I Am a Hopeless Romantic
I'm writing my story wishing to find people who understand my choice. I'm so tired of discouraging comments from people who are not hopeless romantics!
I have found the Right One. No doubt of that. He lives almost 7 000 kilometers away - he in India, me in Europe.
Our love story started on the night he proposed me. Before that night, I had no idea he had romantic feelings for me. He was just a good brother-like friend whom I had known for many years. We originally met each other in a religious web group, so even my Atheist friends admit that God brought us together ;-) Little by little we noticed how we think alike in almost everything and we became good friends. We had marvellous discussions of how to be a better person and devotee of God in daily life, but we also talked a lot about my children; he got very fond of them and became like a godfather to them. What I didn't realize was that he secretly fell in love with me. But I was (unhappily) married and he was a true gentleman. He never even tried to flirt with me before my divorce. He kept telling me marriage is not for him but he is interested in religious bachelor life instead. And when I finally dared to tell him I had bad problems in my marriage, he never tried to benefit of the situation, instead he found me 'save your marriage' guides and tried to give me tips how to deal with my ex-husband to make him mine again!!
Before his proposal, we had met face to face only once when he happened to have a work trip in Europe and he decided to visit us as well. I think anyone else but a hopeless romantic would have answered 'no way' to such a proposal. But not me. I suddenly found myself smiling to him and telling him to visit me again and then we would talk more! Less than a week later I was completely in love and that feelings has only grown stronger week by week, month by month... We've been together like this 13 months now.
During these 13 months, my life has been like a fairy tale, like a sweetest romantic film or a novel. In good and bad. He is just perfect for me and a hopeless romantic as well (something that I never knew about him before my divorce, which must be the reason I didn't have a crush on him those days ;). He really makes me believe I'm special and not alone, daily. He lives physically so far away but in the level of souls, closer in my heart than my own blood.
We have met twice after his proposal. After half a year of visa hassle, he met me last December in my country. He arrived on Sunday and bought me an engagement ring on Monday. He charmed my family and friends.
I'm not an innocent girl. I'm a divorced mother of two. After a painful childhood and an unhappy relationship that took half of my life I took a divorce and started living alone with my two little daughters. But my Love has been treating them like his own. He is the man who is really interested in them, who wants to talk with them daily like a father, who keeps supporting us. He doesn't think children from past marriage are a burden, on the contrary, he thinks children tell everything about the mother and the way I raise my daughters is the first thing he fell in love with in me :-D When he came to my country, the little girls were having fever and bad flu. The conditions were so un-romantic, we kept nursing the babies and cleaning together days and nights, and he got the same disease too from them and then I was nursing him. Yet, it all felt so romantic, I felt I was in heaven every moment, so calm and peaceful and HAPPY. Things are so natural and easy and relaxed with him. We believe we must have been a couple already in past life :-)
We met again in India in May. I'm not able to work much because I think my daughters need me, so with the money that I earn, I can pay my bills but not to travel. But he is always supporting us if we need something extra (it is funny how complicated it is to send money from a developing country to Europe - the money traffic is usually going only to another direction!) and he also paid my dream vacation in India. My parents who liked him too wanted to take care of my daughters while I was away :-) We had a lovely honeymoon. A lonely mother cannot possibly think of anything more relaxing!
The tragedy is, I have no idea of what is the due date. I don't know when can we get married and when can we start living together. It's not just that he needs to find a job here first (I pray the recession is not getting any worse!). It is his Indian family.
Now this is like a Bollywood film! NO-ONE in his family has ever got married out of love. These people believe in arranged marriages only, that too inside their own caste. He happens to belong to the highest of the high in the Indian caste hierarchy. His mother has understood we love each other and she has been supportive, though. Anyway. My Soulmate hasn't yet found a chance to speak to his traditional-minded father, who lives on the other side of India. It's not that he has avoided the topic 13 months but according to the complicated ancient traditions of this family, daughters in the family must marry first and only after that sons are allowed to think of themselves. Now his sister is finally married and he could open his mouth, but he is waiting for the right time and chance. Lately many kinds of family problems have kept his father stressed and that naturally makes it difficult to pop out the truth about us.
He is a very good son and he'd never want to hurt his father. Yet he has promised to me and my daughters that he will do his best to live with us in near future. Sometimes I can't sleep at nights when I'm so worried of the situation. If his father won't accept, my beloved will live hellish life either because of separation or rather because he has broken his old good father's heart. His father is already in distress because he has kept saying 'no, no, no' to all his bride suggestions of high-educated beautiful virgins of the suitable caste! The old man knows me from photos and my fiance's stories and it has been so long before we became a couple and he likes me as a person, and even more, he loves to hear of my cute children. But this is not the West. Being a nice person in love with your son is not enough... I'm definitely not the bride this old man has been looking for! Perhaps the biggest problem is that in the worst case, other people in the same caste may treat whole family badly if one member of the family marries and outcaste!
So, we are living like this. He is working hard and living alone in India and I'm facing the troubles of lonely parenthood in my daily life in Europe. Yet he brings smile to my face and fills me with joy every day with phone calls, sms, email & chat, and I feel I can move mountains :-) He is my God-given source of power, my insurance, my Faith, Hope and Love. And my luxury enabler too :-D My children started calling him Daddy, and that made their biological father, my ex-husband, very angry even though he doesn't care to be present in their life much (he is feeling too busy to stay in touch with his children except on certain days mentioned in our divorce papers no matter how much I'm trying to tell him the girls miss to hear from him).
I'd happily move to India with my children, but their biological father has legal right to keep us in this country.
I miss my Indian Prince Charming dearly and my heart is bleeding for separation, and yet he is all that I want, even this life situation is better than anything in my life before. Because this is the first time in my life I'm not alone. All my life I've felt like an alien from another planet, even when spending time with friends who accept me as I am I still feel no-one understands me, but he does, and I understand him! We have same wishes, same dreams, same religion. He has built my self-isteem with his own hands! My friends are wondering how can we live in celibacy but that question has lost its meaning: we have made love! We have touched each other's souls and not just bodies, how could we ever want anything less in our life anymore!
So definitely, YES, I'll wait for him! And even if the whole world is in conspiracy against us, and he can't move to Europe, I'm definitely moving to India when my daughters grow old enough. Sadly, I would then be too old to have more children. We'd love to have children and perhaps my destiny is to be a lonely mother of three or four before we can all move to India.
Do you guys understand this choice? :)
My family members are not hopeless romantics. They have lost their patience. My father, even though he liked my fiance and blessed our engagement, has little by little started to believe he must be a cheater; he is not able or willing to understand the culture his son-in-law-to-be comes from :-( My mother and one brother keep telling me I shouldn't be this much in love. My ex is the worst, he speaks ill of my Love (even though they had nice time together when he visited us before my divorce) and accuses me of being irresponsible mother that I've let my lover so close to our daughters; my ex is sure this relationship is doomed to end miserably and then our daughters will only suffer. Even my girlfriends sometimes give cynical comments though mostly they try to be supportive.
If you didn't get bored of this long posting, and if you think I'm not an idiot, could you please say it aloud? :-) That would be great mental support for me. And if you like to pray, please pray for us and that his father would give us his blessings!
