Phil N

I wanted people to know how things turned out, so I'm going to summarize and keep it brief and to the point as best I can. I think it's relevant FROM AN IMMIGRATION STANDPOINT, because WHAT THE HECK DO YOU, AS A US CITIZEN, DO WHEN ALL HECK BREAKS LOOSE AFTER YOU'VE BROUGHT YOUR FIANCEE OVER? I mean, most of the VJ people have the happy experience of getting married and living happily ever after. In my case, things went very bad within the first 30 days, and it created a very awkward and ugly situation. Yes, it was a huge mistake to bring my fiancee over in the first place, but that's been covered quite a bit in the other thread.

Well, it started in this thread, and things seem to have run their course.

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/319747-has-this-story-ever-turned-out-well-for-american-man-and-russian-woman/

The moderators here at VJ didn't like the drama it created when my ex-fiancee and her American friend started posting their nasty (and mostly false) account of events in that thread, saying awful things about me, etc. Myself, I didn't mind at all. In fact, I rather liked it, because it showed a very different, contrasting point of view, that people could judge for themselves. She claimed she had been held prisoner and "trafficked" among other things. Not exactly claims that stood up to any level of scrutiny.

A quick summary, so you don't have to cope with the 26 pages of the other thread, if you are new to this mess:

1) Fiancee and 15 year old daughter arrived in early July, just after July 4. They are from a location near Odessa, Ukraine. In the interest of some degree of privacy, I am not naming the exact city, but for most intents and purposes, my fiancee and her daughter are primarily Russian/Ukrainian.

2) After 2 days, baffling fights, and my fiancee saying she would go to the police and demand her rights, my fiancee decided she would sleep in her daughter's room instead of with me, until we were married.

3) Fiancee, who is fluent in English and worked as an English/Russian interpreter and translator, began a habit of cursing at me in Russian in front of her daughter whenever I displeased her. She had wild mood swings and also was prone to hitting and physical violence. I told her not OK. She sort of listened and partially observed this limit, for a while, anyway. I managed to video-record a few minutes of her Russian tirades, using my smartphone camera. Not that it did much good, since I don't speak Russian.

4) I was not OK with this. It felt like fiancee was trying to use rationing of affection and intimacy to pressure me into marrying her quickly, and was not acting like a wife-to-be who loved her husband. I had read other threads on message boards where the woman did this, and I couldn't remember any that had a happy ending for the man.

5) I asked for help on VJ forums. People suggested my fiancee was bipolar. I looked. She didn't fit bipolar. I ran across info on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in my searching. BPD seemed to accurately describe her behavior and way of being.

6) Most on VJ urged me to run, don't walk, away from this relationship. I tried to learn everything I could about BPD and see if the relationship could still be made to work.

7) Things continued to go mostly badly with the fiancee, with a few good points here and there. But it was clear she and I lived in different realities.

8) I confronted my fiancee with my concerns involving BPD, and asked her to get an assessment, and then participate in any recommendations that came out of that. My fiancee decided that I was the one with BPD, and that she would only get an assessment if I first did. Then she decided she would agree to get assessed for BPD promptly AFTER we were married.

9) I began seeing a previous girlfriend. Yes, go ahead and bash me. I was a bad boy, and my fiancee was not sleeping in the same room, not keeping USA hours, not speaking to me in English for days at a time.

10) Things became unsalvageable. While we were driving on freeway at 60mph, returning from visiting her girlfriend who married an American man, fiancee grabbed and yanked steering wheel, endangering my life and life of her 15 year old daughter. Fiancee saw nothing wrong with her actions and blamed me as the cause, I made her angry, as she was convinced I "hated her friends". Fiancee told me she was not ready to go back to her country, I should not change the tickets to earlier, and she would not go back unless I gave her a lot of money.

11) I realized the situation had become very dangerous to me, from assorted threats and violent behaviors by fiancee, to concerns about being set up for false allegations by fiancee. Finally, the previous girlfriend came to my house, and I took the next day off from work and got a domestic violence restraining order. I had my fiancee removed from my house by police, and arranged accommodations for her and her daughter at a local hotel.

12) Fiancee disappeared from hotel after two days, and her friends disavowed all knowledge of her whereabouts. I had no idea where she (they) were and who was taking care of them.

13) Two weeks later, fiancee shows up in family court to fight the restraining order, with coaching from those friends, at least the man, for whom she had worked as an interpreter back in her country. There was a contentious 45-minute contested hearing in family court. I prevailed, there was a finding of domestic violence against my fiancee, and the restraining order was made permanent, at least through her scheduled departure date of early October.

14) Fiancee's American friend acknowledged he had been taking care of her the whole time, and his earlier statements disavowing all knowledge were untrue. He demanded that I pay him money for my (ex) fiancee's living expenses between time of restraining order and her return flight in early October.

OK, so that's a summary of where it left off. Here's what happened afterwards:

THE FINAL CHAPTERS

1) I did not send money to her American friend. After reflecting on the lies, and his overall behavior, and my own challenges of two daughters in college and their Fall school startup expenses, I decided he could pay for his own effort at chivalry, and for their own nice vacation time together. Besides, when my ex-fiancee gives him credit for his generosity, it will truly be his.

2) After about a month of being gone and out of my house, I got a call from the county sheriff's department. It was from their lead sex crimes investigator. They wanted to talk to me about allegations my ex-fiancee had made against me. She had alleged that I had kept her and her daughter prisoner in my house, and that I had forced myself on her non-consensually, aka "rape". The allegations were, of course, desperate lies, some sort of Hail-Mary pass, possibly angling for a "U' or "T" visa for crime victims or trafficking victims. Or possibly just spiteful to try to damage me and cause me expense and difficulty.

3) I obtained some translations of Russian phrases my ex-fiancee had said, from the few minutes of video I had taken out of hours of her apparently cursing at me in Russian. She was saying some very unkind things to me. A few excerpts are below. Her performance in these videos would have been very problematic to a prosecutor trying to paint her as a sweet, innocent sympathetic victim and me as an evil villain.

4) A few days later, I met with the sex crimes detective, and gave him the best briefing I could on the situation and the events. Many advised me to have an attorney present with me. I didn't, as I believed I could handle myself. The allegations of being "imprisoned" that she described, the detective had already told her were not crimes. In other words, me failing to provide 24x7 taxi service to a fiancee who was still operating on Ukraine time, rising at 1pm, to bed at 3 am, did not rise to the level of a crime. The allegations boiled down to one specific morning, about 2 weeks before I got the restraining order and had her removed, where she was very belatedly alleging that she said "no" and I proceeded anyway. Absent physical evidence, corroborating witnesses, etc., it was a he-said, she-said case. The detective said he would forward his report to the county prosecutor for a charging decision.

5) I supplied the detective with additional information about witness credibility problems the state would have at trial, if they charged me. I heard no feedback from the detective, and also did not hear anything from the county prosecutor.

