the biggest mistake you will ever make

[Ellie-and-David 38]

Getting married is the biggest mistake you can make.

Whoops....oh well...too late now.

I guess I'll just have to see how my long distance relationship and subsequent marriage stand up to the test of time

[spookyturtle 9,465]

Getting married is the biggest mistake you can make.

Whoops....oh well...too late now.

I guess I'll just have to see how my long distance relationship and subsequent marriage stand up to the test of time

Best of luck!

[thongd4me 69]

To the OP:

There's much to be said for both sides of this discussion.

My feeling is to do what is possible and part of that means what is age appropriate.

Even if you have responsibilities at home, if you are young enough you might

see it as a plus to get to know your foreign fiancée better because you will see

her in her natural element and be able to observe how she behaves with family

and friends (both the good and the bad). The worst mistake I made with my

first marriage was only going on what of I saw in her behavior in the US,

where she had over-stayed her student visa because she didn't want to

go home and deal with her tyrannical Japanese mom. She was less looking

for a green-card husband than afraid of going back to Japan where it

turned out that she had numerous adversarial relationships with immediate

family, not just her mother. She was all sweetness and light before we

got married, but she started to show her real nature of being hostile and

aggressive once I became family. If I had only spent time with her there

I would have had a completely different outlook. I only observed these

things with 20-20 hindsight on 2 separate trips that lasted one month each.

On the other hand, there are times when the above approach (spending most

of the year in a foreign country) is not practical.

Over a course of 5+ years I spent 4 months with my Thai fiancée and I had to

rely on vacation time to do that, but I think I have an adequate view of how

she loves and fights with family and friends because I met practically all of

them, the good and the bad. She didn't just say "this is my aunt" and feed

me a line of BS, she said "this is the aunt who cheated me and hurt me after

my parents died (without going into the details which she DID give me)."

To see how she treated that aunt with as much love and respect that was

possible told me a lot about the strength of her character, how she can feel

pain but can also forgive, something my Japanese wife never did. She also

told me the GOOD things that aunt did for her. It's never all black or white.

After all, you only have one life. Choose wisely.

EDIT: PS - the OP said this in another thread: ""I had a bad experience with a fiance visa in the past, so I chose to come here and live for an extended time."

I think he did the right thing.

Edited September 16, 2009 by thongd4me

[PlatyPius 5]

Hey, this forum sucks enough of my time away. I got dragged into OT kicking and screaming because this topic started in one of the "legit" forums!

You'd better run while you can... certain members - even a moderator - think this forum is a den of iniquity, a harsh and cruel place, and needs a special warning because it's "dangerous" in here.

[SCFsnoopy 0]

I feel like my relationship with my fiance has been pretty lucky. I met him through friends (so, an in-person meeting) when I was working as a nanny in the US. Although we were "together" for 8 months before I had to move back to Australia, we were still essentially long distance, as I worked in CT and he lived in NY. It took me 2.5 hours to catch the train to his house every weekend.

So, even though we had the pleasure of seeing each other every Sunday, we also got to know each other largely from phone conversations and, later on, he started playing World of Warcraft with me so we chatted through that. I was able to live with him for a month before my J-1 expired, then since I already had no attachments in Australia because I had just got back from a year overseas (and only being 19), I went back to the US to live with him for just under 3 months.

We've been truly long distance for a year now, we've only seen each other twice for a couple of weeks at a time - but given the distance between East coast Australia and New York, even that is very lucky.

I have had "relationships", of sorts, with people I've met through gaming online before I met Jesse - I believe that they are just as real as relationships forged in "real life". An online relationship was what prompted me to go the US for an au pair year in the first place, because I wanted to meet him (it didn't work out, though we are still friends, and it largely failed because his ex-girlfriend threatened to kill me for being with him). People are still people, and still deal with real feelings and emotions, regardless of whether they are behind a computer screen or not.

[justashooter 430]

even if the OP is a jerk and his life is out of control, he still has a point. living in close proximity to the person you intend to marry allows you both to give informed consent. informed consent results in a lower incidence of divorce, assuming you're not just marrying someone to allow them to get a green card, and we've seen enough of that, here. ( "oh, i just don't like them anymore, but how do i make sure they can stay in America?")