Foreigner boyfriend: Happiness can also be imperfect

At the age of thirty, I experienced a life of ups and downs and internal struggles, which made me understand what is the strength that can be relied upon in life to move forward.

1

Phil is a foreign English teacher at university, and I'm studying for a Liberal Arts Ph.D. I'm not a dinosaur, but I have curly hair dyed dark brown, healthy wheat-colored skin, and enjoy sports, especially running, swimming, American billiards, sometimes going to bars, dancing, and occasionally having people drinking. I don't refuse, but keep my distance.

I love to talk about current affairs and international relations, I like to learn about new cultures, and I need a man who is evenly matched with me. I know I'm smart, easy-going, healthy, and charismatic, but not necessarily the type that traditional Chinese men can accept. I've been in love with foreigners, and my freedom of thought has given them a more faceted view of things, and with them, their brains are often bumped out of sparks, but their lives are too fluid, usually a love affair begins with excitement and ends quietly, without even a goodbye text message.

Met Phil at the pool. There weren't many people, but he leaned over to my lane. I took a breath and dived underwater and found him and I, wearing swimming goggles, looking at each other face to face under the water. His long legs were symmetrical, and he curled up slightly to tread water, and the sunlight passed through the water, faintly reflecting half of his body. This moment has been a long, long time for me. I think that no matter how old I am in the future, the image of Phil in my heart will always be this underwater sculpture.

We went ashore. He asked me in English with an Australian accent, "Are you Chinese?" I replied formulaically, "What do you think?" "I don't know, but your skin is beautiful." Before I could politely thank you, he continued, "Are you available?" Why not go out for a drink in the evening? ”

He said to take me to a special bar. When I arrived, I found out that this was a new gay bar in the legend. "Have you ever been here?" "No, I've heard of it." "How did you hear that?" "I have very good gay friends." "Ah, is it? You were the first Chinese girl I met who said she had gay friends. I think gay people are cute, what do you think? "Well, with them, I can talk about men constantly and be very explicit." "Haha, you know what, I recorded a show on TV with an American gay boy. We had a tacit understanding, beat everyone else and won the championship. I was so happy the day I won that I kissed him so hard that the whole process was recorded... It's a little awkward to think about it now, so many people are watching, and there is evidence left behind. ”

What a date! Take me to the gay bar and talk to me about kissing men! We talked about gender from comrades, from gender to politics, to war, to religion, and then to China. I told him about my views on the loss of many traditional Chinese cultures, "Are you Chinese? He asked again. Oh, yes. "Then why aren't you as patriotic as the other Chinese?" He was half-joking. I winked at him, "I'm patriotic to pity that so many good things are missing." He winked at me too, "Let's go get them back together." ”

2

We quickly became boyfriend and girlfriend and stayed together. Phil has said more than once that in Chinese universities, students are at best middle school students in terms of psychological maturity, and he is tired of being faced with a group of "little children who don't know anything" every day. He found a job in the Guangzhou office of the Australian agency and asked me if I would like to move to Guangzhou. I was busy with my doctoral dissertation, and I thought that changing the environment could relieve the pressure, so I agreed.

I also want to see if changes in circumstances can improve our relationship. After living together for two years, Phil rarely bought me expensive gifts, and sometimes saw a dress with exaggerated decors or some socks with eccentric designs in the roadside shop, and he would buy them back for me. The money he spent on himself, the much more he bought for himself, and he lost everything, without any pity, but I looked at the pain.

I sometimes coddled, half seriously and half foolishly asked him, "Do you love me?" He began to reply, "Of course I love you!" "I'm satisfied. Later, the answer became: "Love." And then it was: "How do you ask that?" In the end he often laughed and said nothing. If I asked more than a few times, he would just pat me on the head. One night, I wanted to go to the movies and pull him along. He said, "No, I'm tired today, you go by yourself." "You're my boyfriend, stay with me." He suddenly responded with a big reaction: "Be careful, you are emotionally blackmailing!" "I was stunned at once, it is natural to let my boyfriend watch the movie with me, how did it become "blackmail"?

He later apologized to me, explaining that he didn't like to be forced to do something he didn't like because of some kind of emotional relationship, which meant "boyfriend responsibility" to me, but he didn't want to do it and couldn't force him. I thought he was liberal enough! Anyway, I felt that his feelings for me were fading.

His new life in Guangzhou excited him. Surrounded by his Fellow Australians, he was noticeably happier, starting to hang out with them at night, sometimes going straight to the bar after work. I was at home nibbling on papers and doing housework, and I was getting more and more depressed. Once, he took me to a bar for the first time, but it was to introduce a girl to me. He wanted me to make more new friends, but at that moment, when our relationship was getting more and more strained, did he really know how it felt to me.

