[Nevergrowup]

First: a warning. This is long and possibly tedious…

I have mostly been lurking here these past few years. My name is Raymond, I’m 38 and I live in Norway where I have an ‘86 944 NA as a daily driver. PPOT has been a source for more or less meaningful and useful information, and is always entertaining. However, a couple of recent threads have been about Facebook, the pros and cons, and… I have a story to tell…

I met my wife in ’96, and after more than a little courtship, we moved in together that Christmas. Two years later we get our first son, Maximillian, we marry in 2000, in 2002 Felix arrives, and finally in August 2007 our little princess, Luna Soleil sees the light of day. And everything’s dandy, right? We live in a fairly large, old house with stables and horses. One or two horses are ours, and others rent space at our stables. My wife has been working in periods, but when the baby arrived she stayed at home. I got us a laptop from my work, she’s pretty useless around computers at this time, but quickly got a grip on things. In the beginning she used the net for selling and buying horses, and finding info and browsing horse forums. But last winter she found another use…

She has been known to be of the jealous type, and when Facebook was all the rage I decided that I should keep a distance from it, since the spouse never has come to terms with me being the more “experienced” one, and being jealous of my exes, few as they may be. Well, suddenly she’s signed up for something which in Norwegian translates to Net-Town, where you make a profile, connect with friends, share pictures and chat and stuff. And, naturally, this leads her to Facebook. Now, I’m a little puzzled at this, since I don’t think she’d approve of me signing up all of a sudden, but she seems to have fun, and it occupies her spare time (with a baby and horses to train and feed, that shouldn’t be much, should it?)

After a while, she has made a lot of new friends, worldwide, and this one application, Social Me, is particularly effective. In Facebook you have a profile picture, and based on this picture (or another), you’re being “tagged” by other users. There are a bunch of adjectives, like “cute”, “pretty”, “happy” etc to choose from, or you can be creative and make your own. Then you can reply, and chat and eventually make friends on Facebook. Or, as I soon found out, chat with’em on msn messenger. All of a sudden, she’s talking to guys in Australia and New Zealand, and now I’m getting more than a little annoyed.

Perhaps to douse my suspicion, or simply to free her of guilt, she makes me an account and shows me how it’s done. I reluctantly agree, and - curious as I am – I find it amusing. I get some positive remarks about my looks in the picture, and after a little while I even make some foreign friends. There’s one British girl I talk cars with, and this strange woman from Texas who has a thing for zombies, horror movies and other strange stuff – Vanessa. She’s fun to talk with, and we’re having some fun talking, but of course, nothing serious.

By now, my wife has gotten a web cam. She admits to being a little jealous of my conversations with Vanessa, but I assure her that we have never talked about something I could not have shown my wife. And that’s the truth. My wife is now online a lot of the day, while taking care of the baby. And then, after seeing the last Indiana Jones movie at the theatre, I remark the… strangeness, and vacant behaviour of hers lately, and she spills her beans… She blurbs out that she’s fallen in love with Craig, a guy from New Zealand, who loves her, and wants to move to Norway to be with her. They have talked not only online with their cameras, but also by phone. And this has been going on for some time…

I’m devastated… My wife does not love me anymore. I’ve always been scared of big changes, and hate confrontations, and this feels terrible. But after a few days, a strange calmness sinks in. So, this is how it’s gonna be… Well, to say the truth, maybe I haven’t been really happy myself these past years? I’ve always lived to the principle of keeping the people around me happy. If the wife’s happy – I’m happy. So, trying to keep her happy all these years, I’ve often kept myself from doing and living the way I really want to. Buying our house, building stables and riding court, buying and selling horses, driving to and from trainings and competitions. This was her stuff, her ideas. I mean, it was fun playing cowboy in the local forest; hat, chaps and stuff, but come on – you’re an enabler, Ray! Always trying to please...

In hindsight, maybe I could have forbidden her to use Facebook, shout at her to stop flirting with guys on the net, but I’m not that kind of guy. And maybe I saw this as the excuse to get out? An ordinary day the last year went like this: I get up at 06:15, feed and let out the horses (wife’s a B-person, and since I’m already up…), wake up our sons and make them ready. The princess wakes up about now, and I change diapers and feed her too. Then I wake the wife, and take Felix to day care, go to work, leave work, pick up Felix, buy groceries, come home and make dinner… And often my wife complains because I’m grumpy and make snappy remarks. And this is mostly because the house is a mess when I come home, so I have to do some tidying up before making dinner. Bottom line – I felt unappreciated.

OK, this was time consuming, and I guess many of you want your wasted minutes back. But now it gets amusing…

We get our separation in June (in Norway you have to be separated for a year before the divorce is final). She buys our old, small house back for way too much money. It’s next to her parents, and Craig apparently is something of a handyman (in addition to being fond of horses and breeding them), so she plans to make the house bigger at a later point. As it now is too small for two adults and three kids – that’s why we sold it in the first place. And the plan is for Craig to come to Norway.

But there are clouds in the horizon.

It’s a long trip – if you get a globe, or use google earth, you can see that it’s literally the other side of the world – and the plane tickets are expensive. So he needs cash… Does anybody’s warning bells ring? My “wife” borrows money from her brother, and sends it to him. A ballpark figure of a thousand USD… Bells, anyone?

Allegedly he buys a ticket, but cannot come until October, for some unclear reason. And then he gets sick. Hospitalized, even. And then – disappears completely. Should be clanging of bells the size of a Hyundai right now, but, no… She waits… Until September, when he suddenly appears online again – and doesn’t reply to any of her attempts to contact him. Now, she finally realises what a scam he’s been up to…

Oh, well. The irony… And what about me in all of this? Well, in August I met someone. Online. Via Facebook, and the Social Me-application which has suddenly reappeared after being gone for some time. And we really, really hit it off. In so many, many ways. And I see what kind of relationship I’ve been missing these last years. Of course we’re still in the rosy start of our relationship, but seven months in, I frankly cannot be happier.

My ex-wife has expressed regret, and a wish to start over, but I’m done. It’s not my bitterness talking, either. It was in the cards for some time. Do I feel sorry for her? Well, a little. I think she was love struck, and really liked the attention. But you make your own bed, as they say. And in the way she was always searching for new things – new horses, other houses, and then – other men, clearly indicates that she was not completely happy either.

What about the kids? When we got separated, we decided that the boys should be legally mine, and the girl my ex-wife’s, but we have them every other week, all of them. And this has worked out great.

The only problem now is that I’ve sold our old house. It was too big, and I don’t have the need for stables, and frankly cannot afford the mortgage by myself. My new girlfriend lives 135 kilometres (about 84 miles) away, and she doesn’t want to live near my ex-wife. Well, it’ll work out. She’s fantastic with my kids, and they all love her, so we’ll find a solution.

So the moral is? Hmmm… maybe that Facebook for me was a blessing in disguise? Handle with care? Well, I’ve realised that my marriage was heading towards the abyss ether way – this was just the catalyst that made it happen now, in a strange, but I hope, an entertaining way. Now, where are my car keys?

PS. Vanessa is currently in Sweden, with her fiancé, who she met… you guessed it – on Social Me…