Job Discussion Forums

[Sadken]

Right, so I am just getting mightily pissed off waiting for my Japanese job to give me a date and, tonight, finally ended my relationship with my girlfriend since it wasn't fair for me to expect her to wait whilst I galavanted. The thing is that I really love this girl, it's just that it quite clearly wasn't going to work in the long term since we had a very intense, firey, Bandini-Camilla type relationship and I couldn't afford to put my dreams on hold whilst waiting for things to run their course as far as our relationship was concerned. I expect many of you have been in the same situation. At the moment I am consumed by imagining myself spending the rest of my life rueing the missed opportunity with the love of my life, however, when we were together I was consumed by thoughts of seeing the world independently. I couldn't be with her and be thinking of leaving so I had to leave. I realise I am a committmentphobe man type thing and don't expect any sympathy; I just wondered about any of your regrets....

[amandajoy99]

ha. commitmentphobes are not only men. i have a serious phobia of any commitment, which applies not only to relationships but also to permanent jobs, long-term homes, and careers. i left a boy i l#$@d in greece because i was living in france and had to go to brazil and he was living in greece and going back to italy and, well, what can you do? at least we both had the same dilemma. so either you pursue your dreams of travel and spend an irritatingly large amount of time trying not to think about the person you left in X country, or you stay with X person yearning desperately for travel. whichever one you choose, you're bound to romanticize the option you didn't take. sucks, huh? but i think timing is a huge part of relationships, and i am clinging to some romantic idea that when it is right it will be right, and if that is the case it will work out in the end. silly romantic!

[Sadken]

Actually, some sympathy would be nice as it goes.....

[Guest]

Sadken

I will give you some sympathy. Oprah Winfrey once said "the only courage you will ever need is the courage to follow your own dreams". I firmly believe she is correct.

If you stayed, and your heart was telling you to try new horizons etc. you would not be happy, and in turn your girlfirend would not be happy.

I think you have done the right thing. Place your fate in the lap of the gods and you will see that all will turn out in the end.

I also firmly believe that there is not just one person for each of us, but many. As you get older you will see that many ladies will cross your path and there will be more than one whom you will think of as your "soul mate" during your lifetime.

[denise]

[distiller]

I was able to work the woman and the travel together and now we are an ESL couple. Really saves on rent! I understand the dilemma though as I did leave someone to go abroad once myself. The thing she said to me was that she couldn't live with herself if she knew that she was holding me back. She encouraged me to go and the experience changed me in so many good ways. We met up two years later and now she's my wife. We didn't wait for each other it just turned out that we had both left relationships when we met up again. We then decided to travel the globe together this time as we never we able to regain that same love with anyone else. We are stronger for our ordeal and it still would have been the right move even if we never did meet again.

[Roger]

Sympathy? I am sorry but I feel this kind of "problems" actually gives the white man/woman a bad reputation around the world!
At least here in China many natives feel whites cannot be trusted to commit themselves... to be opportunists!

I know what nomadism means; I don't turn it into a virtue! It is a condemnation, a scourge, a default. Strangely enough, I am willing to stay put in this adopted country of mine that doesn't want foreign invaders for long term spells.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Sadken,

I sympathize with you. Roughly the same thing happened to me while living in Ukraine. Decisions of that kind can be very difficiult.
Who knows? Perhaps it'll work out and you'll eventually be together?

[Celeste]

