoyance: she shouldn't switch religions just because someone she didn't like was also a member, and she should follow a religion because she agrees with their beliefs, not because she wants something.

She got miffy and pretended that I didn't tell her this a few days ago, then suddenly told me that she wanted to follow the religion to be closer to her recently passed grandmother. This is exactly her same method of drama that I outlined before, and as soon as she mentioned her grandmother, I knew what she was up to. I looked away from her and back to my video game, then said that it sounded like a good plan. I then scolded myself for trying to get involved with my wife's issues again, knowing that every result ends up with her ignoring my advice or getting angry.

She still sounded miffy, but the more I ignored her and responded only with short answers, the happier she seemed to become. Truth be told, I'd heard about this phenomenon only recently, and the results are exactly as people say they are (and the exact opposite of what I expected): the colder a man acts to a woman, the more eager she is to please.

It's completely true. Before, every time my wife started a pointless fight with me then I apologized for my rudeness later (and never got anything similar in return), her behavior would only get worse as the fight dragged on, or in the days and weeks after. But now that I treat her little tantrums with indifference, she suddenly seems more than willing to get things back to the way they were. All I have to do is flick my attention somewhere else and give noncomittal hums, and the drama comes to a screeching halt. I updated my coping post with this nugget, in hopes that it helps other unhappily married men.

I don't like acting like this. And I wouldn't have to act like this if I weren't married. But from this point on, I will never have another p-whipped fight with my wife, fights that I've detailed over the past year and a half on this blog.

In marriage, as with any other volatile relationship, weakness invites aggression. Concessions invite more demands. Apologies invite blame.

Ever since I started ignoring my wife when she's miffy, and speaking directly the many reasons that she's wrong when she's actively attacking me, she backs down every time. Her fits of drama have started happening less and less, in addition to being shut down in seconds. She made a big mistake cutting me off sexually, not doing anything around the house, starting fights nearly every week and wasting hundreds of dollars of my money every month: by treating me like garbage for years while still relying on the benefits I provide her, she's allowed me to check out of this marriage in every way but physically.

My wife has no idea of how I truly feel, but I am so internally removed from this relationship, and my life, that I no longer take any of my wife's crap with the kowtowed posture, voice and words that I used to. I'm not pushing her to divorce me, as happy as that would make me, because we have a son. I'm showing her that I won't tolerate any of her bull anymore. If she divorces me because I've decided to stop taking her abuse, I can't blame myself for it. My son deserves more in life than a father who is a doormat and ATM machine to his mother, and I need to show him that not only will marriage destroy him, but that his life and happiness are in his own hands.

I do everything, all of this, for my son, and I will ever remain his dedicated father. Whether or not my wife decides to get with the program and change my life from crap to lame, I no longer care. I'll continue to provide for her as I promised when we got married, and I'll show her respect and kindness when she's a good person, but I'm not taking her abuse anymore. And in fourteen years, I will be free of this yoke. Forever.

As a contrast to all of this, I came home from work by train, and talked with one of my co-workers about my life on the way. She is incredibly beautiful and really nice, and it was good to get some things about my married life off my chest by back-handedly bashing it through comparison to my single life. I never said a word about marriage directly, but I think she got the point as I entertained her with some stories cribbed directly from my Then and Now posts. If I weren't married, I would definitely pursue something more with her.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Combinations

Like many other people who wanted to get married, I made excuses for all of the pains of it because society told me to expect the good things: my wife won't be a jerk because our love will be special. My life won't be boring because we'll travel the world. I will have more sex than ever because that's what the statistics show. All lies, but I believed them anyway with rationalizations and excuses.

I'm going to discuss the different combinations of married couples in this essay, but to do that, I'm going to need to divide people into four groups. These groups will be based on two criteria: a person's actions (if they are proactive or reactionary), and a person's morality and character (if they are good/confident, or selfish/hate-filled).

For actions, an externally proactive person is not just someone who has actively improved their lives and/or the lives of others, but is also a person who tries to get to that point, like someone who goes to school in order to someday have that strength. A reactive person is someone who coasts through life, responding only to stimuli.

For character, an internally moral person is not just a person who thinks well of themselves and others, but also people who are negative, but keep those destructive feelings locked up. In other words, those who act positively while thinking negatively are moral, because they consider the well-being of others through their actions. A selfish person puts themselves first at the expense of others, and/or dumps their problems on other people for the purpose of scoring attention or causing trouble.

Putting the internal and external together, we arrive at four kinds of people:

- A Leader is a proactive and good person. They are the managers, creators, charity managers and doers of this world. They are trustworthy, hard-working, confident, friendly and helpful people.