6) The return date of my ex-fiancee's ticket arrived, which was also the 90th day of her K-1 visa. When I called the airlines, they confirmed that she and her daughter had boarded the scheduled flight. So, assuming they continued with their itinerary, they are safely back home, on the other side of the world. I am assuming this also ends any possibility of charges being brought.

First, obviously, thank God I didn't marry her. Imagine what I would have been in for. And the VAWA and DV machinery that would have been used against me. I also learned that, had I married her, even briefly, I probably would have been ordered to pay large sums of spousal support to her for up to a year or more even if I quickly divorced her. A man with a similar don't-touch-me-marry-me-immediately story, who gave in and married his fiancee quickly, was ordered by California family courts to pay her about $3,000 per month for the foreseeable future.

For my part, I am very glad I chose to obtain the Domestic Violence restraining order. As she said numerous times to me, in between making throat-slashing motions towards me, "You have NO IDEA what I am capable of!" I may have only been a day or two away from her executing a plan to set me up but good for some false allegations. False allegations are certainly one form of domestic violence that is under-recognized, but just as awful as physical violence, and with very life-damaging consequences to the falsely accused. Several VJ posters advised me to get her out of the house, and that her next step, the next play in the playbook, would in fact be to try to set me up this way. As much as I didn't want to believe this about her, they were right.

Day 11 video translation, excerpts. Note that her 15 year old daughter was present for all of these tirades, and understood everything mama was saying. That is some very interesting parenting. Below are what the things she said in Russian translate to, in English.

"seems like somethings wrong in the head, Your mental, somethings not okay with u. what care? look at ur self in the mirror.. look how u act. look hes mental, did no one respect you, mom and dad probably didnt love you. whats ok? look how u act. who needs u? you pushed me to the edge, i cant see you anymore, i cant see you,understand? i cant see you i cant speak english with you. you pisz me off. a little bit, a little bit, i dont give a f--, you wont be able to pick up ur pieces with ur asz. "

"Too bad don’t have anything to f-- you other way I would to. "

"That emotional state that you drive me today is a nothing compare to what I’m capable for. You will “fly” in an apartments like a ball... I will be kicking you off all walls, f---."

"I want you to go and shoot yourself, f---. I hate you so much. If you just knew how much I hate you. And even if you saying that you don’t understand what I’m saying – you should feel hate I feel to you, without words. Understand? Capisce? "

I'm not necessarily looking for any advice or comments here. I simply wanted people on VJ, and other places I have posted about this whole episode, to know how things ended. I don't claim that I was blameless or perfect. I believe my fiancee has BPD. It's really a moot point, because what's important is that we were living in different, and incompatible, realities.

I would be fine with it if VJ moderators immediately locked this thread. The immigration-related issue here, is how did this all end. I wanted people to know what happened next, after she was removed from my house with a restraining order, and that now, apparently, the final chapter has been written, with her return to her home country.

There is a lot of missing information here, obut that's probably for the better...

Grandma dislikes DeeDee for whatever reason, and decided to become belligerent about it. To her, DeeDee is fingernails on a chalkboard, just for existing and what she represents to grandma. Sort of like a wicked stepmother, only wicked grandmother. Since grandma is an abuser, she also rules mama, and is going to talk and bully mama into whatever grandma thinks is best.

I agree that hubby coulda/shoulda done more to protect his new wife from the abuse, but he is young and didn't know what to do in the moment. He seems to have regained his bearings, resolved to take care of her, and at least his new bride is happy with him, and that's what's most important.

The part about mama & grandma & whoever renting that house out from under them, now that's bizarre... trying to make life difficult for the young couple; for some reason (still grandma calling the shots, no doubt) they have really strong negative feelings about DeeDee and want to do whatever they can to create difficulty for Sam in the marriage so he'll bail on her. Well, DeeDee probably already has enough for a VAWA 360 petition if that was her goal, but obviously it wasn't, it was her man that she came for.

So grandma, and mom, must have some agenda for Sam that DeeDee is somehow interfering with. I wonder what that agenda is. This whole thing also makes me curious about Sam's dad, if he is in the picture or long gone or whatever, and whatever other family support is there for him and DeeDee.

In any case, Sam has made a huge effort and commitment to bring DeeDee here, navigating the paperwork, process, expenses, and then faced up to tremendous difficulties from family once DeeDee arrived. If he applies that same determination and persistence to overcoming these family obstacles, and helping DeeDee adjust, it looks promising for a happy ending. Best of luck to both of you!

Just to clarify some points that have been tossed around...

You cannot withdraw the petition. She entered the US with the K1 visa, so the benefit requested with the petition has already been granted and used. The K1 petition was closed when she entered the US.

VAWA has provisions for an unmarried victim of domestic violence to receive assistance from the US government. However, the immigration benefits of VAWA are only available to the SPOUSE of a US citizen or LPR. She didn't marry the petitioner, so she can't get a green card through VAWA, regardless of whether or not she has any evidence.

So far, she hasn't violated any laws. Just as you aren't compelled to marry her, she is likewise not compelled to marry you. However, USCIS will certainly want to know what happened so that it can be noted in her case file. If nothing else, this would be considered should anyone else ever petition for her. Tell USCIS that she pulled a runner and has hooked up with someone else, and that you no longer intend to marry her.

If she ends up talking to anyone who knows anything about immigration law then she'll discover she's cut off her only pathway to remain legally in the US. Don't be surprised if she comes back begging. Be very very careful.

In this situation, what are/were the chances for the fiancee to (fraudulently) obtain a "U" (Crime Victim) or "T" (Trafficking victim) visa? Those visas appear to be available to K-1 fiance/ee's who did not marry their petitioner. On the USCIS website, it almost looks like the "U" (Crime Victim) or "T" (Trafficking victim) visas could be obtained fraudulently in a similar way that a spouse could file a very suspect VAWA 360 petition with no real evidence, and still get it approved. Are the standards higher for "U" and "T" visas than for VAWA I-360 petitions?

For the Vegas wedding, you should try to get Alla Pugacheva to marry you, instead of Elvis. Or maybe Lolita Milavskaya. You can actually find Madonna lookalikes, so that's an option too.

But to really make an impression on the family back home, Mikhail Gorbachev or Boris Yeltsin would do very nicely. I suppose a Bill Clinton lookalike would be a hit back home too.

I think it's time Vegas branched out and offered more choices for wedding officiants.

What else are you doing for your wedding that's cool? I thought it would be fun to party at the Venetian with the wedding party. Yeah, I made plans. But I didn't wind up getting married AT ALL after she got over here.

Ya know, that video was very inspiring to me. You got me practicing that song, and I pretty soon I'll be to the point where I can perform it better than the original artist. I'm pretty good for the first half of the song, certainly very convincing, and then I start running out of gas. Maybe I'm just not crazy enough yet. When I can just effortlessly *perform* it, without having to *try*, that's how I'll know I've truly arrived.

