Greetings fellow Comrades.
Apologies for not being around for ages or contributing anything of note for a while, things have been rather hectic with life business and everything.
So for once i have some interesting news.
After airing my relationship on the forum i got some great advice from all quarters, which has proved to be much more useful than i thought at the time and really helped me think. My wife got in touch with me recently to let me know that a divorce wasn't forthcoming - i had left her to deal with it since it was easier to do in Russia, luckily for both of us she had decided to let the dust settle before doing the deed. we are both artistic temperement and as a result have quite fiery characters so when the rocket goes up it tends to go with a bang. Anyway. Mrs Neo has been working hard getting her career on track and putting her life together during our seperation as have I. I managed to get my health issues resolved and am making a flying start with a new business and getting my financial situation back on course after some very difficult times.
Luckily we were both calmer when she got in touch again to let me know how things are going, we both agreed had we not had such a rough ride with the visa and been kept apart so long things would have been much easier, we also decided in all probability losing our marriage just to be able to live in the UK is not really a price worth paying. She is working around Europe now mostly in Paris and Milan, my work is not dependent on me being in the UK anymore so we have solved some of those problems.
We had some long discussions, both decided we have been quite young and stupid ina lot of respects, we both need to learn a lot and make a better go of our marriage and supporting the other than we have done, she understands she needs to do more to financially contribute so my health doesnt take such a battering and we have both decided that the lifestyle we were killing ourselves for and ruiining our marriage was simply not worth having, and it was possible to be poorer but happier.
So as a result we are planning to get an apartment in Paris and settle there. Its very much at the "lets see how things go stage" - but since we have both already investment a lot of time, money and love into our marriage we feel we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving it another shot. We both still have strong feelings for each other - some advice and questioning by other board members after my intiial post really made me see that more clearly, that if i had told her a lot of the things i told you guys about how i felt about everything she maybe would have understood me a lot better and we wouldnt have had such a major fracture in our relationship.
For me this highlights a few things, how much of a rollercoaster being married to a russian girl can be, in typical RW fashion now the argument is closed as far as she is concenred its like it never happened. I was warned this by a russian male friend, that with RW relationships don't always end when you think they do - and marriages certainyl never end until you are dead, broke or sexually incapcitated through drink.
In a way im relieved, the "honeymoon" period of our marriage is well and truly over and we have gone through that really difficult "test" of your marriage - a major crisis that tests your feelings to breaking point and beyond.
We have both learnt that marriage is something you work at day in day out and signing the register is just the start of it, any problems that you have before marriage are maginified 10 fold afterwards and even with good communication things can come undone, the added complication of a cultural mix and different languages just make that harder and being in different countries just bring a whole new world of complications.
Posting my experience gave me a lot of insight into my situation from many different peoples viewpoints, it made me look at things in a whole different way, i can probably say if i had not done that then i would have blindly stuck to my guns and not reconciled our differences witht eh level of understanding needed.
Its a tricky business altogether, RW are a law unto theselves some days, they can be quite delightful and mad as a bag of snakes but their capacity to go through difficult situations then try and put them back together far exceeds my experience of how western women deal with the same issues.
Anyway, we've had a hell of a year, i am quietly getting sozzled on my rapidly depleting champagne cellar to see out the last of 97. looking forward to a new start all round in the new year.
We decided as well that going to the UK is no longer something we are going to put our marriage through the grinder to achieve, since we can live a happy and content life in Paris without visa complications or having to justify our marriage to a halfwit civil servant then i'm happy to pay my taxes to the french government instead. its put a fantastic balance into our relationship since we are both leaving our old countries and starting a new life together in a new city, we will both go through all those "settling in" issues and start this adventure together, I'm happy to say little baby neo's will be born under a french flag and should have much better citizens rights than their pa was entitled to under his facsist UK regime so i won't miss the UK at all.
So thats the update for now. We've got a long way to go, but as the proverb says every journey beings with just a single step.