- A Support is a reactive and good person. They are people who wish the best for others, but laziness or cowardice precludes them from doing things on their own to improve their lives or the lives of others. They are the world's best friends and silent partners.

- A Bully is a proactive and selfish person. They take action that hurts others to benefit themselves, and rarely limit their behavior. At best, these people are rude, vindictive or controlling, and at worst, thieves, rapists or murderers.

- An Anchor is a reactive and selfish person. They exist only to wallow in the mess that their lives have become, and refuse to do anything to help themselves improve their situation. They are the wet blankets and takers of the world. At best, these people are online game addicts or welfare leeches, and at worst, drug addicts or suicidal.

Before I continue, I want to make a few things clear:

First, this isn't a black and white view of the world; people are not this easy to group and pin down, so whichever group fits most often will suffice. That is to say, if someone is usually a happy and outgoing person, but a couple of times a year they blow their top over something stupid (then apologize later), they're a Leader.

Second, these personality types are based on a person's actions, not on their thoughts. The former is the true definition of a human being.

Third, these types of people are defined by their actions when specific situations that test them arise. Put simply, if a person is kind to their lover almost every day, but if the two of them ever disagree on something, this person becomes a power-tripping, threatening jerk until they get their way, then they are a Bully. The other situations, where things were unfolding as both partners wished, did not test this person on their domineering, selfish nature, and so it would be incorrect to call them a Leader.

Finally, some might wonder why I keep harping on strength in this blog, whether it be confidence, chasing dreams or the like. Obviously, this is a personal thing, because it is the most important thing that I lost as a married man. I can answer that with a question: why aren't you more focused on strength? It is through strength that we achieve our dreams in life, and without it, we have no ability to improve ourselves. If you find yourself using canards like "power corrupts," then you're just rationalizing and excusing your static, complacent existence, your laziness and your fear in favor of that comfortable malaise.

With the explanations done, on to the meat of this essay. These are the combinations of marriage:

Marriage - Anchor/Anchor
Theme - Ruin
Analogy - Two people living in a broken down trailer in an axe-murderer trailer park.

This marriage is defined by a tenuous bond between two very sick people, and a life that's equal parts unchanging and destructive. I don't think I need to explain why this kind of marriage is not ideal, but it doesn't hurt to try.

Neither person in this relationship will ever be happy. They both lack the character to be good people or to control their chaotic thoughts that become chaotic action, and neither one has the strength to proactively change any potential problems with their marriage. Anchor/Anchor marriages are destined for pain, and no Anchor should be seeking out a relationship in the first place, much less with another sick person, much less a contractually obligated one that lasts an entire lifetime. How can they take care of another human being when they cannot even care for themselves?

Truthfully, I've never experienced, or seen, this relationship firsthand, but it's to be expected: Anchors, by nature, tend towards being shut-ins. To see an Anchor outside is hard enough, but to intimately know two married to one another is even tougher.

Marriage - Bully/Anchor
Theme - Abuse
Analogy - Two people in a car, one steering from the driver's side rear seat, and the other cowering in the rear seat next to them.

One partner is an active, but lousy, human being, who drives the relationship to debt-ridden, destructive, selfish ends, while the other doesn't dare say anything for fear of being shouted at or struck.

This marriage is an obvious one to avoid. In the Anchor's position, they will be demeaned, abused, stolen from and pushed around, and their life will get even worse over time. The Bully will get what they want through threats, but will eventually self destruct.

I experienced this with my mother's screaming at my whipped fathers, and everyone else around her, during my teenage years. To imagine being married to a woman like that, especially in a vulnerable position like I was in during my depressed days, makes me feel bad for a few of my fathers, and further makes me want to vomit.

Marriage - Support/Anchor
Theme - Impotence
Analogy - Two people in a parked car, one in the passenger seat, and the other stewing directly behind them in the passenger side rear seat.

This marriage involves two powerless people, much like the Anchor/Anchor relationship above, but in this case, one of the two partners actually knows how to fix their lives, and their relationship. It's just that neither one of the two spouses has the courage or confidence to do anything productive.

Imagine the Anchor/Anchor relationship, only the Support gives the Anchor advice that neither partner ever follows through on, and you have a good idea of why this marriage is to be avoided. This relationship is a godawful cycle of boredom and drama, where the Support dreads every moment that the Anchor pops, and the Anchor, selfish twit that they are, continues to manufacture problems and cause trouble where none existed before, in an attempt to punish their partner, and themselves, in their psychopathy.

I had this kind of marriage with my wife when she was in a horrendous mood with easily solvable problems, but she never listened to the easy solutions I had to offer her. She kept making excuses for why she didn't need to fix herself, and I got more and more frustrated that she kept causing drama where none should exist in the first place. After three or four years of this, I just stopped caring when she tried to stir things up. It's a terrible situation for either party to be in.

