You are going to get inundated with replies of 'I told you so'. You have changed your stance, on this, 180 degrees even since your last recent message.
But you have to go through the learning process.
You went there with the old attitude that wonderful girls in the street were going to fall at your feet just because you are a Westerner; and how would they know you are from the West just by looking at you? Were you wearing a cowboy hat?
What were you expecting? Las Vegas in Ukraine? or honest British police officers? Don't you see that this is one of the reasons they want to leave their country? In any event, I think Kiev is great and I do not get bored when I go there.
You said before that you and her had hours and hours of animated conversations by Skype before. Are you going to tell me that you never discussed what each of you expected from your married life? or even what your interests were?
Of course you will be told off about the language barrier. You could not have an interpreter even in the bed, could you? I personally believe this is solvable through her willingness to take intensive English lessons. Mine is not doing this and that is going to mean the end of the affair.
She has no friends or relatives, save for one? This is the only thing that makes me suspect her. However, some will not bring a foreigner to their people unless they are 100% sure he is going to marry her and take her to his country to avoid ridicule. The gossip over there is bad.
If there is really love there, I would try to save the relationship. It is going to be quite difficult to start from zero again, to find another pretty girl who is genuine and is really interested in you.
Find things you both like doing and introduce her to new things.
However, if your hobbies are rifles, hunting or spending your time in forums like this pouring your bitterness, you have got a problem with educated and sophisticated girls.
The next step would be to invite her to stay with you, for a while, to find out how things work out. You say you have money, buy her an intensive English course in your home town, then she goes to stay with you for a month or so, she studies English in the mornings while you go to work in the evening you have fun and you live as if you were married but with FUN.
Or you can put her on the back burner and start talking to other girls who speak more English and who talk to you about hang gliding or whatever your interests are.
Anyway, a long trip in a strange place can get to anyone.
"I am trying to figure what do I really want. She loves me and I love her, too. However, I feel worn out and bored."
I had these thoughts too… On that summer time conquest of 2011. The party girl a met on a disco turned to be serious relationship… but after several trips, I understood what I don’t want …to marry an immature woman with a kid.
About seeking the approval of others, I said I did not care a fig what other people say about my relationship with a yong girl, but I forgot to mention that the opinion and even approval of my young daughters matters to me. One of them is only 4 so she has little to say about the matter, but the other one is 10 and she does tell me exactly what she thinks, she already disapproves of the lady I have been trying to establish a long term relationship with and I am not going to impose the lady on my daughter. I will have to work to convince her with this one or another one.
Only my 2 daughters have a say in the matter, everyvbody else can sod off if they don't like it.
Quote WS:
"However, if your hobbies are rifles, hunting [...] you have got a problem with educated and sophisticated girls.
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Ehm...err. Now that got me wondering.
My spouse is kinda into all things shooting, and I am burdened with more education than I probably need. lol
(Now, if we follow the classical plot, it should develop with either my head ingenuously shot off, or his coffee subtly seasoned with arsenic! ))
But if seriously. What is this thing with rifles/hunting hobby being a problem for "sophisticated" females? How?
And for the original poster - if he ever comes back to see feedback.
4re,
From what was possible to gather, I have a feeling you are prone to imagining - filling the gaps with wishful thinking. One of the most misguiding, trauma-generating approaches where relationships are concerned. But you seem to know it already.
From experience. Whenever I am in doubt about true layout/worth of the situation, I try to influence its development as little as possible. Works brilliantly.
i think Tomz has it on the money.
with most things that happens hard and fast in life one always needs to have time out to think about it, calculate its ins and outs.
to me its a mandatory thing with almost everything that happens to quickly.
even with the most worst of what life gives a few minutes away from the situation can save one a lot of anguish and put the situation on a better balance.
just to put Kasir thoughts another way,,, something here maybe is telling you 4er theres a big imbalance in what you seek in a person,, well really you have said this much yourself.
even if this woman has communication problems, intellectually shes maybe not up to scratch in how you would like to see each other communicate.
even a person with bad language skills who is intellectually intelligent and who has a natural given way of stimulating conversation normally in their world will still shine above the communication difficulty's you two may of had.
i'll ask you this "are you looking for your equal or something else"?
this is one of the main reasons i have backtracked from some FSU girls.
"Sometimes if you love someone you have to let them go.
Go back to your home country for a while.
If you still have these feelings for her Love will take care of itself."
Most of us in this forum can recognize the feelings of LOVE and ROMANCE. Figure this out first, cause finding compatibility is tricky but but is a must. How there will be conflict resolutions with lack of common understanding. Must Ukrainian women are not submissive.
if there are SERIOUS intensions, then give your best shot and analyze it. your life, your decision, your pick.
and BTW
Relatives and fiends may influence in decision making no more than the opinions on this forum. The ultimate factor is, how this new life will impact my career.
