From the information provided, this relationship sounds over. If she is asking for a divorce, she is telling you she wants out. Do you really want to stay or attempt to force her to remain when she states she wants out? Your kids are in a bad situation, but like others have said, as bad as being divorced is, how much worse would it be to be living in a dysfunctional state of resentment? It won't end well.
As far as mixed signals go. My mom when I was growing up had an impressive ability. I could make her angry, even make her cry from being disrespectful to her, and the phone would ring and she could answer it like sun peeking behind the clouds. I have women friends and exes that had a similar ability.
This marriage, from your past posts, has been over for a while now. You are in a sad position. This you have known based on her stance regarding masking. She has different priorities than you do. And you have to know to the world around us, we look like the crazy ones for not compromising our principles for the "silly inconvenience" of wearing a mask. She works for one of the corporations responsible for making experimental injections and had no problems with still working there in light of all the continued issues with them.
All that is true. 9 years ago I attended a friend’s wake and funeral. He died suddenly while playing in the park with his 4 year old daughter that he and his wife had tried for years to conceive. He was the youngest of our group, 42. Through out both occasions, his little girl kept asking where her daddy was. At the funeral, she….I am crying as I type this, she ran all around the room, looking behind the flowers, the curtains, under her father’s casket, calling out “Daddy Doko”, “Where are you daddy?’ In a playful manner as if playing hide and seek.
The daughter of another friend, all of us mixed marriages, said that the little girl’s “friends” will make fun of her because her gaijin (foreigner) daddy left her. I do not want this to happen to my kids. Death is not preventable, it takes us all. But actual leaving, the shame and guilt kids feel over their parents splitting and worse, being the obvious product of a mixed race union that failed in a racially homogeneous society…
I imagine your kids are already being ridiculed to some degree for something. Coming from the time before zero tolerance, I was made fun of for a variety of reasons. Too fat, spastic, artistic, sensitive, just plain weird. There is only so much you can do to prevent or mitigate it. The worst advice I got from my parents is "just ignore it and it will go away."
That was a beautiful and heroic thing the mother did for her daughter. It must have been very difficult for her. Reminds me of in the movie "Life is Beautiful" where the dad made Auschwitz a game for his kid out of his love and protection for him.
The real shame is the Japanese don't realize how racist that is the mixed-race thing. That should be the shame. MLK was far from perfect but the true measurement of someone is the content of their character and not the color of their skin. It's ridiculous to judge children on that. Almost like judging them for being too short, tall, blue or green-eyed.
I think you did all you could, and then some. Do they have therapy in Japan? And can you find a truly reliable therapist? My first question going into couples counseling would be to ask the therapist. "Are you vaccinated?" If they said yes, or wore a mask, that would be a deal breaker. How can I expect someone to help my marriage who can't even do critical thinking?
I imagine your wife has been thinking about leaving you for years now and probably put it off to the end of the holidays to give you one last gift. What options do you have in getting divorced? Will this mean deportation? Will it mean moving somewhere close by? Can any friends in Japan help you out?
First, let me fix an error in my story telling. My deceased friend’s wife was not playing hide and seek with her daughter at the funeral. The little girl jumped up and ran towards the casket playfully calling out, “Where are you daddy?” And then on past to the flowers and curtains and back to the casket reducing all their to sobbing, bawling wrecks, myself included. Her mother, the widow, collapsed from her chair.
Yes, the one child has been tormented over their eyes. One younger child at school ran away screaming in terror because their eyes are different. They are also teased over their rosy cheeks. I live in fear that some idiot teacher here will dye their kids hair black as sometimes happens.
There may be couples counseling but the time taken away from other things to attend would worsen the problem and I doubt my wife would go. The little I have read from advice columns indicate that they always find fault with the foreign or foreign maladaptive to Japanese culture.
Japan and Japanese are not racist. Just ask them and they will tell you that they are not. Calling a naturalized member of the national legislature the “Gaijin diet member” is not racist. “Gaijin only” signs, not racist. Companies openly advertising for help who are gaijin, blonde, blue eyed, female with the “3 size” of 36/24/36 is neither sexist nor racist. Just ask them. However, any and all misrepresentation of Japanese culture or people no matter how slight is racism in the extreme and that, of course, only happens out side of Japan. In their world view, Japan is the only nonracist country and Japanese are the only nonracist people. All problems are the gaijin’s fault. But this too is a generalization. Individually, many Japanese know this is not true, but the majority will never say so in the presence of one of their countrymen.
In all likelihood, any such counselor would be masked, even now, and almost certainly vaxxed. I think Japan is now the heaviest vaxxed county. If not the most, close to it.
I have a permanent resident visa and thus a divorce will not affect my legal ability to remain. If I had a spouse visa, then yes, I would have to depart. Theoretically, I would find a new place to live and just move out. However, I no longer earn enough to live on my own. This may change by the time I have to vacate, but that still leaves concerns over the possible existence of other programs I am unknowingly delinquent in paying for such as welfare and workman’s comp. A generous benefactor has offered tremendous aid in this area, so it may be workable. Another reader has plugged me into a tour company that could prove rewarding.
Would I choose to live near by? Don’t know. On the one hand, I would like to, to be at least physically close to my kids. On the other hand, I do not want to be expected to aid around the house if I am no longer living in it. Additionally, do I want to have to deal with the reactions to the split by the neighbors, my kids’ friends and their parents, the matsuri group, the kids’ teachers?
unfortunate but not unexpected. Check my previous comments on your threads from 2023/since. This was/is the inevitable outcome....fighting to stay in a dysfunctional relationship with an individual who clearly has a different view of the world is futile....but to be fair the effort was admirable! At minimum you can't say you didn't try...