Marriage - Leader/Anchor
Theme - Parasitism
Analogy - Two people in a car, one driving in the driver's seat, and the other moping in the passenger side rear seat.

The Leader is the breadwinner, the upbeat one, the planner, the thinker and the doer. It is through their supreme effort that the marriage putters along, no thanks to the dead weight Anchor strapped around their waist. The Leader gives, and the Anchor takes.

This is the Support/Anchor marriage, only in this case, the Leader is not only sure of how to fix their mate's problems, but is willing to work hard to uplift them. This, of course, does not move the Anchor in the slightest. Being selfish, hopeless and unwilling to make any effort to improve, the Anchor employs a simple methodology when the Leader attempts to help: excuses and escape when the Leader is forceful, rage and lies when the Leader is nice.

I have this kind of marriage every time my wife gets in one of her whiny moods about something trivial, and I have to take on the role of the stern father figure, giving her piece after piece of advice that she consistently explains away or ignores. She never accepts any of the good help I offer, I feel unappreciated for all I give and all that she takes, and my efforts never stop her from attempting to drag me down with her. It's like shouting to someone in a dark room, who keeps tripping all over furniture and hurting themselves, to reach up exactly four feet and flip on the light, but they keep screaming at you that it would never work. It's a ridiculous, stupid relationship to be in, to have someone hold you back in life so completely.

Marriage - Bully/Bully
Theme - Drama
Analogy - Two people in a car, both sitting in the back seat, fighting over the steering wheel.

If you think living with one controlling, abusive, selfish know-it-all is bad, imagine a marriage where both are domineering idiots.

There isn't a moment's peace in this household. Neither of the two Bullies will ever be on the same page, and because neither one of them has the character necessary to care about the other's well-being (and due to the permanent nature of marriage, where compromise and sacrifice are the name of the godawful game), there will be nothing but shouting and strife between the two as they jockey for a better position over the other in the marriage.

My mom has always been a Bully, and I had ringside seats to the Bully/Bully marriage between her and fathers 1 and 4. After the inevitable screaming fits between them, both of them would invariably turn their frustrations on their kids, because although fighting other Bullies in an attempt to erode their will excites them, Bullies love nothing more than attacking people who don't or can't fight back.

Marriage - Support/Bully
Theme - Chaos
Analogy - Two people in a car, one sitting in the passenger seat, and the other driving from the driver's side rear seat.

This marriage involves a well meaning, but powerless, spouse, who tries in vain to rein in the destructive or selfish tendencies of their chaotic partner.

The Support is little more than an ignored drudge, who spends their time making sure the marriage is kept in order, while the Bully makes attempts to unravel it through their ignorance, selfishness or overall desire to see things crash down around them. The Support, being the weakling that they are, can only make half-hearted attempts to get the Bully back in line, but the Bully's lack of character, or overall pigheadedness, keeps them from settling down.

I lived this marriage for years. I was the Support, internally moral from years of constant personal development, and externally reactive after becoming disempowered by marriage. My wife is a Bully, the kind of Bully that only snaps when her will is questioned, but otherwise is a hybrid of Support and Anchor that does little more than use the computer or nap. Take a look throughout this blog under the "Problems" tab to get more than enough information to dissuade you from ever living this merry-go-round of cyclical nonsense.

Marriage - Leader/Bully
Theme - Harassment
Analogy - Two people in a car, one driving in the driver's seat, and the other fighting for control from the driver's side rear seat.

In this marriage, we have two people who have the confidence and strength to affect change in themselves and others, but only one has the character to wield that strength wisely.

While the Leader will continue to pull and direct the marriage in a healthy, fun way, the Bully will attempt to steer them off course with their destructive behavior. Unlike the Leader/Anchor relationship, the Bully will not flee from good advice, or shut themselves down from hearing how wrong they are. Instead, they'll push even harder to ride the marriage off the rails and into debt, drama and pain.

I had this marriage with my wife for a few years, from just after the Christmas fight in 2009 to the first part of the airport fight in the beginning of 2011, as detailed in my Fights post. Before the Christmas fight, my wife had never popped about stupid things, and so wasn't a Bully. After the first part of the airport fight, her constant stupidity eroded my will to fight back, and I just gave up and became a Support. As a Leader, this relationship is a draining cycle of constantly fighting a fool for control. As a Bully, it's a selfish attempt to avail themselves of their partner's willingness to pick up the pieces after they inevitably send the marriage into ruin.

Marriage - Support/Support
Theme - Monotony
Analogy - Two people living in a trailer park.

