< Disclaimer> < Return To Issue Article Index >

July 2005 Like a lot of men approaching middle age, I felt the need to change my life, to go somewhere new … and get laid! This was in 1999. I would be 40 the following year. I was getting nowhere in life, and I found women in my own country impossible. I decided to go off to Eastern Europe or Russia in search of romance and adventure. The problem was, I didn’t have the money to be able to afford to live there. I needed a job that would support me. So I decided to teach English as a foreign language, for which there was apparently a considerable demand, or so I was told. I took the Trinity TESOL qualification in April 2000, and in May I was offered a teaching job in Krasnodar, Russia, not far from the Black Sea. I fell in love with the place immediately. It helped that the girls there were (and are) very attractive. Also I was given a nice apartment in the centre of the city. I only had a one-minute walk to get to where I had to teach. And vodka cost less than US$2.00 a bottle! My salary of US$500 a month meant a lot of bottles of vodka. Krasnodar, by the way, apparently has a population approaching 1 million but it is known as The Big Village because of its laid-back atmosphere. At the weekend, part of the main street, called Ulitza Krasnaya, is closed off so stalls can be set up and for the locals to promenade. Today, as it was five years ago, it’s still a lovely, relaxed place to live, with lots of young, beautiful people there. Yes there’s poverty, as in the whole of Russia, but the city is improving all the time and getting better facilities and infrastructure and steadily becoming more affluent.

Paul and Russian wife

Let’s be frank. Many EFL teachers couldn’t get ANY girlfriend in their home country.

Life was interesting. There were various ups and downs with my girlfriend. I had lots of drink and lots of women. There was a couple of brief relationships while apart from my girlfriend.

It was bachelor heaven.

Just before Christmas 2000 someone entered my life who was to change it dramatically. My future wife! Seventeen years younger than me, six centimetres taller, and on a good day looking and dressing like a model. She was the new receptionist at the small language school where I taught. With her income of US$20 a month, and living in one room that she shared with another girl, I shouldn’t have been surprised that she eventually perceived certain attractive qualities in me!

Before I went home that Christmas, I bought my doctor girlfriend a ring – a sort of semi-eternity ring. Yet I knew I was going to marry my new young girlfriend. When I returned after Christmas, my wonderful, kind, generous, helpful doctor girlfriend picked me up at the airport … in an ambulance! I repaid her a few days later by moving my new girlfriend into my apartment.

Right from the beginning I knew my intended marriage wasn’t destined to last. Physically we didn’t appear too badly matched because I looked fairly young for my age. However, right from the start there were indications of a hardness, inconsiderateness and lack of desire to compromise on my future wife’s part. As for me, my habitual drinking and womanising were proving difficult to curtail. (EFL is notorious for having a hardcore of teachers who indulge too much in the demon drink.) Most importantly, however, my income as an EFL teacher, whilst being adequate for a temporary, possession-free bachelor life, wasn’t going to be enough to set up a tolerably comfortable marital home. Imported goods in Russia cost the same as in most other countries, so if you have to provide a home for yourself (rather than have it given to you by the state, which was the way until recently) and equip and furnish it, you really need a western level of income rather than a Russian income.

Despite the doubts we had, we still got married. Ultimately I decided to do it just because I knew it would be an adventure, even if a brief and painful one, and that for better or worse I could look back on it with interest when in my dotage.
.

My future wife moved in to my apartment in January; she became pregnant in February, and we were married in April. In truth my wife never wanted to be a mother. She tried unsuccessfully to abort the baby by taking several hormone contraceptive pills, but she was persuaded by her mother to keep the child. In May 2000 my wife and I moved to England, because that’s where we felt we could earn reasonable money. That, I think, was the biggest mistake of our marriage. I would say this to any western male EFL teacher planning to marry a young, attractive, poor, foreign girl – keep them in their own country. And live in rented accommodation. Probably the marriage still won’t last, but it should last longer than if you take them back to your own rich western country. This is because EFL teachers generally earn a below average income when working in their own country, and they often find it difficult if not impossible to get ‘proper’ (meaning well-paid) jobs.

In England, our baby boy was born in November 2001. When breast-feeding finished after six months, my wife sent him over to Russia. Foolishly or otherwise, I pretty much always went along with my wife’s wishes. As I say, she never really wanted to be a mother. Also it turned out she wanted nothing to do with my family.

At the end of 2002 both my wife and I were doing tedious but well-paid warehouse work, and we bought an apartment. She went and fetched our son back from Russia. But she also brought her mother back with her. In April 2003 the two women kicked me out of the marital apartment, and my wife informed me she had looked into the English divorce laws and she was ending the marriage so she could get the apartment for herself, and so I would have to pay lots of maintenance.

Actually I started divorce proceedings. I deliberately dragged them out, and used the time to engineer a reconciliation with my wife.

Getting back together was a mistake. The fundamentals of the relationship were wrong. She had never wanted to marry me and she had never wanted a child. She wouldn’t compromise, and I had too many ingrained bad habits.

We coughed and spluttered through 2004 together, and then this year, 2005, the frictions and conflicts and our mutually annoying behaviour and our inadequacies as spouses and parents brought matters to a head. We separated. And this time we really are getting divorced. My wife has moved a man nearer her own age into our apartment. She is also taking steps to move up the work and social ladder.

And do you know what? I feel that’s exactly the way it should be and was always meant to be.

They say you should only marry if it seems too good to be true. If you’re a middle-aged and not very well off EFL teacher and you’re marrying a girl good-looking and young enough to be your daughter, then it is too good to be true. You have to accept that you are probably just a stepping-stone; you’re not actually the far bank of the river that your wife is really aiming for.

Also the old rule of ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ applies as much now as it always did.

As for me, people tell me they never saw me as depressed as I looked when I was married. (Another teacher friend who has seen middle-aged guys marry young Polish girls tells me she has seen the same happen to them; they start wearing a sort of marital misery mask a few months after walking up the aisle.) I’m now beginning to lighten up again. Also, perhaps strangely, I plan to go back to Krasnodar. EFL teaching no longer interests me though. It’s too ‘small’ as a job, and it’s too low-paid. But I do think having Russian, or East European, girlfriends would be fun. I just don’t think I want another wife.

What I would like to do is some east-west business. One idea is to arrange trips for westerners to go and have operations and cosmetic surgery and dental treatment in East Europe or Russia or India. It seems a worthwhile service, and potentially profitable. But I’m open to suggestions. Does anyone out there fancy joining me in the next adventure? Get in touch if you do.

To contact Paul Click Here

If you would like to submit an article to Escape From America Magazine Click Here
.

< Send a Letter to the Editor > < Subscribe> < Submit An Article >< Disclaimer>