I found this to be very helpful to me in clarifying things when I was in a dysfunctional situation. And it doesn't have to mean that you think the other person is dysfunctional - just the dynamic between two people can be too far off to make things work, it doesn't mean one or the other is wrong....https://dennisprager.com/questions-to-ask-before-marriage
I agree with Zoe. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family similar to yours, I just wished for my parents to get divorced. The fighting was bad enough, but the constant tension was horrible . What is it in Japanese women? No American man I ever knew who married one was happy. I don’t think they have the same concept of marriage that we have.
That last sentence is so true. I have long done lessons on three words that do not translate into Japanese despite English-Japanese dictionaries having entries for. “Friend/friendship”, “marriage” and “family”.
Things are different with younger generations, but until rather recently, Japanese men got married to have a wife to support them for work while men in the US wanted good jobs to support their families. For Japanese women aged 50 and older, the perfect husband is “healthy, wealthy and away”. The housewives I used to teach HATED it when their husbands were at home for when he was, they must prepare proper meals. Otherwise, they and the kids just eat snacks. Hmmm, what does that say about the vaunted healthier than thou’s Japanese diet?
A common depiction of the absent father sent off to Tokyo or the provinces as a geographical bachelor for years on end is his work shirt left hanging in the family room to remind the kids of the sacrifices he is making for them. The “traditional” Japanese family is dysfunctional by American terms.
What seems to happen in the case of many Japanese women and Western men marriages, though not all, is that the woman is too independent for Japanese males, thus they seek or at least accept courtship form western men. They enjoy the attention that we give them as their native counterparts do not treat them as we do. We western men think that OUR Japanese girls is different, she is not like normal Japanese women. That may not be untrue, but, they want to be normal Japanese women. Normal Japanese women are married. When I first was in Japan, an unmarried 26 year old woman was referred to as a “Christmas Cake”. No one wants a Christmas cake on December 26th.
The problem is that they are trained to be “Good Japanese” wives and they can switch to this mode as soon as they utter and hear their groom say “I do.”. Mine did. Still, while the first change was sudden and profound, it was the gradual change over years that finally transformed her into a person I never would have been interested in if she was like this when we first met. These last 5 years especially have wrought their changes upon her. She hated having to work from home in 2020. Now, the mere mention that perhaps she should rejoin society and leave the house for work like normal people do elicits anger. This has been a major point of contention. I have to make mad dashes in to the den for teaching materials when she takes a restroom break or is cooking and do not have the time needed to put things away properly. So there is a five year’s worth of piling on of used materials, tests, and homework that her presence in the den prevent me from taking care of. She demands I accomplish what she prevents me from doing.
I hear you on the constant tension. Japanese kids are never home after they start elementary school, so mine miss most of this. Additionally, in the two years before the panic, I left before anyone else got up and returned after they were asleep on two nights of the week. I picked the kids up the other 3 because mom was working late. It is rare that both parents are with the kids at the same time except on vacation. The whole family dinning together in the evening is rare. This is the norm in Japan. Again, not universal, but normal. In our case, the 11 year old has been creating the most tension.
But what happens when I leave? In the past two days, I have been called on to undertake three emergency errands. Who will do these when I am gone. If my wife does, then who will make dinner while she is running it? In todays’s case, she would have had to cancel a zoom meeting. She will be overwhelmed and as she is not unknown to lash out physically when frustrated and neither is the 11 yeast old who is now almost as big as their mother, they share some clothing, I fear for their safety. I almost expect a call from my former in-laws informing me that one serious injured or killed the other within the next 2-3 years if I am not here. May happen even if I am here.
Unfortunately I know what you were saying about the potential for physical abuse is true. I lived in Japan for one year and the XO of an American ship asked One of his young sailors what happened to his head. He said his Japanese wife got mad at him and hit him in the head with a frying pan.Apparently this was not unusual.
Violence is common here. I have never seen adults engaged in a fight in the US. I know it happens, but have never witnessed it. I cannot count how many times I have seen drunken businessmen in 3 piece suits brawling in Tokyo, or youths gangs attacking cops. Sadly, saw two fights last year at festivals we were participating in. My wife hit me with a thick and heavy book once. I turned to her and in my engine room voice told her that if she ever did that again of if she ever did too any kids we may have that I would divorce g her ass so fast her head would spin. And she never has again. But what will she do when I am gone. What will she do now that divorce is not something that she is worried about. Hmmmm.
I am sorry to read about your tribulations. Being a veteran of several long-term relationships, I can only tell you that sometimes something really good will come out of what seems terrible at the time.
If she kicks you out, I assume she could not expect you to be available early & late for the kids? That could be a real wake up call for her. Would that also free you up to take jobs you couldn’t, because of those childcare obligations?
She was seemingly of the mind that I would be available for such tasks, at least picking them up. She was shocked when I said I would be returning to the US. I long ago gave up what I came to Japan to do for our marriage. Losing my family leaves me no reason to stay and it is better too be homeless in the US than Japan for me. She plans on hiring a home helper. I asked how that makes economic sense and she blew up saying that there would be no more arguments.
