chapter 2
The first time it happened, I was stunned.
It was around christmas, and it had already been a few months since we had seen each other and I was moved into someone's downstairs office room while they were traveling abroad. My first step to making space for myself as being in this relationship.
We were on the phone and he casually told me that he had his whole next year scheduled, full of places he was going and people who were hosting him. He was elated. And I was confused. We were supposed to be making plans together, we were supposed to be seeing each other soon, he was going to be coming to Australia. I thought. I thought wrong.
I had gone from feeling like I was the other half of an in love couple to an unimportant accessory. That feeling would eventually become more frequent until it was finally my whole reality.
The months afterward eventually became almost daily fights. I felt helpless to stop them. The discussions nearly always centered around his visa and how our marriage would accomplish it and me explaining over and over that I could not leave Australia in order to marry him and give him a US green card.
This was around the spring of 2014, the American spring. I had flown to the US in February to meet him and he had taken me to Key West and proposed. Sort of. He told the story of a diver who found a treasure and that he wanted me to have a ring made from the gold of that treasure.
We were in the shop and looking at rings.
I was happy. I was engaged. And I wanted to tell the world.
That night we went to the last hotel room we could find after calling all over the Keys and Miami.
In the morning, when I woke, he was already awake and staring off, deep in thought. He told me he had received "messages" that morning that he should tell me some things.
He told me that he had feelings for other women and there was unfinished business with some women in other cities. I didn't know how to process the information and spent several minutes trying to calmly figure out what that meant to him. We talked for a while and it was completely confusing and unsatisfactory. The only thing that seemed concrete was that he told me nothing had happened and that he hadn't decided yet what he would do.
I talked about a lot of things about myself on the subject, but there wouldn't be anything more from him about it.
One of these women he would begin to spend a lot of time with after I'd gone back to Australia a couple weeks later and he indeed would decide to have a love affair with her and he would continue their connection throughout the duration of our relationship. It devastated me and always made me feel insecure and jealous, but that, I think was all part of the game. It was just one of many fires lit to try and burn my world down.
I was so ashamed of this, that I kept it from everyone with maybe the exception of one friend.
Telling my story is healing, but also exhausting. And that is all I have to say about that.
It was around christmas, and it had already been a few months since we had seen each other and I was moved into someone's downstairs office room while they were traveling abroad. My first step to making space for myself as being in this relationship.
We were on the phone and he casually told me that he had his whole next year scheduled, full of places he was going and people who were hosting him. He was elated. And I was confused. We were supposed to be making plans together, we were supposed to be seeing each other soon, he was going to be coming to Australia. I thought. I thought wrong.
I had gone from feeling like I was the other half of an in love couple to an unimportant accessory. That feeling would eventually become more frequent until it was finally my whole reality.
The months afterward eventually became almost daily fights. I felt helpless to stop them. The discussions nearly always centered around his visa and how our marriage would accomplish it and me explaining over and over that I could not leave Australia in order to marry him and give him a US green card.
This was around the spring of 2014, the American spring. I had flown to the US in February to meet him and he had taken me to Key West and proposed. Sort of. He told the story of a diver who found a treasure and that he wanted me to have a ring made from the gold of that treasure.
We were in the shop and looking at rings.
I was happy. I was engaged. And I wanted to tell the world.
That night we went to the last hotel room we could find after calling all over the Keys and Miami.
In the morning, when I woke, he was already awake and staring off, deep in thought. He told me he had received "messages" that morning that he should tell me some things.
He told me that he had feelings for other women and there was unfinished business with some women in other cities. I didn't know how to process the information and spent several minutes trying to calmly figure out what that meant to him. We talked for a while and it was completely confusing and unsatisfactory. The only thing that seemed concrete was that he told me nothing had happened and that he hadn't decided yet what he would do.
I talked about a lot of things about myself on the subject, but there wouldn't be anything more from him about it.
One of these women he would begin to spend a lot of time with after I'd gone back to Australia a couple weeks later and he indeed would decide to have a love affair with her and he would continue their connection throughout the duration of our relationship. It devastated me and always made me feel insecure and jealous, but that, I think was all part of the game. It was just one of many fires lit to try and burn my world down.
I was so ashamed of this, that I kept it from everyone with maybe the exception of one friend.
Telling my story is healing, but also exhausting. And that is all I have to say about that.
posted by hymenoptera's honey at 1:53 AM
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