A response to a comment left on this blog

I do plan to write a "real" post soon - hopefully in the next day or two.

However, a  couple of hours ago, someone anonymously left a comment on my last post.  In case that person doesn't go back and read when I reply in the comments section, I decided to make this a post of its own.  Plus it's a little lengthy to be a comment.

So this is in response to Anonymous:

I appreciate your concern, but my eyes ARE wide open and my boyfriend is not a con artist.  I was previously married to an alcoholic with Tourette Syndrome, he was bi-polar, he developed some drug issues and tried to get me to do drugs, he routinely told me how I needed to eat a salad but he was going to have a McDonald's burger and a milkshake because I have a weight problem but he didn't, and he was secretly offering marital funds to his mom behind my back.  So I've been in a horrid 10 year relationship which had me crying more than I was laughing, and I didn't enter this one with my eyes closed or being accepting of someone who I didn't feel was treating me right. 

One of the problems with having a blog is that you can't tell everything sometimes and people make assumptions when they only know part of the story.  It's understandable.  I don't really owe anyone an explanation, but here's as much of one as I feel like I want to offer on here:

My boyfriend isn't UNABLE to find time to visit me or his kids - he can't get here because of visa issues.  And he's having the issues in the first place because he was completely honest with our government about some stuff and because he's NOT a liar or a con artist.  They kind of gave him a way to lie his way back here (and they knew he'd be telling a lie) but his work down there is fighting corruption and he felt like he wouldn't be much better than the corrupt people if he lied.

We get cut off because the internet SUCKS in the middle of the Amazon jungle.  I've been there to visit him so I saw it first hand.  We were staying in the nicest hotel in the city and I had to reconnect over and over and over again just to get a one paragraph email to my mom telling her I had arrived safely.  It took me about 4 hours to get one paragraph sent to her.  I went with him to an internet cafe while I was there and he could not stay connected to do what he needed to do.  We visited several offices (banks, government offices, etc.) while I was there.  Guess what?  They had problems too.  The internet sucks there.  I didn't understand it when he told me just how bad it was until I saw it for myself, so I don't expect you to understand it either. Also, when you write a blog you sometimes focus on those crazy moments when the internet cuts off right at an important moment in a conversation and you don't write about all of the times you finish a conversation because those times aren't as interesting to read about. 

When he was here in the U.S., he regularly drove 6 hours round trip from other cities he was working in just so he could take me out to dinner and see me on a Saturday night.  He invited me to drive to the cities he was working in if I wanted to (and I did a couple of times) because he had nothing to hide.  He would come to my house if I was out of town to take care of my cat (he doesn't really even like cats - he's a dog person) and he would go to the store and cook me a week's worth of meals so I would have something healthy and good to eat when I got back.  He would arrive at my apartment, see something needed fixed and just fix it without me asking.  He paid for some healthcare I needed when I couldn't afford it (it was over $1,300).  He gets angry with me when he hears me putting myself down for my weight, not feeling like I was good at something, etc.  He left me about 10 times as much money as he needed to when he left for Brazil to handle something for him.  His goal in life is to open a children's hospital or a place to teach children life skills so they can better themselves.  Does that sound like a con artist?  He prays with me.  He sings in his horrible singing voice just to make me laugh.  He goes to the store and loads up on vitamins and natural remedies and makes me organic healing "teas" when I'm sick.  He pretty much forbid me from doing some things when I was in the Amazon with him that I thought sounded super interesting because he knew they could put me in harm's way.  He cried when I went there because he said he realized no one else there spoke English and I was putting my life in his hands because I would not have known how to even get out of the airport in a taxi without him there and he realized how much faith and trust I have in him.  These are just a very few ways he shows me how much he cares.  He has never asked me for anything in return in the 7 years we've been in a relationship.  He has repeatedly checked in with me to make sure I'm okay with our relationship and the fact that he isn't around.

What you don't know about me is that I don't want a guy who is sitting across the table from me 3 meals per day, calling me 10 times while I'm at work to check in with me, sitting with me on the sofa every evening, and in bed with me each night.  I have never been in a relationship like that and it would make me completely insane if I was.  Just because most women want a lot of together time doesn't mean there aren't some of us who don't. 

You also may not know that my ex-husband and I were in a long distance (international) relationship for quite some time.  And back then the internet wasn't common (I didn't even have a home computer and mobile phones were something only rich people had installed in their cars) and we had to write letters to each other which sometimes took 2 months to be delivered because neither of us could even begin to afford international phone calls.  I was also in a long distance relationship with a guy here in the U.S. (me in Atlanta, him in D.C.).  This is not my first time around this block.

He did not "leave" his kids with me.  They are legal adults and moved here against his wishes.  He checked with me about 10 times to make sure I was okay with them staying with me before they came.  He begged me to be honest with him about whether I was okay with it.  He fought with them a lot about it because he wanted them to wait until he can get back here (he's told me this and so have the kids) but they would not wait.  He wants them to move back home but they want to live here.  Again, they are legal adults so he can't force them.  He has apologized to me profusely that they have been in my house for so long and has been in tears telling me he knows how it has disrupted my life and how awful he feels about all of it.

He is a real man.  And our relationship probably wouldn't work for 90% of people, but it works for us and that's all I need to worry about.  It seems it probably would not work for you and that's okay because you're not in the relationship.  You don't know me and you certainly don't know every detail of my life and our relationship.

I'm not an idiot whether you'd like to believe that or not.  But again, thanks for your concern.