She will be shocked even more when she realizes how much her at home work load will increase when I am no longer here. She works up in the den fro 8:30 am to often well past 10 pm. She cooks but I do the dishes as she goes back up to work. I clean the cats’ litter boxes and take out the trash. She runs the laundry machine, I hang up the laundry to dry. At least some of this she can probably hire someone to do. But the numerous, sudden needs to leave the house and get something will be another eye opener. Yesterday it was brush writing ink. It is a custom here to write some phrase in calligraphy and the kids had this for homework due today. They were going to do it Sunday night but after setting it all up, they realized that the ink had dried in the bottle. She was angry, kids crying that they didn’t know it was empty. Emergency run yesterday to get ink. The day before because we were out of milk. Shortly before that was the jump rope homework when I took the 11 year old to the park for an hour as my wife made dinner. Always something like this. How will she deal with these when alone?
But that is, I believe, the foundation of all our problems. She believes that there can be only one possible outcome for her decisions and will not accept anything other than what she expects to be the result. Worse, her expectations are not within the realm of possibility. I need to earn much more while working far less is the big one most relevant here. She believes that I am the cause of all her frustration and that be removing me from the house, peace and tranquility will reign. She is just not capable of seeing the fact that she is stressed from overwork with work and that her continued presence in the room where I also once worked from and have most of my teaching materials etc, is preventing me from cleaning it and the hours she keeps prevents her from doing so too is, besides the money issues, the biggest problem. What will she do when her stressors increase because there is no other adult in the house? She has never shown the ability to entertain the idea of accepting responsibility for the natural outcomes of her decisions. Will she take it out on the kids?
She said that I no longer need to refrain from work for the family. I am going to offer evenings to the employer that I work for two nights weekly. I hope that they can accommodate me and soon. But I expect that the reality of her decision will hit her like a ton of bricks if/when she suddenly has to pick the kids up all three nights of cram school instead of just one and take them to and from swim classes the other two nights, just as it did when I landed 3 new jobs in one semester. Though, she did say she would pay someone to do these.
It’s really a shame; she’s obviously not firing on all cylinders in terms of thinking this through. That said, unless she has an epiphany, the marriage does seem irretrievably broken, as in her mind you seem to be the bane of her existence & you can’t be expected to keep putting up with this dismissive attitude & lack of respect.
I suppose she can’t rely on her mother / parents to help out? I know you said she either spends a lot of time at her mother’s or her mother is over at your home.
Paying someone to take care of chores around the house & with the kids will just be several more expenses for which she’ll be responsible. As you say, I suspect she’ll realize too late your financial & other significant contributions to the family!
I suspect that she will be over relying on her mother and that there will be friction. We are in our 50s, so her parents are in their 70s but they are quite active. Her mother is in a chorus and other groups. Her dad is semiretired and works part time for the city as a grounds keeper. He golfs and practices Taichi. They are quite busy and there has been conflict in the past when my wife assumed that her mother would be available to help out but was busy.
My wife is no dummy, she graduated near the top of a male dominated industrial chemistry course, one of only 4 women in the entire college. However, when it comes to, how should I put it….personal life, I guess, she might be said to be “on the spectrum”. She deals mutually exclusive demands like a card shark without realizing their nature. When first married, she would lie atop of me in the morning and demand I get out of bed. She is small, but it takes me a while and everlasting cups of coffee until I resemble anything like a functioning life form and raise from the bed when on my back with another person lying atop me and scarce aware that I am not asleep was not going to happen. But, that was her thing for a while. I long ago thought this behavior ended but I realize now that it just was expressed in other ways such as telling me I have to leave her house buy still expecting that I will be able to help her in some degree and her mother and paid help pick up the slack without a thought to her mother’s availability nor the costs of help and the limitations of both.
But she also makes the same kind of demands to our kids. Gives them more homework to do that would take more hours to complete than there are hours in the day in addition to school, cram school, swim practice, Shorinji (which they have stopped) and trips whenever our schedule allows and demanding that they cannot watch TV, play with their Christmas toys, or anything else a child would want to do until their homework is finished. We have argued about this many times after the kids have gone to bed.
It also seems that she has a complete lack of empathy. She thinks that our kids will accept my departure without issue once she explains it to them, completely oblivious to the fact that she had one of the kids in tears just last night as she tried to explain a math problem to them.
People often relax once they've come to an important decision they've been grappling with for a long time, plus she knows that you'll still be living together for another year, so hopefully her plan is to be more civil in the meantime. It takes two people tomake a relationship work, so divorce is inevitable in a situation like yours.
I thought about this too. I would hope (HA!!) that given that her change alone is responsible for the increased civility that she would realize that it was her attitude all along behind the arguing.
I agree with Claudia. Your wife may act with more civility simply because she has made a firm decision and will make the best of the months left for you to take care of the children before the divorce/your leaving the house. That is in both in her best interests and that of the children. If I were you, I'd do my best to (1) line up more jobs so that you might be able to go it alone in Japan if you choose to stay there; let her deal with the child care; (2) be polite to the soon-to-be ex, as it is my impression from some reading that Japanese judges will always decide in favor of the Japanese spouse, with foreign spouses not even being "rewarded" with visitation if the Japanese spouse doesn't wish it; and (3) have meaningful time with the children so that they have as many good memories of being with you as possible.
I'm very sorry for your really terrible troubles. I understand the pain and confusion which is difficult at any time but to have to navigate a tense home life in these uncertain and crazy times makes my heart hurt for you. Have you ever heard that "children would rather be FROM a broken home than live in one?" My siblings and I used to beg my mom to divorce my father. It was a worse than rotten atmosphere in which to try to 'grow up.' Please remember that they are learning how to have a loving/intimate/caring relationship from how you are both modelling it for them. Things are always darkest before the dawn. You got this Kitsune. Relax into it and allow the inspiration guide you into your next decisions. You are both doing the best you can. Remember how you felt about her when you first got together. Relationships are very difficult. Having children makes it 10 times more challenging. Have confidence in yourself. You've made it this far for a reason. My hope is something here helps you. I'm on your side.