Well, we've always loved each other. And he had an inkling of what he was getting in to - I've always been up front about my psych history/issues. But the effort that we both put into the relationship is what reinforced how MUCH we love each other and what has made our relationship last for over ten years. I think the effort that he put in to being patient with me, accepting me for who I was while still expecting me to meet certain obligations and live within certain boundaries (the biggest rule being that I could not hide my self-destructive behaviors or lie about them) is what made me want to put the effort into getting better. I took his love for me and turned it into some sort of love for myself -- and so I went to therapy, took my meds, and sought out hospitalization when I needed it.

<some stuff snipped>

He stayed with me through the DUI, although my self-destructive behavior potentially putting someone elses' life at risk did almost end our marriage. And eventually things turned around, got a little bit better day after day to the point where our lives are terribly mundane.

WOW. Now that is commitment. But he knew up front. I am curious how you first were told about BPD, how your were diagnosed, and how that went over with you, and at what point you decided it was something you *wanted* to work on. Maybe that's asking for too much, too personal for here, maybe PM. Reading between the lines, I can also see that he made an enduring, concerted effort to learn how to communicate effectively and know when and how to insist on boundaries. There are a lot of ways the partner can screw this up and say and do things that are unhelpful and unsupportive. I just thought my ex-fiancee was a very emotional woman. I prefer very emotional women. Which she also is, but then stack the BPD-related behaviors on top of that, and it just overwhelmed me, with almost no feelings or actions of love and affection from her to make it feel worth the effort to me. If I knew then what I know now, who knows. I was learning and I could see it starting to improve our interactions. But I was already worn down and out of patience by that point. When she played games with my requests to do a BPD assessment, promising she would do it after marriage, it came across as one more cynical way of trying to get me to marry her quickly by any means possible. It just all became too high-risk for me to find out. Your husband hung in there with you through all challenges; truly a remarkable man, hats off to him. I can see how working through challenges together, the way you and your husband did, could build even stronger bonds over time. A mundane life, now that sounds appealing right now!

Manipulators try to paint you as insane.

and insert words called "minimizers" or "invalidators" like this. When you couple "hysteria" with "perceived" you have the insane person who is delusional, "perceiving" things that are not there.

Exactly so. The thread management is a relentless fixation on the girl instead of our own behavior. Posts that are useful for us in manipulating the thread direction our way receive flattery. Posts that direct attention to us are... not useful. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Now for something I could not agree with more:

Talk about an understatement. Let me tell you a fascinating story, and you better listen good. Life is so amazing with serendipity sometimes. I'll just make up some names and places here, you know - to protect the real identities

I'm going to look into the forum rules carefully to make sure I don't break one. But you better think over what you are going to say now.

I'm sure it would be equally interesting to hear the story told from my ex-fiancee's point of view. So use your connections and get it out there. Dee Dee and Sam seem to have had contact with her or someone posting for her, maybe they can help. So her plan to use a man she didn't love didn't work? Let's hear her side. Great Scott, don't be a tool, start a new thread with her point of view. Knock yourself out. In this thread, I'm telling it from my point of view.

I would love to know exactly what she was thinking when she grabbed and yanked the steering wheel at 60mph as we drove down the freeway and almost ran the car off the road, likely killing herself, me, and her daughter in the process. Oh yes, she was thinking, "He hates my friends, so therefore everybody in the car must die", was that it? And then two days later, not only is she NOT apologetic over the episode, she insisted to me, "it was nothing" and it was "your fault, because you hate my friends." I learned in court that when she brandished the wine bottle overhead, while standing next to me, as if to hit me, right after saying "f--- you!", that this is actually a Ukrainian form of "Cheers!" Had I married her, now THAT would have been a family court nightmare the moment something happened she didn't like.

Oh my god. I have IBS too and had the most embarrassing moment last night! I do pediatric home health nursing and was caring for a ventilator-dependent child when I suddenly had to use the bathroom. Anyway, I've had IBS for a while and know when something's brewing down 'ere.

<TMI snipped!>

Thank GOD everyone was asleep.

can't believe this thread is still here

and suddenly very grateful for how my husband dealt with my BPD issues

I was learning to deal with my ex-fiancee's BPD issues. It was a lot of work at first. I could just be my normal self everywhere else, but around her, I had to try to always be on mental high alert for BPD-code behaviors and try to recognize and respond appropriately. It did start to get easier. Ultimately, I didn't feel that she loved me. Without feeling loved, it didn't seem worth it to go through life with the extra effort of always processing communication with her through an extra "BPD filter".

In your message, you express appreciation for your husband's efforts. Since you didn't say what your husband did or didn't do in this area, I can only guess. But it's safe to say that he felt it was worth the effort, probably because he could feel that you actually loved him.

I have to acknowledge that my ex-fiancee did notice, and comment on, and seem to appreciate my efforts at learning to communicate with her better.

I knew it was very high-risk to bring up BPD directly to her, and ask her to do an assessment and then whatever treatment was indicated, but within a 90-day window of a K-1 visa, it didn't leave a lot of time or good options.

One positive thing that came out of this is that now when I recognize BPD-style projection, rearranging of facts and sequence of events, I have some communication tools for dealing with it. I have a daughter who plays a Division I college sport, and she was complaining about one of her coaches. I recognized that this coach was doing both BPD-style projection, and also rearranging facts and sequences of events in his mind to match his emotions about certain strategies, and things he was trying to get players to do. It was extremely frustrating for her. I told her to first STOP getting into logical arguments with him, STOP wasting time and breath disputing his version of facts and sequences of events. Instead, listen to his underlying feelings about what he was trying to accomplish, acknowledge those feelings, find some core truths she could agree with about what he was saying, and go from there, that then he would be more open to hearing her ideas. I told her that during games, she should just go ahead and adjust team strategy during games (she is a team leader), and seek the coach's forgiveness later (or accept his praise and recognition for taking the initiative), instead of always feeling she always needed to convince him or get his permission up front. It's been a few weeks since I've heard her whine about this coach, so maybe it's helping.

More responding to TBoneTX's post...

Yes, it was a constant feeling of there-is-something-horribly-wrong-with-this-picture. Mostly she made me miss and appreciate the ex-girlfriend, now the re-girlfriend. Absolutely drove me away. Now I know how to tell the difference between a very emotional woman and a woman with BPD. Every day I celebrate that I didn't marry this woman. Would have made a huge mess of my life. Thank you for your participation in this thread and interjecting a voice of reason. I needed it all to not get sucked in. BPDs almost cast a spell on their intimate partners.

Man -- talk about a clear snapshot of not-a-relationship. And look how she treated her own daughter, ufff man.

