augi Posted August 14, 2011 Posted August 14, 2011 Okay, so here’s the deal. I’m a 20 year old girl that lives in Europe with my husband and at the moment I have a strange relationship with my family in the US and I was hoping you guys could give me some advice. My parents have always been pretty lenient with my siblings and I, never too strict but not too tolerant. When I was about 16, I met my future husband, almost 3 years my senior who I’ll call B, on a language exchange chat and we began talking on a regular basis. After about a year, the relationship became romantic and we wanted to meet each other. I finally got the guts to mention it to my mom and sold her the idea telling her it would be cool to show them the country blah blah blah; I did NOT mention that I had any feelings for him. My mom agreed that it would be cool but my dad did not like the idea at all. However, he’s always been the kind of guy to just ignore his problems so he kind of just blew off the whole thing. So my “friend” came to visit with another friend and they stayed at my house for about 2 weeks and my dad basically said two words to them the whole time. B was really concerned about why my dad didn’t “like” him; because he didn’t drink, do drugs, he was studious and worked full time at the same time. By now, my parents could definitely tell we were dating at this point and that threw my dad off even more. My mom was cool about it but she got on to me a few times about kissing him and stuff like that. B came to visit me again about 5 months later on Spring Break and things were great…my mom seemed to really like him and my dad, of course, ignored him the whole time, despite several attempts on B’s part to talk to him. One Christmas, B worked two jobs in order to buy my family presents and to send them…all this in order to show them that he cared about them and that he didn’t want to have a bad relationship between them. By this time, I already graduated from high school and I realized I couldn’t live without B any longer so I decided I was going to live with him in Europe. I did not tell my parents, however, that I was going to stay for good instead I told them I was going to visit his family. This was a bad idea, I know, and immature on my part but finally my parents found out my plan and convinced me to come home. At this point, my dad was furious and so was my mom. She stayed mad at both of us for a while and said that I needed to go to college and B needed to finish college (he was finishing his junior year). B decided to come and live in the US with me but of course, my parents weren’t going to allow him to be a live-in boyfriend so a good friend of mine rented him out a room in her house. Well of course seeing as he isn’t a US citizen he could only stay for 3 months and I was desperate for him to be able to stay and live there for good with me! I begged and pleaded my father (who is a lawyer) to sign some sort of papers so that B could at least study and have some temporary form of residence and he refused. I wanted to finish college there and B only wanted to study as well or at least work and he didn’t want to interfere with my family at all. So I took matters into my own hands and we went to a lawyer who told us that basically the only way for B to be able to legally live and work in the US was to marry…so after lots of thinking, we got married secretly. However, even this didn’t work because I had to sign a paper saying I made over 20,000 dollars a year which wasn’t the case (I worked as a hostess at a restaurant making minimum wage). So we tried and I got a better paying job and found an apartment and it seemed like it was going to work out but then my parents told me that they were going to take away my car. I was making all the payments but it was in my parents’ name…I knew that if they took away my car, I would have no way to work. So basically, they blackmailed me and long story short, B had to leave. I told my parents that I was going to go to live with B in Europe. At this point, my house was a living hell: I argued almost every night with my mom and they almost kicked me out a few times. Until I was finally able to scrounge up enough money for a ticket and I left secretly during the day. The next 4 or 5 months I had basically no contact with them except a few emails from my dad begging me to come home. They even offered to sign the papers for B to be able to live but I didn’t trust them. Plus we had already begun to settle down here. B was finishing school and working and I was starting college her e in Europe. Nowadays, I talk to my mother once a week on Skype and we get along pretty well, but my relationship with my dad is pretty nonexistent. B and I made a deal that we wouldn’t go visit them until at least my mom came to visit me. More than a year and half has passed since I left home and this summer I asked my mom to please come visit me if only for a week and she said she wanted to and even started looking for a ticket but then my dad said no. So now I’m in a dilemma where my dad is unwilling to let my mom come visit me and I made a pact that I wouldn’t visit them until they made an effort to come visit me and see where I live. I don’t want to back down and give my dad his way because I’ve worked pretty hard to show them I’m mature and can make my own decisions. My dad has been used to always scaring me into things and I won’t let that happen any more. What should I do? I know this was really long but I wanted to give you guys the full story…any advice is high appreciated!
linwood Posted August 14, 2011 Posted August 14, 2011 That`s a story! Exactly how old are you and "B" now? How long have you been with him in Europe? Are you living with alone with "B" or with his parents? Are you working? Is school going well?
Author augi Posted August 14, 2011 Author Posted August 14, 2011 I'm 20 and B is 23. I've been here almost 2 years now and we're both studying and working and yeah I'm pretty happy with what I'm studying.
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