Thanks. The sounding board feature of this group is comforting. I will not be talking of any of this to my parents until finalized. No need to burden them with the need to keep it secret from their grand kids, especially when they can’t do anything about the situation. Same with our friends here in Japan. I won’t talk about it with coworkers either. This is my only outlet.
I fear that I am bleeding a bit too much on my readers, though.
You are very welcome to bleed on us! We choose to read or not read, we choose to reply or not reply!
I am an expatriate not living in my native country. I am a "single" mum to mixed-race teenagers, but my situation is very complicated!! I see many mixed relationships. We do not necessarily know what we are getting into when we are young. The cultural aspects may not become apparent until much later, and then they press down like a ton of bricks. There can be great dissatisfaction on both sides. Of course we did gain as well or we wouldn't have embarked in the first place. Things change over time.
How did your kids deal with the split? What, if anything, can I leave to help them out in my absence?
The cultural differences were mostly known to us. Despite not being young, both in our 30s, we still thought we could just ignore these, at least in the main. After all, who knows what goes on in our own home and in our relationship. And, for the most part, we have successfully ignored these. Not unheard of now, but not many husbands do anything in the kitchen. Many of my college students still tell me that no one besides mom, no one is allowed in their kitchen. Apart for the pre New Years cleaning, husbands rarely do anything household chores. Unlike what is usual though about this, it is not always or only the husband’s fault. We decided that when my wife cooked I would do the dishes. Actually, it was my suggestion. She loved it but we still caught over it. She would stand next to me and critique every single movement. She and her mother wash in what is to me, a very strange manner. They wash one dish and then put it back with the unwashed dishes and then rinse when all have been washed. How can the be sure that they kept track if the washed and unwashed. I say nothing as I allow for differences in how a task is done, as long as it is done in a reasonably amount of time.
Not so with many wives. Wife tried to get me to wash dishes as she does. Eventually I told her that unless she wanted to do the dishes, she needs to leave me alone to wash them as I do and reminded her that I did not demand she change how she washed dishes. Whomever is washing the dishes washes them as they see fit. We had many such discussion in the first months of our marriage. I vacuumed wrong, I folded laundry wrong. I was in the navy, folding clothes to fit as much as possible in our sea bags and yet be able to pull out our dress blues ready to wear without summer creases is a skill we spend a significant part of boot campy to learn. If I took her approach to household chores she would have divorced me for running her a mini boot campy. I didn’t hang laundry to dry properly, everything I did, did not fit her one and only way to do it. I would later learn that this is common in the States too between those of the same social-economic group. I have seen lots of postings by new husbands informing the world that before marriage that they did not know there was one and only one way to eat a potato chip, tie a trash bag, fill in any task big or large. So these are not just between cultures. What is in my case, is that I am even doing them at all. Well, for now anyway.
Dad lives in 1 country and I live in another. He visits and sees the children quite regularly. We get to see eachother on vacation times and do go places / do things, which includes their spending time with half-siblings. We both agree to put up a united front with regards to them and in front of them (neither of us was ever the arguing type), and I think we mostly manage this (the children may say different). Children see far more detail and emotions than we adults would hope / suspect (my mum always said "little monkeys have big ears" - sounds better in Dutch, which she is but I cannot speak.
My biggest advice is to build your relationship with your children. Really talk to them and listen to them. Build a relationship that will last even if you are not in the same house or even the same country. Talk to them about your life and experiences (and that of your parents and other relatives) and ask them their thoughts to help them really feel a part of your family and your history, and to feel some allegiance to or at least interest in your country.
Work hard to enhance their interest in the US (I hope things there will become far better if things go smoothly with DJT and his new team and increased US patriotism) because you then stand a better chance of getting them for higher education. Adulthood is really when good relationships will pay off.
I am assuming (because you said so) that you will go back to the US. Build memories with them, though surely that can be hard the way that Asian kids are forced to study and have all of their time filled. I have continual "arguments' with Dad who wants me to get tutors / arrange extra classes, which I have refused all along because I want my kids to be independent learners, not spoon-fed by tutors and then can't cope once they are let go and self-responsible. The children are in Grade 10 and Grade 7 in international school and doing rather well, all based on their own efforts. They are in varsity sport (their choice), and the oldest request piano and guitar lessons.
My children's Dad thinks money makes up for not spending time with them and hardly talking to them between visits*, and then it is shopping spree time when he visits. He has far more spending power than I do and we might go for meals that cost more than my 2 weeks grocery bill (which really hurts, particularly considering how far behind he is on the agreed support for education, etc), and he keeps buying and bringing things we don't need = more clutter! But then he lectures them instead of listening to them.
*if you are apart set up communication lines and times and deliver on it, and insist that they reciprocate.
Be consistent for the kids (and even your wife). Commit to what you can and then deliver on it. Don't commit to what you can't. My kids roll their eyes (no doubt copying my internal very large eye roll) when Dad promises something.. because they know it may or may not ever eventuate..
Hope this helps a little. We all do what we can in this life and we can only ever deal with today and keep moving forward.