Her daughter is her BPD "constant object". Always has to have her around. Problem is daughter needs to be able to have a life too and not have to take care of mom's emotions all the time. One thing that was really sick is the way she would curse at me and mock me in Russian, for the daughter's benefit. Toward the end, she also made her daughter participate in more sick games, like the time she asked to be dropped off at the fabric store, and I gave her a $20 because it was all I had. She insisted I had to give her $80 more or she (and her daughter) were not getting out of my car. This was during the noon hour, and I had to go back to work. After sitting in the parking lot for 5 minutes, I finally just drove home. Then she refused to get out of my car there. Of course, she made the daughter participate in this. I have a second car, so I got out, and went and drove my other car to work, as the two of them sat there. The daughter is a great kid, and it's really sad that she wound up in the middle of this mess. But, as I said, this will be at least the *second* time that the mom (and daughter along with) has been removed from a family residence by police. If I'd married this woman, can you imagine what the daughter would have "learned" about how a woman gets her needs met?

INTERESTING NUMBERS:

Days at my house: About 35

Times she slept in my bed with me: 8-10

Times we cuddled and talked in bed together: 0

Intimate relations times: about 5

Times we watched movies/TV together in bed: 0

Times we watched movies together in Theater room: 1

Times we talked into the wee hours of the morning over drinks, outside on the deck: about 6 or 7

Times we ate meals together: About half the time

Times she prepared meals for me: Most of the time

Times she did my laundry for me: 1

Russian language lessons she gave me: 0 (She gave me 1 in her country)

Times she allowed her teenage daughter out to meet new friends: 1

Times she allowed her teenage daughter out to sports camp or workshop activities: 1 (She/they bailed on 2nd day of a sports camp)

Checking in at post #339. Where's the beer? Maybe it's time to get out for a nice foot massage, relieve some of this tension I feel from reading this stuff.

Phil - I gotta admire you for the backbone - our buddy mcat had none.

I appreciate the kind words. My goal was to NOT wind up being a victim.

Basically, my standard was that until she made me feel that she was truly my woman, and I was her man, there was no way I was going to marry her. So the marry-me-or-I-won't-even-sleep-in-same-bed-as-you tactic pushed me way a lot further away.

I read several stories on here and elsewhere from men who were in a very, very unfortunate position.

The one thing I did glean from all this was to NOT marry the woman until you are absolutely certain, because once you marry her, she will then have the legal ability to make your life a living hell, courtesy of the delightful and lovely USA family court system and domestic violence industry.

And it was hard to find any story where the woman *pressured* the man for a quick marriage and things turned out well. I still don't think I've read any.

Actually, the same is true for a man on a K-1 Visa pressuring his female fiancee to marry him quickly. There were plenty of horror stories on that side too.

So I think the rule would be, if a fiance/ee pressures you for a quick marriage, RUN, don't walk, in the opposite direction. Marrying quickly by mutual desire, based on a solid relationship, is a different thing.

My ex-fiancee telegraphed large parts of her agenda by things she said in heated moments, and by the overall way she treated me. I do think plan A was to marry me and stay with me for a while, but to have me "under her heel", and she believed I would give in to her withholding tactics. I think the DV/VAWA/family court assault was plan B, if I wasn't minding my P's and Q's as a husband and got out of line. There was an article I posted a link to earlier about whether BPD/NPD tactics are premeditated. The short answer was that BPD's dont really have a step-by-step global domination plan, and largely make things up as they go along, but have a lot of skill at improvising.

Once she realized I probably wasn't going to marry her, she quickly became "all about the money". That was very interesting. I may post a couple brief accounts of that here in the future.

It seems a lot of the so-called "protections" for women have the effect of keeping American men from marrying foreign women, by creating risks that are too high for the man. I suppose you could say this about marriage in general these days; the risks are just even higher when marrying a foreign woman. When the other guy, whose story I posted, told me he had been ordered to pay $2500 per month spousal support to a woman he was married to for only 6 months, that was extremely scary. His story was so parallel to mine, with the primary difference being that I didn't marry the woman. He is pretty sure his gal is either BPD or NPD also.

I wish, on a K-1 visa:

The marry-or-go-back-home period was much longer, at least 6 months;

The K-1 beneficiary could immediately get drivers license, permission to work, etc., without requiring marriage first, for the duration of the K-1.

I'm sure there are pros and cons to these ideas.

I plan to periodically post updates here. Occasionally I may also post snippets of past events that are part of the story, which have not been shared here. At this point, my objective is to share my story, for others to see a complete start-to-finish picture, and decide if any elements of their evolving story have things in common with mine.

Honestly, I did not read your posts entirely, so I missed those statements However, although you said that he was not ready to change, you insisted on showing him that he may have co-dependency issues. I don't think that helps him much.

I am guilty of this myself in my personal and professional life. I see the problems and I think I can help. But it's premature and it backfires. I'm still learning how to use my knowledge in such a way that it's actually helpful.

RLogan's hysteria over my perceived codependency issues stopped being useful after the first post. (I suppose I'm labeling and invalidating or whatever there, but that's how I see it.) I can totally relate to your last paragraph about seeing others' problems and feeling like we have knowledge that can help, and jumping in prematurely and having it backfire. Often the real truth about what is happening is several levels deep, and the information people share publicly, or in the first stages of getting to know them is incomplete. Then they start telling us the whole, uncensored story over time. There's a lot that simply can't be shared effectively in this forum. Normally I won't expend the effort to tell someone what I think their problems are and what they need to do about it, unless they show me in some way that they are ready and open to hear this. Otherwise, it's a waste of my time and attention as well as theirs, and annoys them. That old saying about trying to teach algebra to a pig comes to mind. Obviously my ex-fiancee was not ready to have the BPD discussion with me. I chose to attempt to have it anyway because I felt her BPD-like behaviors would have to be acknowledged and diagnosed and therapy underway for me to even consider continuing the relationship. You've read my less-than-stellar results on that here...

But, under the circumstances, I felt I had no real alternative but to press ahead. Of course, she then "agreed" to do a BPD assessment "after we are married". This agreement alternated with "I'll go if you go in for one at the same time too". The version she told in court was the "I'll go if you go in at the same time and get one too", because apparently she felt the "after we are married" version would sound manipulative if she told it in court.

Well Phil, When she found out that other guy would help her with the legal stuff she dumped us like cold greasy fries.

one night we were guzzling vodka and sharing our innermost thoughts and cuddling. In the morning when we woke we was alone nuzzling the empty bottle of vodka. She was no where to be found. Just an empty vodka bottle and three large bags of chips with nothing but the crumbs. Thats all we have to remember em by. We are crushed but it was worth every minute of it.

So Phil, Our work is done here, time to go our separate ways. Good luck

If we was a little more musically inclined we could write a country hit. "Just an empty vodka bottle and three large bags of chips with nothin but the crumbs"

I think it has a ring to it.

Darnit, while you're working on the country song, could you at least get the storyline correct? If you read my posts, she was removed from my residence by sheriff's deputies, via a domestic violence protection order. Do you not actually read these things?