Thanks for the visit summary. Oddly, your description of the girl that you went travelling with sounds like something similar to me. I have read some of the dating profiles and I get the impression that many of the ladies want a partner who can provide them an exciting, active, and worldy lifestyle. I am for the most part live a quiet lifestyle and am not that sociable. This is one of my concerns about the expectations of any potential partner. Each person has their vision as to how to live their life and how the other person would fit into that vision.
I have visited very rural areas in Asia and know all about incovenient travelling from mud roads, no seats on trains (overselling of tickets), fighting to get on a ferry, overnight bus trips and having to push people aside to sit down, etc.
I did notice that the women in the western regions appear to better off than those in the eastern side. Thanks for the impression about Lviv. BTW, Lviv dropped out of the competition for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games due to the ongoing conflict.
4re: When you get home, you'll know if you want to see her again. As far as being bored, you had a vacation in a place as interesting as Kansas in the 1920's. I like it there, but dam, you need to go someplace and create great memories in courting a woman that will probably never travel further from her home than you have already taken her. My lady has never ridden a bicycle and I have taken her parasailing and river rafting. You will have to take the lead to find out how adventuresome she is. Even that movie about Kansas got color after the tornado ride.
4re,,, the novelty of trying to communicate with a pretty girl that speaks a different language has worn off,,,, and now just simple communication has become a chore. The giggling has ended and real life has begun.
If you both care for each other, I wouldn’t wait too long to make your decisions. She is probably a little worried and anxious right about now,,, not sure if you will return to her.
Guys, your comments and insights are amazing given that I have omitted a lot of information.
The root cause of the problem is that this girl has some issues. She got married young and divorced. According to her, her ex treated her like garbage and caused her psychological problems. She is incredibly hyper sensitive person and gets offended very easily (she warned me about this several times in the letters). When she does, she immediately becomes defensive, her face takes an angry look and she will say things that can be hurtful. It has happened several times mainly because of bad translation and poor communication. Every time she ends up apologizing and crying. It is good that she has the quality of character to say "I am sorry" and mean it, but these incidents have taken a toll on me. She also has mood swings for which she also warned me in the letters. She can be moody, cry easily, show no interest, and say awkward things that can make me feel unwanted. We have discussed about this. She points that I need to be patient with her, understand her and get used to her mood swings.
Then there is the issue of lack of communication itself. There is a big difference in education between us. This does not bother me at all. However, the lack of communication does. Of course, it is very frustrating for the both of us not being able to speak the same language although I must say that she has made very impressive steps towards learning English during our meeting. She also has private tutoring three times a week. She pays a teacher out of her very limited finances. By the way, wages in her town and Ukraine in general for the most part are below poverty levels, I was chocked when she told me how much she and her relatives make.
That said, she is very naturally beautiful girl, she shines without makeup or fancy clothes. She is much younger than me and clearly outside my league in terms of looks. She is also a truly good person and pure girl. As I said before, she has all of these other attributes that we all look for in a woman. She is not a materialistic person, she is family girl, she has put me in the center of her life and wants me to make all the decisions and so on. I also believe that she does love me very much. These are the pros that have to be weighed against the cons.
Anyway, thanks for all the good comments. My trip is coming towards an end. As you suggested, when I go back home and evaluate the whole situation with a more clear perspective, I should be able to make better decisions.
Wifeseeker: I cannot bring her to my country without a fiancee visa. If I could, I would. In fact, if it was easy or even possible, they would charter these women to America by the hundreds on a daily basis. Even with a fiancee visa (that takes up to a year to be issued), she can only stay 90 days. During this period, we have to get married or she gets deported.
I come back to the matter of you having money. Where I come from, you can enter the country if you enrol in a full time course for a minimum period of time. Or you could buy her a tour of 3/4 weeks then you join her or take her off the tour to stay with you. Or just get her the fiance visa, you have no obligation to marry her.
About her state of mind, this is going to be the real challenge for you. Now it would be even more necessary to live with her for a while to see if you can cope with it. It can take years for a person like that to go back to some kind of normality. Read the story of Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh. He said about her: She gave me the best and the worst moments in my life (with her instability).
Then you decide if you are going to be committed to her enough to help her with her situation. That would be real love.
I invited a girl to stay with me for 1 month, taking an English course, who had exactly the same problems as yours. Young and beauiful too. But our relationship did not work out because there was no love. If there had been, I would have committed myself to her regardless of her problems.
You are a bit lucky she has already been married and divorced at her young age. She has already learned something.
As for the language problems, the only solution is intensive English courses.
You need to understand, if you do not want any of the above problems, get yourself a local wife. See if you can find one as beautiful, young, charming and interested in you.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
"By the way, wages in her town and Ukraine in general for the most part are below poverty levels, I was chocked when she told me how much she and her relatives make."
Ha. Memories memories... I dodged the question when it came (hate the damsel-in-distress hat, it does not fit me). And my then-prospective-Westerner felt awkward to ask again. And then it was too late, we were married. lol
****
"She has put me in the center of her life and wants me to make all the decisions and so on."
Good in case you both are into patriarchal ways. Otherwise, it's like double rowing with one partner idle...