From the information provided, this relationship sounds over. If she is asking for a divorce, she is telling you she wants out. Do you really want to stay or attempt to force her to remain when she states she wants out? Your kids are in a bad situation, but like others have said, as bad as being divorced is, how much worse would it be to be living in a dysfunctional state of resentment? It won't end well.
As far as mixed signals go. My mom when I was growing up had an impressive ability. I could make her angry, even make her cry from being disrespectful to her, and the phone would ring and she could answer it like sun peeking behind the clouds. I have women friends and exes that had a similar ability.
This marriage, from your past posts, has been over for a while now. You are in a sad position. This you have known based on her stance regarding masking. She has different priorities than you do. And you have to know to the world around us, we look like the crazy ones for not compromising our principles for the "silly inconvenience" of wearing a mask. She works for one of the corporations responsible for making experimental injections and had no problems with still working there in light of all the continued issues with them.
All that is true. 9 years ago I attended a friend’s wake and funeral. He died suddenly while playing in the park with his 4 year old daughter that he and his wife had tried for years to conceive. He was the youngest of our group, 42. Through out both occasions, his little girl kept asking where her daddy was. At the funeral, she….I am crying as I type this, she ran all around the room, looking behind the flowers, the curtains, under her father’s casket, calling out “Daddy Doko”, “Where are you daddy?’ In a playful manner as if playing hide and seek.
The daughter of another friend, all of us mixed marriages, said that the little girl’s “friends” will make fun of her because her gaijin (foreigner) daddy left her. I do not want this to happen to my kids. Death is not preventable, it takes us all. But actual leaving, the shame and guilt kids feel over their parents splitting and worse, being the obvious product of a mixed race union that failed in a racially homogeneous society…
I imagine your kids are already being ridiculed to some degree for something. Coming from the time before zero tolerance, I was made fun of for a variety of reasons. Too fat, spastic, artistic, sensitive, just plain weird. There is only so much you can do to prevent or mitigate it. The worst advice I got from my parents is "just ignore it and it will go away."
That was a beautiful and heroic thing the mother did for her daughter. It must have been very difficult for her. Reminds me of in the movie "Life is Beautiful" where the dad made Auschwitz a game for his kid out of his love and protection for him.
The real shame is the Japanese don't realize how racist that is the mixed-race thing. That should be the shame. MLK was far from perfect but the true measurement of someone is the content of their character and not the color of their skin. It's ridiculous to judge children on that. Almost like judging them for being too short, tall, blue or green-eyed.
I think you did all you could, and then some. Do they have therapy in Japan? And can you find a truly reliable therapist? My first question going into couples counseling would be to ask the therapist. "Are you vaccinated?" If they said yes, or wore a mask, that would be a deal breaker. How can I expect someone to help my marriage who can't even do critical thinking?
I imagine your wife has been thinking about leaving you for years now and probably put it off to the end of the holidays to give you one last gift. What options do you have in getting divorced? Will this mean deportation? Will it mean moving somewhere close by? Can any friends in Japan help you out?
First, let me fix an error in my story telling. My deceased friend’s wife was not playing hide and seek with her daughter at the funeral. The little girl jumped up and ran towards the casket playfully calling out, “Where are you daddy?” And then on past to the flowers and curtains and back to the casket reducing all their to sobbing, bawling wrecks, myself included. Her mother, the widow, collapsed from her chair.
Yes, the one child has been tormented over their eyes. One younger child at school ran away screaming in terror because their eyes are different. They are also teased over their rosy cheeks. I live in fear that some idiot teacher here will dye their kids hair black as sometimes happens.
There may be couples counseling but the time taken away from other things to attend would worsen the problem and I doubt my wife would go. The little I have read from advice columns indicate that they always find fault with the foreign or foreign maladaptive to Japanese culture.
Japan and Japanese are not racist. Just ask them and they will tell you that they are not. Calling a naturalized member of the national legislature the “Gaijin diet member” is not racist. “Gaijin only” signs, not racist. Companies openly advertising for help who are gaijin, blonde, blue eyed, female with the “3 size” of 36/24/36 is neither sexist nor racist. Just ask them. However, any and all misrepresentation of Japanese culture or people no matter how slight is racism in the extreme and that, of course, only happens out side of Japan. In their world view, Japan is the only nonracist country and Japanese are the only nonracist people. All problems are the gaijin’s fault. But this too is a generalization. Individually, many Japanese know this is not true, but the majority will never say so in the presence of one of their countrymen.
In all likelihood, any such counselor would be masked, even now, and almost certainly vaxxed. I think Japan is now the heaviest vaxxed county. If not the most, close to it.
I have a permanent resident visa and thus a divorce will not affect my legal ability to remain. If I had a spouse visa, then yes, I would have to depart. Theoretically, I would find a new place to live and just move out. However, I no longer earn enough to live on my own. This may change by the time I have to vacate, but that still leaves concerns over the possible existence of other programs I am unknowingly delinquent in paying for such as welfare and workman’s comp. A generous benefactor has offered tremendous aid in this area, so it may be workable. Another reader has plugged me into a tour company that could prove rewarding.
Would I choose to live near by? Don’t know. On the one hand, I would like to, to be at least physically close to my kids. On the other hand, I do not want to be expected to aid around the house if I am no longer living in it. Additionally, do I want to have to deal with the reactions to the split by the neighbors, my kids’ friends and their parents, the matsuri group, the kids’ teachers?
unfortunate but not unexpected. Check my previous comments on your threads from 2023/since. This was/is the inevitable outcome....fighting to stay in a dysfunctional relationship with an individual who clearly has a different view of the world is futile....but to be fair the effort was admirable! At minimum you can't say you didn't try...
