1-0, 1 love…

I have never been a victim. I don’t believe in taking crap in relationships. I try not to  loose my temper and loose control of myself, I consider myself evolved enough to agree to disagree. I know I can’t always be right and I know how to fight fair. At least that’s how  it started. Living with someone who doesn’t follow the same rules made me feel like I was being denigrated. I stopped playing the rules and started stepping up to the plate and swinging hard when we got into verbal altercations. Slowly over time it became normal for him to call me names, get in my face and shout at me. I couldn’t let him keep winning by cheating. I hate being the underdog, I cant stand feeling like someone has got the better of me. So I had to lift my game in the argument stakes.

When I got called a named, I called him one in return. I slowly but surely lost all sense of what is normal and right and levelled back as much crap as I was given. But somewhere along the way I started hating the change I saw in myself. I felt mean and was disgusted with how I was treating my husband Daniel. I knew in my heart that my actions were wrong, but on the battlefield it was tit for tat. I still refused to let him get away with verbally abusing me or acting out. Daniel also started making accusations about me talking to other guys online. Horrible questions like ‘oh are you looking for a new boyfriend to replace me?’ became the norm. Over and over again I was accused of fooling around with other guys when I was online. Daniel had left the virtual community that we had met in and assumed that I must be seeing other people because I had remained there. When I asked him to come and spend time with me he replied with questions like ‘are you in love with my avatar and not me?’ I was shocked. He seemed to twist everything. Everything I did seemed to be used against me. The feeling that I couldn’t win soon set in and hasn’t left me. I assumed that when he came to Australia that we would be like dozens of other couples I knew online who  spent time in virtual worlds together and seemed to thrive on the shared interest. This didn’t happen for us. Daniel says he wanted to focus on the real world, not a virtual one and he wanted to spend time with me, but when ever I spent time with him he was texting or gaming on his phone, building villages and waging wars. I really couldn’t see the difference between my virtual world and his war games. But he could and that’s all that mattered.

In my heart of hearts I felt abandoned. My online identity is very important to me. This is hard to explain but the interactions there help give me confidence, social interaction and make me happy. Daniel thought I was wasting my time and efforts and he thought I should be more focussed on my real life. He still doesn’t understand this facet of my life, even though we met there. We both had different expectations from our relationship in this matter , but unfortunately he still assumes that when I’m on the computer I’m talking to other guys. It doesn’t matter what I say or do, he just assumes that I’m fooling around. I started wondering what incentive I had to stay faithful if he firmly believes that I am not. I didn’t know what to do… I was being judged for something I hadn’t done and there was nothing I could do about it.

Memoirs of my shattered dreams… or Trying to make some sense of it all…

Hi, My name is Anna and this is my relationship story…

About seven years ago in an online community I met a man and fell deeply in love. I was so happy. I had been lonely for so long, I had grown apart from my last partner after fifteen years together, two lovely children and a small privately run company. I had decided that we had nothing in common, we lived separate lives and wanted to dissolve our union. I had wanted more time to recover from that uncoupling, but met someone I just couldn’t resist. I was like a giddy schoolgirl again, I felt like a bunny rabbit in the spring time. I couldn’t get enough of him even though we lived in different countries and were separated by a  21 hour plane ride. I had to meet him, my life almost depended on it.

Luckily for  both of us we were able to do that. After four months of emailing, Im ing, skyping and chatting he caught a plane and we met at Melbourne airport for the first time. We both felt that we had finally met out match and were so excited. Initially he came out for a month long vacation to Australia. The month got extended to a year and finally we decided to get married so he could stay forever.

These were fun days when we swan, hiked, holidayed, spent time with friends and really enjoyed our lives together. We bonded over things like cooking, matching libido’s, terrible childhoods and the desire to improve ourselves both financially and as evolved people. We had so much in common then.

It wasn’t all roses – my children weren’t very impressed with the strange new American person in our lives but I told myself that eventually they would get used to it. They were older now and about to set off on the adventure of university and work life so I wasn’t sure how much longer they would be around, I needed someone in my life just for me when they had departed the nest. I silently hoped they would understand and it would all work out all right.

The new man in my life was so much more fun, he dressed better, had more education and could talk to me on deeper levels. I was in heaven. My friends loved his wit and sense of humour. It was win-win all around. Or so I had thought.

Due to his visa status at first he wasn’t allowed to work legally in my country. I didn’t think this was important, I had a good job and could provide for us both and fill in the gap. I had savings and we made the most of what we had. I was happy to help him financially and take the burden. I had no idea that the paperwork would take so long to get processed and how this would effect the harmony in our household. The situation lasted for nearly two years until the work visa finally came through. By then I was completely depleted financially and had been using credit to fill the gaps, but now I was fifteen thousand dollars in debt and the pressure was really on. I guess that’s when the fights really started. The pressure had got to me and I was buckling underneath it. I had never been the main provider, I had been lucky enough in my last marriage to work part time and care for the family. We weren’t affluent, but we were comfortable. I suddenly ached for that time when I felt safe and financially stable. It wasn’t long before genuine worry set in. What if something happened to my health? What if I couldn’t work any more and I lost my house? What if? What if? What if?

About ten years ago I had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and depression, so worrying was something I took to another level. Within about six months I got my first ulcer. My house was precious to me. Its not an expensive or particularly stylish home, but owning a house was something that my parents weren’t able to accomplish living in the city so to me home ownership was something that I had prided myself on and also something I was terrified of loosing. You know how they say that when a person moves up in life they are frightened of falling back down – well this old cliché really bit me hard. By now my credit was maxed out and my bank refused to refinance my home loan until my spouse wasn’t listed as a dependent deduction on my tax return. I was tired, frightened and started to resent my new husbands work situation. Other things also needed to be done like him getting an Australian drivers licence and the fee’s paid to immigration just didn’t seem to let up either. It always seemed like one step forward, three steps backward and my nerves were getting frazzled.

After two years of stress for us both the cracks had started to appear along with something else that I wasn’t used to – his temper tantrums. We had argued in the past, usually a short burst anger from us both that involved sharp words, hurt feelings, recriminations and regret. But something had happened, something had changed and unfortunately there was no taking it back. The alpha male I married didn’t take crap and the situation got  nasty very quickly.  At first I was taken aback, unsure of how to handle the volley of insults, accusations and just plain nastiness that was being thrown at me like bricks. In my last relationship we never argued, sure we disagreed but had always dealt with our emotions quietly and talked out our issues. This was totally different. In the past I had been able to defend my point of view or ask for what I needed but now I was no longer able to without it the conversation taking a rapid nose-dive into name calling and outrageous allegations. It seemed my husband was adept at turning situations around and heaping the problems off on others. I wasn’t used to this but I would get used it because this was developing into our norm. At first I despaired about our arguing. I felt he wasn’t happy with me or that I had done something wrong.