So this is the first of the marriage types that people might consider a success. Here we have two Supports, both well-meaning and both impotent, living together in a daily routine. Why do people sign up for this stale monotony of a relationship? Generally, it's because people become one or more of the following, and refuse to fix or mitigate the problem:

- Bald
- Fat
- Old
- Ugly
- Boring

And they don't fix the problem(s), because they are one or more of the following:

- Lazy
- Cowardly
- Weak

Rather than do something like shave and put on muscle (or wear a hat), diet, do young things or cultivate a personality that shines past the rough exterior, it's so much easier for a Support to just give up and find a fellow failure to cling to, then wait for the arrival of death. Support/Support marriages are about giving up every chance and all potential in a vast and amazing world because the Supports are both losers, too far gone to improve themselves. Think I'm being harsh? Read "Marriage is for Losers" by Dr. Kelly Flanagan, a lauded call to enjoy a marriage like this, and read between the lines.

It's. Also. So. Incredibly. BORING. When my wife isn't flipping out about something, this is the basic relationship we have: wake up, family time, go to work, go home, do chores, go to sleep, repeat. It's not even close to what my life was like when I was single.

Marriage - Leader/Support
Theme - Instability
Analogy - Two people in a car, one driving in the driver's seat, and the other navigating from the passenger seat.

This is the second of three marriages that people might consider a success. It sure sounds appealing, too: one partner is active and directs the marriage for the betterment of both partners, the other partner guides, and the two support one another while the Leader leads them on to fun and fulfillment.

Unfortunately, marriage doesn't work out this way. As I said in my Leverage post, marriage involves the transfer of leverage from a man to a woman because of two reasons: the legal system in many countries, and the cultural expectations of men and women in nearly all of them. Because of this, it's important to show the Leader/Support marriage with either gender in either position.

When the Leader is a woman, and the Support is a man, it's only a matter of time until the marriage falls to pieces. When it comes to a relationship, women primarily desire strength from their husbands. This could mean handsomeness, money, confidence, muscles, tough talking, status, fame, or any other way that a man shows himself to be a force to be reckoned with. I don't even disagree with this. I'm oftentimes married to an Anchor, and I know why women want to avoid relationships with whiners, dead weights, and manipulative Nice Guys. Anchors throw a wet blanket over everything and make simple tasks Herculean.

The problem is that when a Leader woman, for some reason, marries a Support man, her eye will begin to wander for someone who can proactively protect, enrich or otherwise work with her better than her Support husband; he will become an Anchor in her eyes. It's in her genetics. Because there is seldom any kind of punishment or shaming for a woman to divorce for any reason, and she is usually rewarded for doing so, she is likely to end up making that decision.

When the Leader is a man, and the Support is a woman, as my relationship with my wife was before she got pregnant, it feels great. I was in charge of our fun and activities, and all she had to do was show up and have a good time. When she had a different idea that was better than mine, I happily followed her line of thinking.

But when the ring came on, and I moved in with my wife, she degraded from Support to Bully in just a year, because she knew she had me trapped. I tried to combat her stupidity, I tried to uplift her back into the Support that I once knew, everything. But she had no incentive to improve, so she got fat and became an even worse Bully, and I finally gave up.

In short, Female Leader/Male Support marriages are on a crash course for divorce court, while Male Leader/Female Support marriages have a shelf life that lasts as long as it takes for the wife to realize the amount of power she has acquired. Why would you want to sign up for either one, especially if you're a man, with this kind of risk in mind?

Marriage - Leader/Leader
Theme - Complication
Analogy - Two people on two motorcycles, driving down the road in the same direction.

If I were born again into another life, and when I was an adult, if somebody put a gun to my head and said that I had to get married or they would pull the trigger, I would tell them to blow my brains out. I'm not joking.

But if I absolutely had to choose a kind of marriage, this would be it. When two Leaders come together, everything works. You have two people, proactive and full of character, who don't need to support one another because they're both strong enough to look out for themselves. It's a great life, shared.

At first.

This marriage degrades or falls apart when one or the other spouse changes. Perhaps both partners agreed that they wouldn't have children, but then someone changed their mind. Perhaps both partners wanted to have a huge ranch out in the middle of nowhere and live there for the rest of their lives, but then wanderlust overtook one of them.

Whatever the case, when one of the Leaders is still moving in the same direction, but the other wants to go somewhere else, then it's either time for the marriage to end, or for one of the Leaders to give up and become a Support. And I can say from personal experience, for a Leader like I was who had worked so hard to get to that point, and to chuck every dream and hope into the gutter for the rest of his life, made me feel infantilized, then cheated.

This has all been made especially grating, of course, from all of the additional and unnecessary problems that I have had to take on as a result of marriage. In other words, not only was I degraded from Leader to Support, but I then had to take care of five times the debt, chores and fights as my single life, and be rewarded with less than 10% of the sex and take-home pay.