I found this to be very helpful to me in clarifying things when I was in a dysfunctional situation. And it doesn't have to mean that you think the other person is dysfunctional - just the dynamic between two people can be too far off to make things work, it doesn't mean one or the other is wrong....https://dennisprager.com/questions-to-ask-before-marriage
Were it not for the kids, this would probably settle it.
Yes you did.
I agree with Zoe. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family similar to yours, I just wished for my parents to get divorced. The fighting was bad enough, but the constant tension was horrible . What is it in Japanese women? No American man I ever knew who married one was happy. I don’t think they have the same concept of marriage that we have.
That last sentence is so true. I have long done lessons on three words that do not translate into Japanese despite English-Japanese dictionaries having entries for. “Friend/friendship”, “marriage” and “family”.
Things are different with younger generations, but until rather recently, Japanese men got married to have a wife to support them for work while men in the US wanted good jobs to support their families. For Japanese women aged 50 and older, the perfect husband is “healthy, wealthy and away”. The housewives I used to teach HATED it when their husbands were at home for when he was, they must prepare proper meals. Otherwise, they and the kids just eat snacks. Hmmm, what does that say about the vaunted healthier than thou’s Japanese diet?
A common depiction of the absent father sent off to Tokyo or the provinces as a geographical bachelor for years on end is his work shirt left hanging in the family room to remind the kids of the sacrifices he is making for them. The “traditional” Japanese family is dysfunctional by American terms.
What seems to happen in the case of many Japanese women and Western men marriages, though not all, is that the woman is too independent for Japanese males, thus they seek or at least accept courtship form western men. They enjoy the attention that we give them as their native counterparts do not treat them as we do. We western men think that OUR Japanese girls is different, she is not like normal Japanese women. That may not be untrue, but, they want to be normal Japanese women. Normal Japanese women are married. When I first was in Japan, an unmarried 26 year old woman was referred to as a “Christmas Cake”. No one wants a Christmas cake on December 26th.
The problem is that they are trained to be “Good Japanese” wives and they can switch to this mode as soon as they utter and hear their groom say “I do.”. Mine did. Still, while the first change was sudden and profound, it was the gradual change over years that finally transformed her into a person I never would have been interested in if she was like this when we first met. These last 5 years especially have wrought their changes upon her. She hated having to work from home in 2020. Now, the mere mention that perhaps she should rejoin society and leave the house for work like normal people do elicits anger. This has been a major point of contention. I have to make mad dashes in to the den for teaching materials when she takes a restroom break or is cooking and do not have the time needed to put things away properly. So there is a five year’s worth of piling on of used materials, tests, and homework that her presence in the den prevent me from taking care of. She demands I accomplish what she prevents me from doing.
I hear you on the constant tension. Japanese kids are never home after they start elementary school, so mine miss most of this. Additionally, in the two years before the panic, I left before anyone else got up and returned after they were asleep on two nights of the week. I picked the kids up the other 3 because mom was working late. It is rare that both parents are with the kids at the same time except on vacation. The whole family dinning together in the evening is rare. This is the norm in Japan. Again, not universal, but normal. In our case, the 11 year old has been creating the most tension.
But what happens when I leave? In the past two days, I have been called on to undertake three emergency errands. Who will do these when I am gone. If my wife does, then who will make dinner while she is running it? In todays’s case, she would have had to cancel a zoom meeting. She will be overwhelmed and as she is not unknown to lash out physically when frustrated and neither is the 11 yeast old who is now almost as big as their mother, they share some clothing, I fear for their safety. I almost expect a call from my former in-laws informing me that one serious injured or killed the other within the next 2-3 years if I am not here. May happen even if I am here.
Unfortunately I know what you were saying about the potential for physical abuse is true. I lived in Japan for one year and the XO of an American ship asked One of his young sailors what happened to his head. He said his Japanese wife got mad at him and hit him in the head with a frying pan.Apparently this was not unusual.
Violence is common here. I have never seen adults engaged in a fight in the US. I know it happens, but have never witnessed it. I cannot count how many times I have seen drunken businessmen in 3 piece suits brawling in Tokyo, or youths gangs attacking cops. Sadly, saw two fights last year at festivals we were participating in. My wife hit me with a thick and heavy book once. I turned to her and in my engine room voice told her that if she ever did that again of if she ever did too any kids we may have that I would divorce g her ass so fast her head would spin. And she never has again. But what will she do when I am gone. What will she do now that divorce is not something that she is worried about. Hmmmm.
I am sorry to read about your tribulations. Being a veteran of several long-term relationships, I can only tell you that sometimes something really good will come out of what seems terrible at the time.
If she kicks you out, I assume she could not expect you to be available early & late for the kids? That could be a real wake up call for her. Would that also free you up to take jobs you couldn’t, because of those childcare obligations?
She was seemingly of the mind that I would be available for such tasks, at least picking them up. She was shocked when I said I would be returning to the US. I long ago gave up what I came to Japan to do for our marriage. Losing my family leaves me no reason to stay and it is better too be homeless in the US than Japan for me. She plans on hiring a home helper. I asked how that makes economic sense and she blew up saying that there would be no more arguments.