I do think the line about "dumped like cold greasy fries" has definite potential for a country song, though. Also, there was next to zero cuddling the whole time she was here. There was a fair amount of guzzling vodka and sharing innermost thoughts, though. So you are at least partly correct. Now, it was really scary earlier when you were making up future storylines that almost sounded plausible, and were based on correct sequence of events. You are slipping, man. Can you raise your game a notch here? I mean, I understand there is such a thing as artistic license, but we gotta have standards somewhere, right?

It's funny, you don't like him diagnosing you, yet you did so to your ex with such ease....

Don't you think RLogan and I should at least LIVE together first before he diagnoses me?

Oh, and sure I *like* it.

RLogan, can you come over for a couple months so you we can share some quality time mutually diagnosing each other?

I think you said you were ACOA too, so I'm sure we'd have fun.

How do you feel about beaches and ladies rooms? And pina coladas and getting caught in the rain?

I have never understood the need for a Tarzan-swinging-through-the-jungle mentality when it comes to love....not truly letting go of one before firmly grabbing hold of another. Get it together, man.

This question has been asked a couple times in different ways, so I'll respond here.

It's difficult to tell if the K-1 process will be successful. When we were on opposite sides of the ocean, my ex-fiancee did not prove herself as a woman worth totally stopping my local dating life for. A woman can "disappear" into thin air at any moment. On my second visit, she again failed to show me that she was worth giving up my local dating life. And how do I KNOW what she was or wasn't doing herself? She seemed to be a woman with many secrets.

I love women, and enjoy their company. It has been normal for me the last two years to have a dating rotation of 1-5 women at any given time. When the number was more than 1, the women knew I was not exclusive with them. When the number was 1, and it was exclusive, I kept to that. I lost a great woman last summer because I was honest with her about my situation of being engaged. All I ever told her was let's have fun and see where it leads. She wanted more serious and sooner. In another 2-3 months, possibly I would have broken off the engagement and chosen to be with her.

My ex-fiance kept playing games with me instead of showing me that I was her man and she was my woman. I would notice that she was active on the dating site where we met. Each time I saw that, I felt it gave me permission to continue my local dating life. She was not as reliable as I would have liked with her communication, and not as energetic and motivated to make regular Skype chats happen. After giving her a start time "range" of 30 minutes, If I was even a few minutes late for the earliest start time, she would have a hissy fit. (Another BPD trait, BTW) After my second visit to see her, she dropped off the grid and did not communicate with me for 11 days. I should have broken it off right then. I didn't because I felt I had too much invested. Besides, the K-1 petition approval had already been received, and, as I understood it, that used up one of my two lifetime "bullets" right there, so I may as well go ahead and roll the dice and give her a chance to be the woman she promises she'll be once she comes to my country.

I gave my ex-fiancee every opportunity to show that she was my woman, and that she was here because she loved me and wanted to build a life together. Instead she played games of withholding herself and acting like hers was made of gold and lined with diamonds, and creating arguments out of thin air as an excuse to not move into my bedroom (and make it ours) and to not sleep in the same bed with me. She drove me away. She proved that I was right to keep options open. I told her repeatedly, in person, and in email, do not play games in the area of intimacy with a man with options, and I am a man with options. She repeatedly chose to ignore this. Having abundance in my life in the area of dating helped me have the strength to not get sucked into her games out of emotional and sexual neediness and desperation. You can call it my defense mechanism, or you can call me a #######, or whatever you want. My ex-fiancee tried to manipulate the wrong man. Her games also showed that she neither loved me nor respected me. She thought I was a desperate American man, without options, an easy mark for her games.

Primarily, I am guilty of ignoring the huge red flags with my ex-fiancee and bringing her over anyway. I should have saved my resources for a much higher quality woman. I gave her credit and value for qualities she did not possess. Having other options helped keep me from doing something even more stupid and marrying her.

A couple lessons, in hindsight:

1) If, especially after becoming engaged, she doesn't make me feel like being exclusive with her and devoting all attention to her, and that she is doing the same for ME, then STOP immediately! Do not file K-1! Do not buy airline tickets! Do not pass GO! Cut losses immediately!

2) Cultural differences are never an excuse for ignoring red flags.

OK everyone, flame away on that!

You are the one who came asking for input, so belittling those that do is even more "interesting and amusing". One of the other things about codependency is that they too are manipulative, and this tactic is straight out of the book. You have an invalidator in here along with the derision - but this stuff doesn't work on me.

Mostly barking up the wrong tree except for so many things I am dead right about, and here is an extremely important one: Adult child of alcoholic. Me too. In part, that is what gives me such insight into you. Look at the critical things I have said that are true. The only thing I see you disagreeing about is your codependency, which is precisely what a codependent will do.

If you are an adult child of alcoholic then you ought to be aware of how prevelant codependency is in them, and in spouses of the alcoholic. This is actually where the term "codependency" arose: in the people most immediate to the alcoholic or drug addict. Now of course the science has been extended to all manner of codependents associating themselves with people who have serious problems.

I couldn't agree more. Fixating on trying to do so is classic co-dependency. The main benefit is the insight this gives other people. Denial is extremely powerful in codependency. People need to see this: "I don't have a problem..." Apart from starting off in an alcoholic family, choosing all these leper-people to associate with, obsessing over them, losing control of your life because of this association...

The classic codependent will have his fiance nearly killing him in one way or another, while the ex-girlfriend is moving back into the same house with both of them - something bordering on insane behavior to normal people - and saying the whole time how in control of everything he is. It is all so perfectly rational, logical, normal...

Exactly. That is what a codependent does. Look how you took on this guys problems, just like the last fiance' and how it is such an important part of your self-identity to be the one taking charge of someone else's problems. As you said, I am not going to fix you. You do not want to be fixed. It is "fun" to be playing with dynamite. Others though can learn from this.

Take care. I think my work is done.

The point of this thread, for me anyway, is to share the story, for the collective good, and get helpful ideas from others who have relevant information and perspective. So you've made your point that you think I have codependent tendencies. That's great, except that it doesn't really point that well to anything clear and specific and actionable. Should I read or listen to a John Bradshaw book again? Or maybe reread everything Melodie Beattie ever wrote? Go attend ACOA meetings? Codependency is a big, big subject, with lots of different flavors and subcategories and details and specifics. I know your opinion, "aha, he's one of THOSE!!" and so does the everyone else reading the thread. Your work here is indeed done. I believe my primary challenges now are in areas other than codependency. I hope we can agree to disagree.

As far as taking on this guy's problems, first and foremost I'm a businessman. Our relationship started out as business and we became good friends along the way. When his situation went south a little bit, I made a business decision to help this guy out, based on facts and data, and a read on him that he was truly ready to take responsibility and make changes. He was and he has been. Do I mix my head and my heart in such decisions, YES. Right now this guy is doing great things for me on the business side. Improving my bottom line by about $1K per month. I recently lost another such business bet on a person, and although it could still turn around, right now that one is a net loss of about $1500.