I only ever had a Leader/Leader relationship with my first girlfriend, and it was great. We met up when we wanted, went out for movies and dancing, stayed in for TV and sex, and were always on the same page. Then we moved in together and the relationship turned into a boring Support/Support situation, then eventually into an empty Bully/Support relationship with me in the occasional Bully position, for which I still feel ashamed.

In order, this was how my relationship with my wife went, between me/her:

- Late 2007 to September 2008 - Leader/Support. My girlfriend, who later became my pregnant wife, acted nice to me because she knew how great a guy I was. She kept up this act for another year, because she thought I was going to take off before she gave birth, and she wanted to secure my presence with her.

- September 2008 to December 2009 - Support/Support. After we officially moved in together, our married life followed an extremely predictable, and boring, routine.

- December 2009 to February 2011 - Leader/Bully. My wife, realizing I wasn't going anywhere, let loose all of the selfish, domineering, rage-filled horsecrap that she had held in check, and I ineffectively attempted to defend myself by using logic against her drama-stirring foolishness. When I did, I got about the same amount of respect and understanding as if I were using the same logic on our seldom angry infant son.

- February 2011 to October 2012 - Support/Bully. Since fighting my wife's mercurial nature wasn't working, I attempted to concede in every fight, in the hopes that appeasement would make her stop barking at me, and help her understand how much I did for her as her husband. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work, and only made things worse.

- October 2012 to today - Leader/Support. After my wife had the abortion, I had been pushed far and long enough. Her stupid drama gets only two responses from me: calm and logical, but direct, reprimands for her childish behavior, then absolute apathy and withdrawal. Depending on the fight, I sometimes use both, or sometimes skip straight to the latter, but both responses work extremely well. I've taken back control of this relationship and turned it from a volatile powder keg, back into a boring routine where I call the shots, and quietly remember my old life.

If you think this is hardly a way to live, you're right. If your relationship with your significant other is going great, why complicate it by getting married? Marriage upsets the power dynamic, limits freedom, and guarantees nothing, especially for a man. Even if you're marriage number ten (both Leaders), you shouldn't even need that contractual obligation to keep the two of you together. One of the big reasons of marriage is to "prove" some kind of trust exists between two people, but there lies the contradiction:

- If you don't trust your partner, then you shouldn't be getting married.
- If you DO trust your partner, then you don't need to.

So these are the kinds of marriages:

- Chaos.
- One spouse taking care of dead weight and the other spouse putting an undue amount of pressure on the first.
- Mind numbing, endless monotony.
- Getting involved in a permanent relationship with another human being, who by nature is prone to change.

Don't do it. If you want kids, have a surrogate parent help, or adopt. Kids are extremely easy and fun to raise if you are a strong person, and worth every minute. But don't get married. And if you decide to ignore these warnings, do yourself a favor and don't have kids with your spouse; give yourself the option to leave when the marriage inevitably becomes abusive, boring or unfulfilling, and you realize that I was right.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Then and Now 47 - Odds and Ends 6

Then and Now 47 - Odds and Ends 6
Time: Before I got married.

Nate, Annie and I got to know each other pretty well over the course of my stay at my apartment. We were all about the same age and had a lot of the same interests regarding media and travel, so we always had good times together, either in my place or theirs. One day, the two of them invited me to go out with some of Nate's cousins to visit an outdoor market, so we all took the subway to go adventure a bit.

There were three or four cousins there that night: one of them was in grade school, so I wasn't much more to her than a novelty foreigner to practice English with. The others were about my age, but they were extremely shy, and no matter how much I tried to talk to them, they shyly responded for only a few seconds before going back to Nate in the local language.

That night, we all went into a combination restaurant, shop and arcade, where the top floor sold clothes, but an escalator went underground to the eating and play areas. We all sat down to get something to eat, and talked for a bit. Going back up top, we walked past some food carts until we came to a sausage vendor. They sold these incredibly thick, foot long sausages wrapped in paper, and Nate said I had to eat one. I bought it and we took a picture of me staring at it in mock shock, then we walked back towards the subway to say goodbye.

I nibbled on the dog for about an hour before and after I rode on the train, then met up with Nell near my apartment. By the time we got together and headed out into the night to pick up some stuff for my apartment, the dog was still half-uneaten. Finally, after she and I finished shopping and we set up a time to have a real meet-up, I could take no more and ditched the super dog in a trash can. I did give it my best, though.

-----

My first "date" in this country was with a girl who messaged me on the internet, and I met up with her just a day or two after I first got to the hostel. We met up at a bus stop near my new place, then we took a walk through her college campus on our way to have some coffee.