She will be shocked even more when she realizes how much her at home work load will increase when I am no longer here. She works up in the den fro 8:30 am to often well past 10 pm. She cooks but I do the dishes as she goes back up to work. I clean the cats’ litter boxes and take out the trash. She runs the laundry machine, I hang up the laundry to dry. At least some of this she can probably hire someone to do. But the numerous, sudden needs to leave the house and get something will be another eye opener. Yesterday it was brush writing ink. It is a custom here to write some phrase in calligraphy and the kids had this for homework due today. They were going to do it Sunday night but after setting it all up, they realized that the ink had dried in the bottle. She was angry, kids crying that they didn’t know it was empty. Emergency run yesterday to get ink. The day before because we were out of milk. Shortly before that was the jump rope homework when I took the 11 year old to the park for an hour as my wife made dinner. Always something like this. How will she deal with these when alone?
But that is, I believe, the foundation of all our problems. She believes that there can be only one possible outcome for her decisions and will not accept anything other than what she expects to be the result. Worse, her expectations are not within the realm of possibility. I need to earn much more while working far less is the big one most relevant here. She believes that I am the cause of all her frustration and that be removing me from the house, peace and tranquility will reign. She is just not capable of seeing the fact that she is stressed from overwork with work and that her continued presence in the room where I also once worked from and have most of my teaching materials etc, is preventing me from cleaning it and the hours she keeps prevents her from doing so too is, besides the money issues, the biggest problem. What will she do when her stressors increase because there is no other adult in the house? She has never shown the ability to entertain the idea of accepting responsibility for the natural outcomes of her decisions. Will she take it out on the kids?
She said that I no longer need to refrain from work for the family. I am going to offer evenings to the employer that I work for two nights weekly. I hope that they can accommodate me and soon. But I expect that the reality of her decision will hit her like a ton of bricks if/when she suddenly has to pick the kids up all three nights of cram school instead of just one and take them to and from swim classes the other two nights, just as it did when I landed 3 new jobs in one semester. Though, she did say she would pay someone to do these.
It’s really a shame; she’s obviously not firing on all cylinders in terms of thinking this through. That said, unless she has an epiphany, the marriage does seem irretrievably broken, as in her mind you seem to be the bane of her existence & you can’t be expected to keep putting up with this dismissive attitude & lack of respect.
I suppose she can’t rely on her mother / parents to help out? I know you said she either spends a lot of time at her mother’s or her mother is over at your home.
Paying someone to take care of chores around the house & with the kids will just be several more expenses for which she’ll be responsible. As you say, I suspect she’ll realize too late your financial & other significant contributions to the family!
I suspect that she will be over relying on her mother and that there will be friction. We are in our 50s, so her parents are in their 70s but they are quite active. Her mother is in a chorus and other groups. Her dad is semiretired and works part time for the city as a grounds keeper. He golfs and practices Taichi. They are quite busy and there has been conflict in the past when my wife assumed that her mother would be available to help out but was busy.
My wife is no dummy, she graduated near the top of a male dominated industrial chemistry course, one of only 4 women in the entire college. However, when it comes to, how should I put it….personal life, I guess, she might be said to be “on the spectrum”. She deals mutually exclusive demands like a card shark without realizing their nature. When first married, she would lie atop of me in the morning and demand I get out of bed. She is small, but it takes me a while and everlasting cups of coffee until I resemble anything like a functioning life form and raise from the bed when on my back with another person lying atop me and scarce aware that I am not asleep was not going to happen. But, that was her thing for a while. I long ago thought this behavior ended but I realize now that it just was expressed in other ways such as telling me I have to leave her house buy still expecting that I will be able to help her in some degree and her mother and paid help pick up the slack without a thought to her mother’s availability nor the costs of help and the limitations of both.
But she also makes the same kind of demands to our kids. Gives them more homework to do that would take more hours to complete than there are hours in the day in addition to school, cram school, swim practice, Shorinji (which they have stopped) and trips whenever our schedule allows and demanding that they cannot watch TV, play with their Christmas toys, or anything else a child would want to do until their homework is finished. We have argued about this many times after the kids have gone to bed.
It also seems that she has a complete lack of empathy. She thinks that our kids will accept my departure without issue once she explains it to them, completely oblivious to the fact that she had one of the kids in tears just last night as she tried to explain a math problem to them.
People often relax once they've come to an important decision they've been grappling with for a long time, plus she knows that you'll still be living together for another year, so hopefully her plan is to be more civil in the meantime. It takes two people tomake a relationship work, so divorce is inevitable in a situation like yours.
I thought about this too. I would hope (HA!!) that given that her change alone is responsible for the increased civility that she would realize that it was her attitude all along behind the arguing.
I agree with Claudia. Your wife may act with more civility simply because she has made a firm decision and will make the best of the months left for you to take care of the children before the divorce/your leaving the house. That is in both in her best interests and that of the children. If I were you, I'd do my best to (1) line up more jobs so that you might be able to go it alone in Japan if you choose to stay there; let her deal with the child care; (2) be polite to the soon-to-be ex, as it is my impression from some reading that Japanese judges will always decide in favor of the Japanese spouse, with foreign spouses not even being "rewarded" with visitation if the Japanese spouse doesn't wish it; and (3) have meaningful time with the children so that they have as many good memories of being with you as possible.
I think you are both correct but I still wonder why she just couldn’t be civil before and not pick fights.
I'm very sorry for your really terrible troubles. I understand the pain and confusion which is difficult at any time but to have to navigate a tense home life in these uncertain and crazy times makes my heart hurt for you. Have you ever heard that "children would rather be FROM a broken home than live in one?" My siblings and I used to beg my mom to divorce my father. It was a worse than rotten atmosphere in which to try to 'grow up.' Please remember that they are learning how to have a loving/intimate/caring relationship from how you are both modelling it for them. Things are always darkest before the dawn. You got this Kitsune. Relax into it and allow the inspiration guide you into your next decisions. You are both doing the best you can. Remember how you felt about her when you first got together. Relationships are very difficult. Having children makes it 10 times more challenging. Have confidence in yourself. You've made it this far for a reason. My hope is something here helps you. I'm on your side.
