What would you do?

lerenah · Sep 01, 2009, 10:25 PM

Well, I guess it all goes back to me living in South Korea almost a year ago. I met and fell in love with this woman. We were planning to travel and everything as soon as our English teaching contract expired. We both really hated living there and wanted a change. Well, she made considerably more than me, but we both had debt. Before I met her she was making little payments on her debt, but I convinced her to just lump sum it and pay hers all off because it wasn't that much. She never went to college, so she didn't have the huge debt that I have. I owe a lot of money towards my student loans, but because I needed money to save up so that we could go on this big trip, I deferred them. I started saving up at least $1500/month and ended up with around $7000 to go traveling with. However, towards the end of our contracts, I was starting to want to go traveling less and less because I was becoming more business-minded. I was trying to convince her to invest in an internet business with me rather than go traveling because if we invested, then we would be making money rather than spending it and also, we could go traveling whenever we wanted and wouldn't have to worry about stopping to make more money. Well, she disagreed with me because she admitted to being skeptical of making investments. Long story short, we ended up going traveling. While I thoroughly enjoyed!!!! going to so many places in Asia, my money was dwindling fast, I was using dollars. But her money was not going as fast as mine, she was using british pounds (she's from England, I"m from the USA) Also, she made more money teaching than I did because she has a specific teaching qualification from England that enables her to work overseas with children. Me, on the other hand, I only have a degree, but it's not in teaching. So, we go traveling, she has more money than I do, my money's going fast. We both come to the reality that we need to start looking for jobs again. This is all in the midst of us arguing because I'm giving the "I told you so" speech on how if we'd invested, we may not have needed to work. So, we start looking for jobs again and because she doesnt have a degree, her job selection is quite limited. She gets offered a job in China where they pay her a nice salary. However, if I go to China, I won't make as much money with my degree teaching English. So, we go back and forth about where we should live, keep in mind, we're also arguing and I'm not feeling like she's the woman for me because if she had listened to me and invested when we had the money, instead of went traveling, then we wouldn't be in this situation. So, we're arguing while traveling, it's intense, we're breaking up, but getting back together because it's cheaper to travel with two instead of one. We're experience stress because of each other, we want to split up, but have gotten so used to each other that we just can't. Meanwhile, we're still looking for jobs as well and don't know if we want to be apart from each other. So, she accepts the job offer from China, I decide to just go back to South Korea where I know I can save there like I did before and just start over again. In the midst of my decision to work in Korea, I get bad news from my mom that one of our close family members was murdered. It was horrible what happened. I was needing my mother to get a background check notarized for me at the time, but now because of this death, I don't feel so good about asking. I decided that I'll just let some time go by, but time was of the essence and I really needed her to get the background check for me so that I could get this job in Korea, which I really needed because my money was running low. All of a sudden my mother tells me that she's been so overwhelmed and busy and I start to come to the reality that she will not be able to help me out with this background check. So, I decide that I'll need to fly all the way home to the USA to get it done myself so taht I can secure a job for me. Luckily, my girlfriend decides to pay for it, she comes along, too and got a chance to meet my family and everything. Meanwhile, we go to the states, I get my background check sorted and sent to Korea and everything is all set. I'm going to work in Korea, my girlfriend will be in China and we've decided that we'll just stay together and do a long distance relationship. At this time, I'm holding on to my last $1000 before this job starts in South Korea. Meanwhile, she's trying to convince me to come to China before I go to South Korea because we need to get as many visits in before my job starts. She made me promise to catch a bus all the way from Detroit to Chicago so that I could pay $160 for a Chinese visa in order to come to China and spend my last $700 for a ticket. I decided to go ahead and do it. I figured it would be ok being that my job in Korea would fly me the rest of the way and handle my visa situation. Also, my mother was GETTING on my nerves, that's another story. Well, my girlfriend's gone to China to start her job, its the DAY before I set off to China to visit her...I get a call from South Korea and they say that Ive violated some immigration law, which they don't know of, but the bottom line is I MUST get my visa inside the US and I can't get it from Japan, which is where I normally get it. I tried to explain to them that I simply CAN"T get it from the US because I'm about to leave first thing in the morning!!!! I've already paid for my flight to China! But they were insisting that the only option for me was to cancel the flight and just get it from the US. I was so ready to leave for my trip to China, imagine living at your mother's house and experiencing all these past aggressions, but not being able to express them and getting excited about seeing your girlfriend in China, also feeling secure about going into a job because you're running low on money and how these all were taken away from me with one phone call. So, my life was literally left up to chance because I decided taht I wasn't going to stay in Detroit, I decided to take teh flight. I was also feeling like "why did I let her convince me to buy this ticket", but then I was trying to be optimistic in thinking, well, it's China, I'm sure I'll be able to find a job. Well, I get to China and I'm in a hurry to find a job because I've got to pay my student loans back, they're already past due and I owe money. I get to China and the stress and pressure are ON!!!!! I MUST find a job!!! So, I go out on interviews, I finally find a job, but it won't start until 1 more month from now. So, right now I'm feeling helpless...depending on my girlfriend for my own survival, at the same time making peanuts. I know that once I start getting paid, I'll have no money, still because I'm so in debt now. I'm just seeing the future to be grim for me and I'm also feeling a little weird towards my girlfriend because I keep thinking how, if she were money-minded or wanting to do business like I was back then, we would have probably been in a different situation. I almost resent that she talked me into spending my last few dollars on coming to visit her in China when it wasn't monetarily good for me. What's creating this resentment is that I think about her situation and she's OK! She ahs a job, a place to stay, she's got her own money coming through, her peace of mind is at ease, and while I know that she's helping me out, I still feel like my peace of mind is fragmented, all because earlier down the line I listened to her. I'm confused about being with her, although I won't say this to her. I love her, but I don't know if it's going to be in my best interest to be with her. She makes more than me and I know that I will have a hard future paying off my debts and trying to keep up with her. But while I'm feeling this, I'm stuck to her because I won't have any money....OH, and to top it all off. I had to wire money to South Korea for them to send me back my degree and documents so that I can get a work visa here, and the wire transfer fee that the bank charges took me in the red zone! I know owe the bank, too and I have no overdraft protection! So, I'll end up owing them a lot more!!!!! What is happening with my life????