The campus was extremely small, barely bigger than one or two city blocks. I imagined it was either just the dormitory area, or I had missed the rest of it on our night walk. We walked through a wide courtyard with some basketball courts to the side, and all around us rose a ring of buildings with scattered windows lit up and students studying inside. We went to a coffee shop not far away from the Mexican restaurant where Sammi and I had our date in Then and Now 28. It was a very nice place, with glass windows showing the night streets just outside, wide open aisles and very comfortable seats. It almost felt like a 50s diner.

One of the first things this girl said to me was that she absolutely wasn't interested in dating at the moment. I told her that was fine; to tell the truth, I wasn't really interested in her, either. But once she had stated that, it became much easier for me to relax and treat her as any of my guy friends, joking about some of the things I had seen at my bud's aunt's place and complimenting her country, and she told me of some things I could go an see while I was in the main city.

After about an hour, I walked her back to her campus, then went home to talk with May and Ken.

-----

Walking through the rainy streets of my first city at my bud's aunt's place, my bud and I kept under the overhangs of the businesses next to us as best we could. The rain was so heavy, that just a few seconds outside in it, and we would have been drenched for hours. We came to a group of young kids kicking a ball around, and right when we started to get close, one of them kicked it straight to me. I stopped it with my foot and looked at them, and they seemed to be shocked, like they had never seen a foreigner before.

I kicked the ball up into my hands, then tossed it to the boy in front with a "Here you go," one of the first things I learned from my studies of the local language. The kids all got excited and ran towards me, surrounding me and peppering me with questions that I could not yet understand. I laughed, smiled, waved goodbye and kept going with my bud. "Don't get a big head," he scolded me, and I laughed again.

-----

My boss at my first job told me one day that we were going to have a party. I asked her why, and she said it was because we had just welcomed our 100th student into the school. I'll get to the story of me getting this job later, but for now, it's just important to mention that I was the first teacher to teach at this school, which was a newly built place. My boss said that they couldn't have done it without my help, and though I humbly accepted the praise, I knew she was right. I was an excellent teacher because of my five years of experience in America, and that plus the fact that most other foreigners who come here:

A) Don't care about their jobs as teachers
B) Don't know how to teach, and refuse to improve
C) Both

...made me the teacher that I was, especially in comparison to others. That, and more importantly, the extensive experience and efforts of the staff there, made the school the success that it was. So as thanks, my boss took everyone to the hotel that I saw in Then and Now 38, which, fittingly enough, I first saw as I was leaving an interview for another school.

It was a mammoth place up close, colored red and gold and standing dozens of stories tall on a mountain peak overlooking several valleys around it. The lobby was grandiose, and the staircase leading up to the rooms was fit for royalty. We went to the bottom floor and had some lunch at a fancy restaurant down there, and I got the chance to practice the local language with my boss and two co-workers. I told some jokes, and they thanked me for my hard work. It was a very fun time.

After lunch was done, they drove me back down the mountain so I could go to the subway station and start the day's travels.

-----

Taking cues from Ken and the warm welcome he gave to me at the hostel, I greeted another foreigner who came from an entire world away. Although his body language hinted, and speaking with him later confirmed, that he was condescending, picky and annoying, I still made it my happy mission to give him the welcome that I had also received. He talked a little about his home country, but most of our interactions came a little later near midnight, seated at the table near the window of the hostel situated a dozen floors above the city, while I attempted to teach him some of the local language.

Our impromptu tutoring session started when he told me that he was a vegetarian and wanted to ask the locals not to add meat to his meals, and he asked me if I knew what to say. By then, I had learned several hundred words of the local language and "I don't eat meat" was a set of simple words that I had long since mastered. After I told him, he kept saying the words wrong time and time again. It was such a simple phrase; I knew the only reason he kept messing it up was because he knew nothing of the local language.

But rather than get frustrated and chalk him up as yet another in a long string of disrespectful foreigners, I patiently repeated the phrase and gave him tips until he was able to speak it correctly. Once that was done, I gave him a quick and dirty primer on the language, its grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, and how to use mnemonics to cut study time by a factor of ten. I used his pencil and notebook to make note after note for him to study later, but he remained emotionless and uninterested throughout the lesson. In fact, he seemed a lot more interested in reprimanding me for accidentally breaking his pencil lead two or three times.

An hour or so later, when I had given him all he needed to know to master the language in months, he said it was late and went straight to bed, with no show of gratitude or any kind of sign that he would study what I had told him. Despite this, I still hold the hope that he ended up using that knowledge to his advantage to fully enjoy his time here, and avoided marriage like the plague it is.

As for today...