You know in your sad heart what's necessary. Like Zoe I'm on your side, glad to be a sounding board.
Thanks. The sounding board feature of this group is comforting. I will not be talking of any of this to my parents until finalized. No need to burden them with the need to keep it secret from their grand kids, especially when they can’t do anything about the situation. Same with our friends here in Japan. I won’t talk about it with coworkers either. This is my only outlet.
I fear that I am bleeding a bit too much on my readers, though.
You are very welcome to bleed on us! We choose to read or not read, we choose to reply or not reply!
I am an expatriate not living in my native country. I am a "single" mum to mixed-race teenagers, but my situation is very complicated!! I see many mixed relationships. We do not necessarily know what we are getting into when we are young. The cultural aspects may not become apparent until much later, and then they press down like a ton of bricks. There can be great dissatisfaction on both sides. Of course we did gain as well or we wouldn't have embarked in the first place. Things change over time.
How did your kids deal with the split? What, if anything, can I leave to help them out in my absence?
The cultural differences were mostly known to us. Despite not being young, both in our 30s, we still thought we could just ignore these, at least in the main. After all, who knows what goes on in our own home and in our relationship. And, for the most part, we have successfully ignored these. Not unheard of now, but not many husbands do anything in the kitchen. Many of my college students still tell me that no one besides mom, no one is allowed in their kitchen. Apart for the pre New Years cleaning, husbands rarely do anything household chores. Unlike what is usual though about this, it is not always or only the husband’s fault. We decided that when my wife cooked I would do the dishes. Actually, it was my suggestion. She loved it but we still caught over it. She would stand next to me and critique every single movement. She and her mother wash in what is to me, a very strange manner. They wash one dish and then put it back with the unwashed dishes and then rinse when all have been washed. How can the be sure that they kept track if the washed and unwashed. I say nothing as I allow for differences in how a task is done, as long as it is done in a reasonably amount of time.
Not so with many wives. Wife tried to get me to wash dishes as she does. Eventually I told her that unless she wanted to do the dishes, she needs to leave me alone to wash them as I do and reminded her that I did not demand she change how she washed dishes. Whomever is washing the dishes washes them as they see fit. We had many such discussion in the first months of our marriage. I vacuumed wrong, I folded laundry wrong. I was in the navy, folding clothes to fit as much as possible in our sea bags and yet be able to pull out our dress blues ready to wear without summer creases is a skill we spend a significant part of boot campy to learn. If I took her approach to household chores she would have divorced me for running her a mini boot campy. I didn’t hang laundry to dry properly, everything I did, did not fit her one and only way to do it. I would later learn that this is common in the States too between those of the same social-economic group. I have seen lots of postings by new husbands informing the world that before marriage that they did not know there was one and only one way to eat a potato chip, tie a trash bag, fill in any task big or large. So these are not just between cultures. What is in my case, is that I am even doing them at all. Well, for now anyway.
Dad lives in 1 country and I live in another. He visits and sees the children quite regularly. We get to see eachother on vacation times and do go places / do things, which includes their spending time with half-siblings. We both agree to put up a united front with regards to them and in front of them (neither of us was ever the arguing type), and I think we mostly manage this (the children may say different). Children see far more detail and emotions than we adults would hope / suspect (my mum always said "little monkeys have big ears" - sounds better in Dutch, which she is but I cannot speak.
My biggest advice is to build your relationship with your children. Really talk to them and listen to them. Build a relationship that will last even if you are not in the same house or even the same country. Talk to them about your life and experiences (and that of your parents and other relatives) and ask them their thoughts to help them really feel a part of your family and your history, and to feel some allegiance to or at least interest in your country.
Work hard to enhance their interest in the US (I hope things there will become far better if things go smoothly with DJT and his new team and increased US patriotism) because you then stand a better chance of getting them for higher education. Adulthood is really when good relationships will pay off.
I am assuming (because you said so) that you will go back to the US. Build memories with them, though surely that can be hard the way that Asian kids are forced to study and have all of their time filled. I have continual "arguments' with Dad who wants me to get tutors / arrange extra classes, which I have refused all along because I want my kids to be independent learners, not spoon-fed by tutors and then can't cope once they are let go and self-responsible. The children are in Grade 10 and Grade 7 in international school and doing rather well, all based on their own efforts. They are in varsity sport (their choice), and the oldest request piano and guitar lessons.
My children's Dad thinks money makes up for not spending time with them and hardly talking to them between visits*, and then it is shopping spree time when he visits. He has far more spending power than I do and we might go for meals that cost more than my 2 weeks grocery bill (which really hurts, particularly considering how far behind he is on the agreed support for education, etc), and he keeps buying and bringing things we don't need = more clutter! But then he lectures them instead of listening to them.
*if you are apart set up communication lines and times and deliver on it, and insist that they reciprocate.
Be consistent for the kids (and even your wife). Commit to what you can and then deliver on it. Don't commit to what you can't. My kids roll their eyes (no doubt copying my internal very large eye roll) when Dad promises something.. because they know it may or may not ever eventuate..
Hope this helps a little. We all do what we can in this life and we can only ever deal with today and keep moving forward.