If I get blown up playing with dynamite, at least I can say while I was alive, I LIVED. And it was never boring. As the quote goes, "If you don't piss off an occasional person, you're playing it much too safe." By their very nature, international relationships and marriage are risky business. Of course, family court being what it is, almost ANY marriage is risky business for a man these days.

"Normal" is a very subjective concept. And I disagree with your false dichotomy of Normal/Not Normal. Everyone has issues and challenges. That's normal. That's fine, toss me into the "Not Normal" group and call it a day. Remember the Mel Brooks movie, Young Frankenstein? Igor goes to the brain depository, accidentally drops the glass jar containing the brain he wanted on the floor, breaking and destroying it. Then he grabs a different brain-in-a-jar off the shelf, with the label "Abnormal" on the jar, and that's the brain the monster winds up getting. So yeah, I'm sure that's me, "Abbie Normal", and everyone else is simply "Normal". Gotta go, my organ donation forms just came up on the printer, gotta sign them and send them off.

So....B!tches to the airplane?

LOL!!

Good memory you have, to pull the "beaches" tidbit from way back earlier in the thread!

Yes, it should have been "beaches -- airplane" but said while approaching the beach in Hawaii with me and pointing to an airplane overhead. But that's her loss.

Wow, this thread is quite a doozy too. His ex-wife is from Moldova, and things really unraveled for him. I suppose I'll read it when I have a few spare hours...

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/189857-my-wife-threw-her-marriage-and-life-here-away/page__st__420

Hey, PhilN, I am glad to read that you are trying to process the whole situation now. I hope you are talking about emotionally processing it. In order to move on and learn from what happened, it might help you to actually grieve your loss. Only you know what dreams and hopes you had about this woman. Only you know what you went through. You are the arbiter of this and you know best, but it seems that your focus on BPD prevents you from dealing with the emotional sequalae of your loss.

It's always nice to get a compassionate and sensible post... and this time you are mostly on the mark.

You are right. I did have a lot of hopes and dreams with this woman. So, so many. And her daughter too. And perhaps more children as well. That was part of my dream for sure. This woman fit so much of my list... or so I thought. Yes, there is definitely some grieving going on, grieving the amazing and fun and romantic life I wanted to have with her that I believed was possible.

A bunch of it got dashed on that day at the ocean, where what should have been a fun romantic time got turned into a mess, over what seemed like a silly and coincidental misunderstanding. Then I started seeing the pattern. The rest of the hopes and dreams got gradually dashed on the rocks too over the next few days and weeks. It does suck to let go of that dream life I was going to create with her. But VJ isn't my first choice for grieving, and I have a pretty good support network of family and friends for that. So I probably won't talk about that much here. In fact, my objective here is more to document the story, for others to learn from, when elements of their evolving story seem similar to mine. I suppose that is part of my grieving process. The other fellow, whose story I summarized, was a big help in knowing to NOT go forward with marriage. If I had married her, my story might have ended a lot like his, where within a few months of marriage, he left his home and went on an extended "camping" trip to get away from his wife, and soon wound up being ordered by family court to pay her several thou$and dollars per month spousal maintenance. So I'm celebrating at the same time I'm grieving. And part of my grieving is turning my mind to creating the next chapters of my life, adjusting the story so it doesn't have her in it, but is just as exciting and successful, if not more so, than the life I envisioned with her.

Phil im kinda confused by one thing. knowing your story here, few days ago i found a new topic posted by a new member who was complaining about coming to USA to her fiance, who tried to force her into having sex with him. also she came with her daughter. i saw a pattern here. anyway reading further into her story i found out her "ex fiance" got a restraining order against her based on "lies" and he got other woman into the house when she was still living there. i looked at the country to see if by any chance she was from ukraine. there were no details. so i replied to the topic saying her story seems kinda familiar and included the link to your topic. now whats even weirder, a little after that the topic dissapeared from my content list, and i cant see the member anywhere. either she deleted her account or blocked me without a reason. so...yeah...confusing....

I'm sure it would have been interesting to hear her side of the story. It does sound like there are similarities...

I'm telling my story from the point of view of the American man involved. It would be great to hear how it sounds from her point of view.

Let's see...

"I wanted to find a stupid American man, where I could pretend that I wanted to be his wife, long enough to trick him into marrying me and having him support me and my daughter for a couple years, until we can get a green card and leave his stupid a$s. And if he gets really annoying, I can always use VAWA and do an I-360 petition. Oh yeah, and one more thing, since I don't really love him and I'm just faking caring about him, and using him for economic reasons for me and my daughter, I don't want to act like a normal wife and sleep in the same bed with him. And after I give him a little bit of sex to lead him on and confuse him, I'll make up some argument or excuse and cut him off, and then go sleep in another room instead of with him. After all, and in my mind I'm a hot 25 year old, and really I deserve Vin Diesel or Antonio Banderas, not some ordinary man. He should feel grateful I ever shared my angelic self with him at all. And God forbid I should ever do his laundry or things like that for him. It's hard enough getting up at 2pm and smoking a couple packs and drinking a bottle of vodka and/or a bottle of wine. After all, I was up on Skype until 4am talking with my Russian-speaking friends. Never mind that i should be adjusting my body clock to the USA and making it possible for my teenage daughter to get out and experience life here. Anyway, since he called me on my BS and didn't marry me, how can I still stay in the USA and get him to pay for me, and still get a green card? He's just not cooperating. I read about other Ukrainian women who have done this successfully, so where did I go wrong? How can I get him to do what I want? He's evil. He had the nerve to take up with another woman, just because I wasn't acting like a wife, and was sleeping in another room. I thought American men were supposed to be stupid suckers, an easy mark for a sophisticated Russian woman like me. Aren't there some laws I can use against him? Can't I just go to the police and demand my rights?"

Yes, let's hear her side.

UPDATE: The court hearing on the DV restraining order was held this morning. My ex-fiancee showed up to contest it. Along with her were her two friends who live 1.5 hours away. Her male friend sandbagged me this week, pretending he didn't know where she was. She showed up coached by him and well prepared to fight the order. He's been through his own family court wars, so he had a decent idea of how to coach her. In the end, the DV part of it upheld. The resulting order was watered down a little, basically allowing contact for arranging her return to her country, and limited in time to 3 months. So I don't know if she/they really accomplished anything. Possibly it was about emotional venting more than anything else. The particular female judge who conducted the hearing has a reputation for being extremely biased against men, and certainly that was on display in the cases before us. Me and my two support people shook our heads in disbelief as this judge coached and supported women through their efforts to get DV restraining orders against men, and scolded and stonewalled the men who were confused by the process. I was the only male on the "Petitioner" side.