Perhaps you have heard of what is going on in Ukraine to realise that educated ladies do not want to know about weapons, shooting, etc. Plus most of them are now against animal cruelty. The city girls regard their local men who like violent computer games and films and who may even own guns as troglodites that they want to escape from. Of course in the USA they will only get more of the same. I do not believe that yours is as sophisticated and educated as you make out.
moyarishka: you hit the nail on the head. This woman has a little girl. The child stays with the father and loves the father. According to her, the child says that she loves her but does not really love her. What child does not lover her mother? She blames everything on her ex, but if her ex was so nasty to her, why would the child prefer the father? If she were to get married to me and come to my country, the child would be left with the father. Even before we met, she committed to me that she was ready to leave her child and begin a new life with me. As flattering and convenient as this is, it is also troublesome.
You all have great points. What I think makes this thread useful is that it is not about the typical fraud / scam detection stuff. I think if someone falls for the usual crap such as sending money, etc., then I have no sympathy for that person, he deserves to lose money and get disappointed. The question is how you avoid getting involved with an unstable person who shows a lot of genuine interest but tells you lies about herself. It is unfair to say she tried to scam me from the beginning. 300 emails over 2 1/2 months, she was getting up in the middle of the night to read and answer my emails. She did not do this to scam me. But she lied to me. She lied to me about her previous marriage. She divorced her ex earlier than when she told me she did, then she went back to him and left him more recently. She said she did it for the child (to preserve the family). She had to come clean because the correct dates had to be put on the petition for the fiance visa. She also lied to me about being a smoker. She's a smoker, I could tell the stench in her mouth from the first moment I kissed her at Boryspil and I asked her, she became nervous and said no. I knew but I did not insist, then I caught her smoking again and again. She says she only smokes when she is stressed. But she has cigarettes in her handbag. In the letters and her profile, she said she does not smoke. I would have never been involved with a smoker because I cannot stand the smell. She also lied about her English in her profile. Again, I would have never been involved with a girl that speaks no English at all. When I realized that she spoke no English at all, I was already deep into this. Then she lied about her habits. She said she is an energetic and hard working person who loved to be a homemaker. I saw no indications of any of these during our meeting. I have no idea what else she lied for, but all along she insisted she was telling me the truth. I did not really want to make the trip to Ukraine, something did not feel right, but she insisted and the interest she showed me in the letters was incredible. Every time there was a minor sign that I might pull back, she went hysterical, cried and said things that seemed unreal. However, the blame is all on me that I fell for this.
As I said previously, the first days were passionate and it seemed like a dream. Then it faded and even became unpleasant. I asked her if I did something wrong or whether she was disappointed in me for some reason. She denied all this and said she is the one to blame, she has personal issues and complexes and again blamed her ex for all this. Her behavior can only be described as unacceptable. She offended me several times (which she admits) and sometimes made me feel unwanted. Some people simply deserve their destiny. If she is truthful, her ex treated her like shit. I treated her with respect and was generous with her both in showing her my interest and giving her my time and affection. She did not appreciate any of this. All the big words of this meeting being the greatest opportunity of her life were nonsense.
The trip has been a total disappointment. Up until the last moment she told me that she loves me yet she has not even written me an email, she has simply disappeared. I am not going to write to her. If she does not write to me, I will take it for what it is. I also want to give everyone the following advice: do not buy gifts, especially expensive gifts, even if you can afford it. It gives the wrong incentives, especially to a woman who can hardly makes ends meet and lives in misery. What bothers me is that she did not say no to the gifts that I bought her in Kiev while she likely knew something was not right for her. She accepted money up until the very last moment. As I said before, I was not played from the beginning, but it is possible that I was played at some point during the trip.
I can go and on, but it is not worthwhile to review all the details. The point is I invested my time and money let alone my feelings and ended up empty handed and with a broken heart. For me, this was my last trip to Ukraine. If I ever get involved with a girl from that country, it will be for the right reasons, i.e., fly her into a nice vacation destination in the Caribbean and have fun. It is my personal opinion that serious relationships with girls from over there are not worth the time and risk.
Wifeseeker: all that you mentioned perhaps can be done in the UK, not in the US (if you want to marry the girl one day). Immigration here scrutinizes everything during the fiance visa process. If she was given a student visa and did not complete the program, they will deny her a fiance visa on the basis that she gamed the system previously. If she was given a visitor's visa through an agency and she separated from the group, they will find out, they will deny her a fiance visa. In other words, if you want this woman to become your wife, then your best bet is to follow the letter of the law. In addition, the US citizen can also be blacklisted. If you do this sort of thing and then you want to bring another woman as your fiance, they may reject your petition.
For me, having difficulty communicating is a very bad sign, and it isn't only a matter of language. I've met women with poor English -- in one case, we were constantly referring to my pocket dictionary -- but still I had a sense of rapport. I've also met women whose English was very accomplished, but we were mostly together in silence, because we "ran out" of things to talk about.
What you have just posted -- about her little daughter living apart, and her lying about being a smoker -- just awful!
I'm glad you've come to your senses, painful as it may be.