When I was in my second to last year of university, I was dating a guy who had the wanderlust. He told me that he'd applied to a job overseas. He told me that if he got the job he would be gone. He wanted to make sure that I didn't get too attached or try to hold him back. I agreed. He got the job. I was really upset, but I didn't beg him to stay. (I got drunk with my girlfrinds and cried my eyes out, but I never asked him to stay for me.) 2 months later, it was time for him to go. He gave up his apartment and stayed with me for the week before his departure. I was thinking of maybe going to see him at CHristmas break or something, but had no firm plans. THe day came when he was supposed to leave. We said goodbye early in the morning and I went to work. In the middle of my workday, I got a phone call. It was him. His work visa had fallen through at the last minute (the employer had told him to pick it up from the consulate on his way to the airport) and he didn't want to arrive in foreign country to work with only a 14 day tourist visa. He told me that he would meet me at "home". THe employer turned out to be more than a little shady, and he didn't end up going at all. 6 months later we were married. 6 months after that I graduated from university and we both went overseas together for our first foreign teaching positions. Fast forward, it is now a week past our 8th anniversary and we are still teaching abroad. We plan to return to our home country for a while to have kids and start a business and buy a house, but we plan to always keep our options open and travel to new places throughout our lives.

When you meet the right person at the wrong time, it can be heartbreaking, but sometimes the gods intervene and throw you together anyways. You can have true love and follow your dreams. It really does happen.

[Gordon]

That's wonderful Celeste.

I think you will find someone who shares the same passions and goals that you have. You often meet them in the most unexpected places too. My wife (then girlfriend) and I went to Korea to teach together 9 years ago. We have the same goals in life and even though she is no longer teaching English (other than to our daughter at home) we are travelling around the world. She would go to any country with me to live. I couldn't have found a more supportive mate in the world. Any chance we get, we take off somewhere and travel. We've been to over 30 different countries in the past 10 years and hopefully we'll see many more.

[biffinbridge]

Putting my credit card behind the bar in a Polish knocking shop while chugging JD and carousing with lapdancers has to be up there with the most stupid things I've ever done.

[joshua2004]

I threw caution to the wind and just hoped I would meet someone I could travel with and teach with! I have had more than a few thoughts about whether I was doing the right thing.

I met someone and we have opened a school together and we plan to travel the world together. I am so happy. My biggest plan before was to meet my soulmate. Now I have much bigger things to think about.

[Postmodern]

Hi all,

This is a very interesting thread.
I've always been bitten by the travel bug. I traveled and taught in Korea for more than a year. But some of you guys are right: when you travel, you romanticise about home and vice versa.

A few years ago I met a girl in my home town, Montreal. It was a good thing, but I wanted to travel again. She didn't want to join me, so I went alone. I was in Germany teaching for about 6 months. She waited for me. When I got back we got married.

Everything is fine, but now after 2 years I want to travel and teach again, but she doesn't. My best solution is to go for short periods of time. I guess I'll be killing 2 birds with one stone, but I don't know if my decision was cowardly: did I choose both worlds and avoided suffering, or did I forgo both worlds by having only a bit of this and a bit of that and in fact chose suffering?

I think married, middle class, life is the next thing to death even if you are with the person of your dreams. In my life, nothing seems to be enough. I am searching for something, which I've never been able to understand, that I know I will never find. Wherever I go in this world I never feel that I am getting closer to what i'm looking for. It is a sense of longing that I can't seem to overcome.

And in the words of U2 This is how I feel: Though this song is a bit overly religious for my world.

I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for
But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for
But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I�m still running

You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it

But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for
But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for
But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for
But I still haven�t found what I�m looking for...

If I were a religious man, I'd say that I am truly forsaken by God. But I am not religious so I will say that we're all simply forsaken. Riders in the Storm.

[Guest]

I am not at all religious, and I felt all my life as though I was looking for "something".

I had no idea what it was, that is until I arrived here in China 15 months ago and I suddenly realised that I had found what I had been searching for all my life.

It is a sense of being where you belong, and doing what you should be doing. It was well and truly worth waiting for and I hope that everyone achieves it in their lifetime.

Because I am not religious, I have a problem explaining to myself and everyone else why I have felt for the past 18 months as if someone or something was "pulling my strings". I have felt for almost two years that I have no control over my own destiny and I am just content to go with the flow.

Coming to China has been a life-altering experience for me and I would encourage everyone, no matter what age, to follow their dream and do not let anyone or anything deter you.

[carnac]

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H. L. Mencken