I woke up at 5:00.
I played video games.
I went to work.
I taught students.
I drove to another school.
I taught students.
I went out to tutor a student.
I came home to an empty house.
I ate dinner.
I surfed the net.
My wife and son came home, so I turned off the game.
I prepared teaching lessons.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I did the dishes.
I played video games.
I slept.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Then and Now 46 - Friends All Around

Then and Now 46 - Friends All Around
Time: Mid-2007, single and at my apartment.

This was one busy day. It took place a few weeks after my tutoring classes got started up and had fully kicked off, and I had gotten to know Tim, Jessie and Amy very well.

First, Tim and Jessie asked me to come to their apartment to hang out for a while. It wasn't a class or anything like that, it was just two friends inviting me over to spend some time relaxing and having fun. When I got off the subway car, I came to a residential area of town, with rows of five or six story apartment buildings lining long roads with very few cars on them. Not only did Tim and Jessie's neighborhood feel open, spacious and opulent, but it was quiet, too.

They asked me to call them when I got near their place so they could come pick me up, so I found an interesting little landmark where they could find me easily: it was a small park in the shape of a triangle, with only a slide, a few swings and some monkey bars in it. It was small and oddly-shaped because it was in the middle of three lanes of traffic, which met up and went in three different directions at each point of the triangle. There was also a fence running all the way around it to keep the kids from dashing out. I was there and sitting on a bench for only two minutes when Jessie pulled up in her car, and I got inside to go to her and Tim's place.

It was a nice apartment. There was an L-shaped couch with some comfortable cushions in the front room, and a very large TV directly in front of it. On their counter were some bowls of fruit, and their coffee table had a couple of magazines to read. Their place had just the right amount of furniture and clutter to make it feel like home, but wasn't stifling enough to feel like I was getting lost amidst chairs, clothes and other unneeded knickknacks. Their infant daughter was sitting in the corner of the L couch, and I started to make faces and play with her. All she could do was follow me around with her eyes, open her mouth and wiggle her tongue around in response.

Tim excitedly asked if I wanted to play his Wii, which I had never played before, and I happily agreed. Jessie rolled her eyes in a teasing way, probably because man time was coming. I made my little avatar with spiked hair, evil eyes and a half-smirk. I was trying to make myself look confident, but I ended up looking more like a jerk. Even Tim laughed, "You look like such a bad guy!"

We played a couple of games. First up was a bowling game, where he proudly showed me his 300 score that he got sometime in the previous year, but as in real life, I wasn't able to bowl over 80 myself. Then we played tennis, which was kind of interesting, but I don't remember who won.

Finally, we played boxing. I was really railing on Tim for a good couple of minutes, getting in some solid hits, but I think he was playing possum, because as I was just a hit or two from winning, his guy suddenly jumped out and started raining blows on me. I tried to dodge and block his hits, but the controller wasn't really listening to what I was telling it to do, so my guy dropped his gloves down from his face right as Tim laid a haymaker directly across my left cheek. I was down and out in seconds. He cheered and I groaned at the same time.

We soon quit the game to talk about other things. I found out that day that Jessie is a published author here, and had written several children's books over the years. I was really impressed. After a while, though, it was time to go, so Tim and Jessie saw me outside. Before I went, they gave me their old bicycle, which they never rode anymore. I thanked them a bunch as I went out, and rode the bicycle back to the subway station.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take the bike onto the train, so I had to go back upstairs and leave it, unlocked, in front of a business. There were a bunch of other bikes there, and I really didn't need the bike all that much so I wasn't worried if it got taken away or stolen, but I still felt nervous leaving it there. I went back downstairs and took the subway back to my apartment for another scheduled meet-up with my other student Amy, and again, it was just her and me going out, not a tutoring session.

She picked me up in her car, and she drove us down a long, peaceful dark road from my town to the main city, and brought me to a seafood restaurant where she knew the boss. She excused herself to go talk with him, and I walked around, enjoying the fish trophies and other things hanging off of the walls. Amy came back a minute or two later and apologized for leaving me by myself. I told her not to sweat it, then complimented the boss on his place.

We got back in her car, and she asked if I wanted to see a movie with her. I said sure, we could go see the Simpsons movie, and we were off to find a theater that was playing it. Unfortunately, it either wasn't playing or was sold out, so we just spent a while driving around aimlessly for about an hour. We still talked about our childhoods, our time abroad in other countries and general English topics the whole time, though, so it was still a very fun trip.

Finally, as night had long set in and she had to head home, I asked if she could help me pick up Tim and Jessie's bike and take it back to my place. She happily agreed to help out, and we went to the business where I had left it. Thankfully it was still there, so we loaded it up, and headed back to my place. When we arrived, we both got out of the car, and she handed me my usual rate for a tutoring session.