Mostly, the process made me very glad that I wasn't dealing with her in any kind of post-marriage proceeding. Her friend was willing to lie and distort where necessary, but that's the environment that family court/DV court creates. So I don't particularly hold any grudges against him, or her for that matter. He can't or won't see her BPD, possibly because she's not shown it to him because that's not their relationship. I also don't think she's been honest with him about a number of things. But, that's how it goes.

My ex-fiancee, like many of the men on the "respondent" side of a DV order, misunderstood the process. She was asking during the process if she could get a restraining order against me during the hearing, sort like a #######-for-tat thing. She was also constantly talking about money and what she felt my support obligations towards her should be and thinking the judge could somehow force me to give her more money. Maybe that's how things would work where she comes from...

Anyway, I'm still processing all this. I'll probably post some more updates later. I'm just glad it wasn't a "spousal maintenance" hearing like the other guy whose story I posted.

While it's moderately interesting and amusing to be on the receiving end of your attempted diagnosis and analysis, you are operating on very limited information. It's mostly barking up the wrong tree. Yes, I am an ACOA, and I did a ton of work in my young adulthood on ACOA-related issues. You're certainly not going to "fix" me here.

One thing I learned from a friend who spent 7 years in a relationship with a BPD, is the power that BPDs (and NPDs) have to pull people, especially partners, into their "alternate reality". When I first met him, I kicked his butt HARD for all the poor choices he made, adjusting his life to orbit around this woman, and losing his own way. Well, at that point I had never been in any kind of relationship with a BPD. Now I understand firsthand the intensity and pull that BPDs can have on their intimate partners. Now I'm not so critical of him any more. But I made different choices and did not get ensnared so deeply into the relationship with the BPD.

This can have an element of truth to it, but it is also one of just many excuses the naiive are willing to accept without cause. We always give the benefit of the doubt, even when we walk in the bedroom with them on top of their boyfriend. We just need an excuse supplied to us. So it's her culture.

Here again, the vast majority of people go their whole lives without someone committing paternity fraud on them with a leper child. This is soap opera drama material, not normal life. Not a big deal, I did not lead a normal life - not even close. But we have to know ourselves. Why did this hunter-killer unit zero in on you? Because hunter-killer units have radar operating 24/7 to detect people like you. Once they do, it is like a lion spotting a zebra.

There is no deep insight here. People are attracted to "their kind of people": the kind of people they want to be around. So you see sports nuts at sports bars, the band geeks doing their thing together, etc. These psycho hunter-killer manipulator units are looking for the naiive, happy-go lucky, gullible fellow who gives the benefit of the doubt no matter how outrageous their behavior is.

Your "filter" is broken or nonexistent. Some relationship advisors say to have this list of "dealbreakers" so you aren't such a retard about who you allow into your life to waste your scarce time. Things they absolutely must have, or things they absolutely must not have.

I have been this outdoor maniac, so all the hunter-killer psycho units would tell me how much they loved the out-of-doors, fishing, camping, etc. "All my life I wanted to live in a cabin in the woods..." My filter was whether they actually did anything amenable to cabin life with a wood stove as opposed to being a townie in high heels just weaving B.S. to manipulate me. You can make all the excuses you want for them and in the end the mistake was not filtering them out in the beginning because they had a dealbreaker.

There are some really important dealbreakers you just cannot make excuses for. If they lie, they're out. If they have this big drama going on through no fault of their own, that is a person who is going to have drama for the rest of their life through "no fault of their own". So you write down on paper: No drama. You would be amazed how that simplifies your life.

I guarantee that with this psycho hunter-killer unit that pulled paternity fraud with the leper child on you - there were red flags you ignored on the way in. As a matter of fact you told yourself that it showed your conscientiousness, your empathy, your understanding for giving her a chance despite seeing her morph into a reptile or have mirrors shatter when she looked in them. I did the same thing with people and had to learn over and over again that there are a lot of bad people who will hurt me because of it.

Wow, this is out of control with the projection and attempted analysis. But, I appreciate your intentions.

If I recall correctly, these women are 0-for-2 in getting me locked up in a long-term commitment. Yes, one cost me a good chunk of money, but a small amount in the grand scheme of things. And I don't regret the fling with the paternity fraud gal. It was fun for the couple weeks the "relationship" lasted. Then she went partly AWOL for the next 2-3 weeks, and I didn't put anything on hold for her while she tried to play her games. Then I called BS on her fraud attempt and that was the end of that; she suddenly "lost the baby". The interesting thing... This gal made plenty of money and owned her own house, nicer than mine at the time. So she picked me as the one to try to dupe apparently because she wanted me as a father influence in the child's life. Actually, almost flattering.

My story is that I have great, loving wonderful people in my life who care about me, and these are people I have attracted into my life. And these were people who helped me avoid getting sucked in by women who wanted to manipulate me. So I have the one ex-girlfriend (who now rents from me) that helped me avoid the paternity fraud, plus the re-girlfriend who loved me and wanted me and stuck with me and helped pull me back out from the BPD near-disaster. I also have another dear friend who was in a 7-year relationship with a BPD who sucked his soul out of him, and he helped me tremendously too. As he said near the end when I was wavering, "I've lived that 7 years with a BPD, so now you don't have to." Meaning he could give me the Cliff's Notes version and save me the trouble of getting into a long-term relationship, by sharing his experience and letting me know what to expect.

You are correct about a lot of things though. You are right about me overlooking the lies (in her profile, she lies about smoking, drinking, and fudges her height and weight) and she lied to me about other little things too. My BPD gal got this far with massive, massive help from her American friend (and I consider him my friend) who sang the praises of this misunderstood girl, and insisted I should chalk all her strange behavior up to cultural differences and her stressful and difficult environment, and we just needed to understand each other better. Now I've had my first experience at recognizing what personality disorders look like in an intimate relationship. Now that I know how the next chapters of a BPD/NPD/other story turn out, and I know how to recognize the signs, I don't need to go any further than the first chapter in the future. I admit to liking to have a certain amount of adventure in my life, and being willing to defy conventional wisdom sometimes, willing to take calculated risks if the potential returns are high enough. Sometimes the risks pan out, and sometimes they don't. Certainly, I spent WAY too much life energy on this woman. If I had chosen better and heeded red flags earlier, it would have saved everyone a lot of grief. Now I know that most red flags are independent of cultural differences.

Some of my dealbreakers were:

1) Attempting to use rationing of sex and intimacy to try to control a partner

2) Behaving in ways towards me that I found extremely disrespectful

3) Having double standards for herself vs others

plus, for this international relationship:

4) Never making the adjustment to functioning on USA time

It was the first dealbreaker that triggered me to start this thread.

