S_Parc wrote:In the beginning, she was ok with my immediate family being distant, as she was in her post sales-engineering training/work in MA. We never visited them, despite spending time on the north shore and being only a few miles from their residence. It was the poisoning of the well, where ppl [ I didn't even know some of these in-laws ] felt that my family would have had a negative impact on our offsprings, that she started having doubts about the future. Realize, any child between her and myself would have been a dual citizen of the USA and Brazil, without going through a green card process. However, how would my family treat him? Like an American kid, or some troublemaker, south of the border? The fact that her other close friend had no such issues, with her husband's family [ and that I think was Kentucky or Tennessee (Deep South, mind you)]. In contrast, traveling around New England, except for that men-hating Lesbian town of Northampton MA, everyone else treated her well. There was a sense of cognitive dissonance... I was living in a semi-cultured region, & I'd met a lot of great Portuguese-speaking residents at the time, but had no family graces to offer her, outside of a bunch of friends and acquaintances. She didn't feel, in the end, that that would be enough for the kids, since children are not adults and can't be expected to understand why my family would want to be mean to them.
Hang on a minute. So
she had her doubts about your family not being present and embracing enough for the kids to grow well. That was a bit arrogant of her, if I may, to use her big family as "moral capital" and throw its weight to make assumptions on your own family, or how they would treat your future kids. We all know how different family relations are in the northern emisphere (I have lived in the UK enough to notice) and how beneficial it is to have a big, supportive family. That doesn't mean though that a 50-strong family circle is automatically better than a couple of grandparents to meet three or four times a year. It's a case-by-case situation.
Now I think about it, Monica
did throw a couple of arguments in the past about me "not being a good son" because I didn't fly to Italy often enough to meet my parents. That until I vehemently reminded her that I speak to my Mom at least twice a week every week and, being a contractor, every Friday or Monday I spend on top of the weekend just to say hallo to my mom & pop is $1000 less in the company coffers. Culture gaps mate - we can't marry somebody the other side of the world and expect gardens of genetically-mutated roses with no thorns, can we?
S_Parc wrote:As for the future, I think that may have been my final relationship. Soon afterwards, I'd started to lose interest in women & life's been good. So while the story above may appear to be a bit sad to a person reading the synopsis, in some ways, I'm glad that it's over. It was kinda like living in a waking dream of what a perfect married life would have been like in America, had certain events been different, starting in the 80s. And then that was it, I'd awoken from that fantasy and I started liking life, as it was, around here.
When a person lives a reasonably busy life and derives satisfaction w/o a woman's companionship or approval, it's a pretty good one. One can travel to Montreal QC, see a 5 star GFE esc@rt and enjoy life back at home, w/o all the stuff guys here are complaining about, concerning women & dating, or dealing with nasty AWs in social settings. I now simply tune out the AW nonsense and go on living life. But I think that if I didn't at least have one good relationship in this life, I wouldn't have been able to make that assessment. Now, that that story is complete, I can move on. And thus, I have enough mileage to say that in life, there's no one path which is palatable for everyone.
In your earlier post you said you're in your 30, say 35. I find it kind of sad that a man younger than me, probably at least decent looking, a good personality and a good job, has given up the pleasure of spending time with a woman whom you love and whom loves you back. You probably let your family-gate problem grow too much into your intimacy with your gf, to the point that, as you say, the well was poisoned and you couldn't recover your relationship.
Again sounding like I am teaching you a lesson, but I really don't see how even the best 5-star GFE escort can perfectly wrap the pleasure, the tenderness and the honesty of a real relationship with a loving girl. If anything, when it comes to sex, I still have trouble staying sexless for more than a couple of weeks, and I like to do it at least 4 times a week. That would be quite time and money-consuming, with a top-notch pro.
You know, I would have thought the opposite is true from your premises. If you had at least one good relationship, you would be keen to go for more, challenging yourself outside your comfort zone and reaching out for that special one, perhaps without having to travel to the opposite edge of the world, but once again without ruling international travel out. Maybe you could pull a Will N Dowd and try and date an exchange student keen to stay in the US (or is it Canada)?