I refused it immediately. I told her she was a friend now, not a student, and I didn't take money from friends. Besides, I was doing fine with my new job and apartment, so I didn't need to charge my friends money for my English lessons anyway. I was enjoying their company enough as it was. She smiled and put her money away, then we spent a couple of minutes outside her car chatting about a new modeling job that she was going to take. She had to leave the country and do some shoots over there, but she kept the same phone number and asked me to call her when we could hang out again.

And with that, Amy was gone, and like my other tutor-student-turned-friend George, I never saw her again. I texted her one time while she was abroad, and she wrote a message telling me how happy she was, but that was it. In any event, I'm still very happy to have gotten to know her.

As for the bike, I rode it to my job once or twice, but after it got a flat tire on the second or third ride, I just left it unlocked at the base of the stairs up to my apartment. I never really liked bikes, and not just because of the constantly popping tires, but because they were a pain to store, and never seemed to go much faster than speedwalking. It was still an awesome present, though. It remained at the bottom of the steps until my girlfriend got pregnant, then I moved out to be with her. I hope someone found it and is making use of it now.

As for today...

I woke up at 8:00.
I played video games.
My wife and son woke up, so I turned off the game.
I took my son out to get breakfast, but the first shop closed at 10:00, and the other one ran out of bread, so it took a bit longer than usual to find a place. We talked, cruised a bit, ate, then went home.
I watched TV.
I roughhoused with my son.
I watched internet movies with him.
I went to work by train, and played video games on the way.
I taught students.
I came home by train, and played video games on the way.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I did the dishes.
I watched internet movies with my son.
I slept.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Then and Now 45 - George

Then and Now 45 - George
Time: Mid-2007, single and at the hostel.

George, one of my tutor students from my hostel days, was a young man who went to a local college in the big city. We got in touch on the internet, and he actually paid me $30 for an hour and a half of my services, which was far more than I was expecting. When we first met up at the subway station, I had a very good feeling about him. He had a bright smile, was dressed casually but cleanly, and gave me a nervous, but friendly, handshake. I wasted no time getting to know him and his work at college, where he was studying English for some work he wanted to do later.

At his campus, he took me on a quick tour around the place. There were little forest patches on the sides of a road that went around the campus, and the path made a ring all the way around the main dorm rooms and classrooms in the center. I asked George if he knew any other foreigners from this college. He said he didn't know any personally, but he had seen one or two hanging out around the place. Apparently, one was just looking around for a girlfriend, while the other actually studied engineering there.

We walked around for a bit longer, until we came across his dorm area. The door was locked and he wasn't interested in showing me inside, because he hadn't cleaned the place up. I said it was fine, so we went to the computer lab to have class. For our first tutoring session, I taught him English sentence order and simple words he didn't know, and asked him to speak for a few minutes on random topics that came to his or my mind. I asked him if he wanted me to be ruthless with correcting him so he would improve quicker, or only correct the important things so he wouldn't get discouraged. He laughed, and said I should choose whatever I thought was best, so I compromised and wrote down his mistakes on a piece of paper to politely bring them up later.

After a while, it was time for a break, so we got on one of the computers, and I showed him the "Atari Porno" episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd. He thought it was pretty funny, and I made sure to translate some of the better swear words and slang English for him to remember later. In no time, our ninety minutes were up, and I was on my way.

We met up a few more times for class after that, and I even saw a couple of his friends at the subway station once. The guys seemed pretty friendly, but the two girls kept staring at the floor and looking away shyly. Each time I met George, I would switch up the tutoring class to involve practicing listening, writing, phrases, slang, or whatever he seemed interested in. They were great classes that went by quickly with how much fun we were having.

After I moved to my apartment and started getting a regular paycheck, I called him and said that we could meet up for free from that moment on, and we could practice English while exploring the town. He seemed happy, but hesitant, when we hung up. That was the last time I talked to him, probably because he wanted the professional class to help with his English, instead of just messing around about town and practicing casual speaking.

And, as with many of my other good friends from my unmarried life abroad, by the time I realized George had fallen out of contact with me, I had already made twenty or thirty other friends and had completely forgotten about him. Then my email account went down, so I never got to hang with him again. He was a great student and friend, though, for the brief time we knew one another.

As for today...

I woke up at 10:30.
I went out to tutor a student.
I came home.
I spent an hour or two fixing the computer.
I played cars with my son.
I played Mario Paint with him. He wasn't impressed by my animations of a face snorting up a man, or a train riding a bus and running over another guy. But he couldn't stop talking about the last animation I did of Yoshi eating his own turds.
I watched DVDs with him and my wife.
I ate dinner.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I did the dishes.
My wife and son watched internet movies, so I played video games.
I slept.