You are correct, the hunter-killer units are out there, hunting for vulnerable targets. I don't see anything wrong with having some fun with them, as long as you recognize them for what they are, and don't do my mistake of trying to project them into being something they're not. Maybe I'm guilty of sometimes coming across as a nice, accommodating guy who can be manipulated and shamelessly taken advantage of. I'm working on developing my ####### side more. I think getting a protection order and getting the ex-fiancee escorted out of my house by law enforcement showed there's hope for me yet on the ####### side of things.

Actually, I went back and counted my criteria for a long-term partner. There are 44 yes-no questions on it. You're right, my filter (for women to avoid) is broken or nonexistent; after all, I should have at least 50 items, and my criteria list only has 44. Anyway, for my ex-fiance, I can answer "yes" to 26 out of 44. For the re-girlfriend, it's 40 out of 44. So I might be a fool to kick that one out of my life again. My favorite kind of messed-up woman is the talented, energetic, loving codependent who dotes on my every need and thinks constantly about how she can make things better for me and take care of me. That's her, my re-girlfriend. I think it's my emerging ####### side that she really loves, and I just mix in enough nice guy to keep it unpredictable and interesting. She's sure she can fix me.

On a positive note, my 20 year old daughter plays college soccer and has been complaining about her weird coach for 3 years now. I recognized some elements of his behavior as similar to BPD behavior. No, I am not "diagnosing" this man!! Asthenia and Nene and everyone else, stop wagging those fingers NOW!! just saying he shows some elements... Given that, I was able to suggest to my daughter some strategies for communicating better with her coach, and for keeping her own focus and not getting distracted by his behavior. Now when he "projects", she'll can recognize what is happening, and have some tools for dealing with it. She will know NOT to get into a "logical" argument with him, over whose version of reality is correct, that's for sure! So there have been some good things that came out of this.

You asked if we see a pattern Phil and yea, I do. I missed the part about the ex-girlfriend and the psycho fiance in the same house, and other drama, but seeing that now I recognize the pattern, yea. Each move of the drama llama is explained as the most rational thing to do and you need to know how one operates to recognize it because they're slick.

When you are bringing the ex-girfriend into the house with the crazy, violent fiance we get softened up with how she has become the dream woman and logically of course she belongs with you. Nobody could disagree with that given the evidence that has been submitted, which is controlled by you. All of us do this, at least to some degree - we choose which information to provide, or word it in such a way that our audience is led to conclude it is bad luck that brings us this conveyor belt of drama. Look at the decisions we made - normal people would make all the same decisions. But there is a reason drama follows some people around and others have stable, even boring lives.

You see this guy playing with matches in the dynamite factory, and he has a rational explanation for it. Oh, don't mind me with these matches because I need the light to see what I am doing so none of this dynamite goes off. I mean the top reason for murder is mixing competing sexual partners, green card or other financial/power motive, and drugs which is in this case alcohol. Hey! You hit all three top reasons simultaneously! No wait it is four because next after that is mental illness. How can this go wrong?

You have more than one victim of abusive people you have attracted. Well sure, lightning always strikes twice in the same place - if you are a lightning rod. Of course you have to finish getting rid of this leper. But that isn't going to fix you. What is it about you that attracts you to these drama cases. I learned there was a kind of frankenstein woman attracted to me that could recognize me at a distance, and set me up for ambush before I knew what was going on. There were things they did to me that should have been signals to run, run, run - but they were familiar to me from having experienced them in childhood, and I actually smiled to myself because it felt familiar. A person can actually find comfort in something the rest of us would not submit to. My mother or father does this to me, or this is the kind of thing I grew up with, so I am actually uncomfortable around normal people. I am not saying you are clinical. There is a pattern here though yea.

All in good spirit. One tip: It is cheaper and more honest to hire a couple of hookers for the night and have them fight over you. Then do the threesome. They'll do whatever you want and no manipulation is involved, all above-board and fully compensated. The nice thing about that is when it's over there's no baggage. Nobody trying to kill you, or places you have to avoid going etc.

The re-girlfriend was only at the same house as my ex-fiancee the night before I went and got the protection order. Since my ex-fiancee wasn't getting up until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, they didn't cross paths the next morning. The girlfriend was my moral support in getting me to family court and following through on getting the protection order. Without her, I probably wouldn't have gotten it done. Bringing her in was the "nuclear option". I knew if/when I brought the girlfriend to the house, that was my way of saying the engagement was 100% over.

Yes, I was playing with matches in the dynamite factory. I decided I was going to roll the dice and bring this woman, my ex-fiancee over here. In hindsight, my mistakes are obvious. I was guilty of assuming I would fully win her over once she got here. I was guilty of believing her when she insisted she would be just a normal calm woman in the USA, without the stress of simply surviving in her country. I was guilty of giving her too much undeserved credit for her capabilities, and of not seeing the nature of the underlying issue (BPD), while making excuses for her behavior. I was guilty of listening to her American friend (she was his interpreter when he met his wife), who tried to explain away all her issues as cultural differences. She didn't show him her real BPD side. That is reserved for only her closest people. The truth is, it was his influence that is probably singularly responsible for me sticking with the process during the many difficult times and bringing her over here. There have been at least half a dozen times, especially during my two visits, when I was ready to bail and he talked me into sticking it out. He didn't intend to mislead me, but he didn't know the BPD side of her. When I look back at my notes from the two trips, it is all so obvious that BPD is what I was dealing with. A new experience for me... as they say, good judgment comes from experience... experience comes from mistakes and scars and pain.

Also, I felt I would be getting another awesome daughter; I have two amazing, talented, beautiful young adult daughters. Both will graduate from college next Spring. Her daughter is a great kid, and for a man there's no such thing as having too many daughters who love you.

Hell, I don't need to hire hookers, I can do just fine with regular women, and if anything, they should pay me. But, your argument makes sense from a purely numerical standpoint. I spent around $14,000 visiting her twice, doing the K-1 process and bringing her here. That would work out to about $1,000 per playtime. Certainly less potential for baggage, as you suggest, but not without its risks I'm sure.

I don't normally attract crazy women, and in the USA I'd recognize it and ditch the witch in a hurry. But mix in all the other stuff, cultural and language differences, the appeal of the exotic, etc. and it's a little trickier. I plead guilty to sticking things out with my ex-fiancee, wanting to see how things could turn out, hoping they would turn out amazingly well. About 3 years ago, I had a young 30-something American gal try to play me; unknown to me, she was a few weeks pregnant when she seduced me, and then she tried to pass her pregnancy off as my child, and played little games with me, claimed she loved me, etc., while displaying other erratic behavior. Then it turned out the baby had spina bifida. Well, an ex-girlfriend helped me add up the weeks, and knew the timing of the tests, and told me there was no way I was the father, since the spina bifida test wouldn't be meaningful until week 12, and it was only week 6 if I was the father. By that point, I'd already told the other gal we wouldn't be a couple, but maybe we could be friends and do a good job parenting together. After I questioned her on the timing, I never heard from her again. It was easier for me to be certain about psycho behavior without language/culture differences confusing the issue.