David, I don't know you well but your posts have really brought me up short. I'm going to talk about my own experience , and I hope you sit down and really think about what you and he are doing...
Alex really needs to understand all the ramifications David. Indianapolis is not London. When it comes to cultural activities etc, if Alex is used to the British Capital he will find any midwestern American city a boring blah shock.
I had been to Denver many many times, for extended periods. Yet--in retrospect--all those trips had a FOCUS. The focus was Nicholas, being a father to Nicholas, just BEING in the same house with a growing boy. The focus wasn't Katrina, wasn't me: it was Nicholas.
Now, I moved to Denver because that is where Katrina and Nicholas live. Figured it would be ok, even though I've never cared for either Denver OR Colorado on their own merits. The reality was and is jarring. Nicholas now lives in his own house. He is 22. Katrina and I are married and together and the focus is not him, it is US and suddenly location matters, matters a great deal. To me at least. She is a native, she loves the state. I am not a native, I have come to LOATHE the state. If we were in empty Wyoming I would be very happy with where we lived; a great many people think I am nuts saying that yet it is nothing but the truth of MY reality. Katrina would lose her mind in a place that empty. If we were in a 'real' city I would also be very happy. To her Denver IS a real city, to me Denver is this deadly boring half-this-and-half-that, very blah overdeveloped smear on the landscape with no focus, no reason for existing and no urban fabric whatsoever.
So yes, I moved here for love, David. I love my now-wife madly. NOBODY could or would love me the way she does. NOBODY.
I thought moving would not matter. Well, it does. My material circumstances have improved and I couldn't care less. I left a life's worth of attachments, friends, you name it. I make friends easily and yet find myself miserable half the time. It blew and blows me away: I detest this place to the point where I considered walking, and I not only love Katrina mad crazy but have never been loved so much in my whole life. Yet I wanted to walk. People say 'just move'---which would be much easier if the real estate market hadn't collapsed. We are going nowhere until we can sell this house---which has been a horror show from the day I moved to Denver, it was contaminated and took 60,000. to DEcontaminate and is still not put back together!!! I think we will be here for at least 3-4 years and if I don't get my head on straight it will be a marital disaster. So I'm doing what I can to get my head on straight, as I do not want a disaster with a woman it took me 30 years to get. And I need to point out she is not the problem: the problem is ME and my lack of adjustment to Denver.
We would have been better off going to not New York, which is mine, and not Colorado, which is hers, but to someplace completely new which would be OURS.
If Alex moves to the US to be with you, you might consider that it's best to find a place which is YOURS, not Davids. Not Alex'. YOURS.
Anyway that's my 2 cents...
Topic: Messages From The Heartland (Read 2149369 times)