My dissatisfaction with him is growing. Trying to talk to him, he often came home at one or two in the morning, exhausted, or drunk-eyed. The air in Guangzhou is not good, one day, I had a high fever because of inflammation, lying in bed, but because of the pain in my body, I couldn't sleep, thinking of being alone in the face of emotional and academic pressures, tears brushed down. Finally I heard a noise outside the door. He went into the room, turned on the light, and found me staring straight at him. "What's wrong with you?" He wasn't too drunk yet. "I have a fever." My throat was blocked by all kinds of emotions and liquids, and the sound coming out was thick and dignified. "How did your voice become like this?" "Because I'm sick!" I couldn't control it and cried out. Echoes rumbled through my eardrums, tears falling in large streams. "You don't care about me, just drink, do you still love me?" When I uttered the word "love," I heard my heart mournfully. He heard it, but instead of looking at me, he just sat down on the edge of the bed with his hands around his head. It took about a century to make a slight noise: "How can I not love you..." What kind of answer is this? I felt my heart break.

The next week, he came home from work, cooked, and took care of me. On Monday morning, he went to work and sent me an email: "I'm sorry I couldn't answer your question directly. I need more space of my own and Guangzhou makes me feel free. I'm in love with someone else, but I love you too. I don't know how to deal with it, so escape. I wept silently. I can't accept that this relationship is no longer simple, and the man sleeping next to me is longing for other women. I couldn't accept it, living under the fence of such a man. Can't maintain love, at least maintain my self-esteem.

3

I kept running through the agency every day and couldn't find a suitable apartment that I could afford. I suddenly realized that since living together, it was Phil who was burdening the lives of both of us, and I was vaguely ashamed of complaining that he didn't buy me good gifts. A friend of a friend was willing to rent me an idle room for a short time, and I immediately set about moving. On the evening of the move, Phil did not return home. Carrying a huge suitcase, computer, clothes and books, I moved down the stairs step by step. Friends said he was so cruel that he didn't even show his face. He later told me that he avoided it because there was no way to watch me go, and that it would be even more cruel for him if he sent me away.

Living with someone else, I discovered that Phil was probably the one who could tolerate me the most. My friend's friend first felt that I didn't have a normal schedule, slept during the day and wrote at night, and then felt that I was not interested in reading, writing and writing all day, and then pointed out that I had a cup in the wrong place, got up without folding the quilt, and added more oil to stir-fry. My financial situation was not good, I wanted to move away but I couldn't do anything, and finally I became a thorn in the side of others. I've never lived so hard.

I began to miss Phil for being nice to me, and I regretted leaving so quickly and denying him everything. Now I have also become a victim of "emotional blackmail", because my friend's friend is kind to me, so it has become a matter of course that she hits me with any words. The relationship between me and my parents is not like this? They always put their hard work on bringing me up and asked me to do this and that to repay their parenting grace. I know it in my heart, but if I am "forced" to do it, I will not feel comfortable. Phil is highly sensitive to this, and he does not want to be a victim of this "emotional blackmail", which is related to his education from an early age to think independently and live independently. His requirements for his own space are undoubtedly higher than mine.

Phil later asked me out for a drink in the evening and asked me if I was doing well, and I didn't want him to pity him, nor did I mention much, just talked about what books I had read recently and what new ideas I had. He listened with great interest, sometimes adding some of his opinions, and we seemed to go back to the beginning, with endless words to say. I asked him if he had developed emotionally, and he said, "My dad knew we had emailed me after we broke up, and he said he couldn't believe that our aesthetic, intellectually matched couple would actually be separated." ”

One day two months later, Phil sent an email: "I heard you're having a bad time. I've always missed you, can I meet tonight? "He moved, but the new apartment didn't make him happy, and he was in no mood to tidy up against a room full of messy stuff. I helped him open the box of the package and put the things in his habits. "Let's reconcile." His eyes were red. I nodded. We sat on the balcony and really talked about our feelings for the first time. He said he didn't know how to cheat emotionally and couldn't hide from me the fact that he was in love with someone else, but since I left, he felt lonely, life became meaningless, and he didn't want to talk too much about "that emotional variation" because "died without starting out". I also told him that I realized that I was not sensitive enough, and some of his needs were filtered out by Chinese standards, without taking into account his feelings. Finally I asked, "Tell me, is your dad the best red bride in Australia?" He blinked and said, "Absolutely." ”

A month later, he was going to Europe because of a job transfer, and we got married in order to be able to take me with me. I have always thought that marriage is the product of automatic generation when love reaches its peak, but our marriage is a means of making up for setbacks. But I don't feel too much regret. Because setbacks give us confidence and trust, and make us more aware of our own and each other's needs. I no longer ask questions like "Do you love me or not?", and his presence is the answer. I also don't rely too much on his or other people's attitudes towards me, because I also need the space to build an independent self. The world is not all 100% pure love stories. My experience, because of the variations and ups and downs, has more reflective meaning.