Why My Brother Will Never Get Married.

Well, my brother Jeffrey decided to take off Thursday and Friday last week. It was annoying for me, as my work and study output grind to practically Zero while he's around. Today he's told us he has next week off too. So I doubt I'll be getting much done next week either. The reason he's taken time off, is he's bored at work. Thursday he insisted that I watch the soccer with him. It was on at 2AM in the morning and finished at 4:30AM. Normally I go to bed at 2AM, so staying up a while longer wasn't to much of a stretch. It was only a friendly between South Africa and Australia anyway. Not an important match. He'd already had Monday off for the Superbowl. Well, he sits behind me most of the day, expecting to be entertained somehow. He brings his boredom home from work. He doesn't want to do anything most of the time, but will launch into tirads concerning the world. Obviously he has too muich time to think about things at work. As I keep pointing out to him, some of his observations on the world, are incorrect. Tonight was one of his tirads against women. Maybe I am just being an optomist, or an idealist, but I really don't have as much of a negative slant on the world as he does. He raves on about how women are evil, yet he's never had a girlfriend. He's never had a close relationship with any women I can remember, and he's never even tried to. Yet, he bases a lot of his opinon on what women are from my marriage. He's had first hand experience at seeing my marriage in action. He lived with my ex-wife and me for two years when we were in Sydney. I'll fill you in on what basically happened. First, I got married. No big deal. For the first three years of Christine's and my marriage, she was supposed to save every cent she earned, while we lived off my wage. I knew she was spending a bit of her money, because every now and then she'd have a new outfit, or have her hair done. Still, she should have been saving some. Whenever I asked her, "How is the saving going?" She'd tell me it was going good. So after three years, I figured she had enough for a deposit for a house. NOPE! She'd spent every cent buying her lunch, buying clothes and other things. She couldn't even account for where it had gone. It came to about sixty thousand dollars. She claimed it was because she wasn't used to having money, so she didn't know how NOT to spend it. We were now three years behind where we wanted to be! We decided on some drastic action. We asked my old flatmate Paul and my brother Jeffrey to move into a share house with us. They accepted. During the two years at the share house together, my brother Jeffrey had first hand experience at how manipulative my wife could be in getting her own way. (I won't go into detail). She used to have a saying, what's mine is hers, and what's hers is also hers. After we moved out of the share house, Chris and I got our own place for a while. Jeff returned to Perth, and Paul moved into a Granny flat by himself and then later his girl friends house. Six months before the marriage ended, we had zero dollars in the bank. This was due to the nest egg we'd saved up being spent on taking her mother to Hawaii. The way that happened, was Chris announced to her family that she was taking her mother to Hawaii. In order to save face, I didn't disagree with her. I was very much on the spot. Her family already didn't like me. Well, Chris made the announcement, and so that I wouldn't look like the bad guy to the family, I agreed. The only difference I made to Christine's plan, was that I would also go to Hawaii. It made Chris furious, because she wanted it to be her and her mother alone. The way I saw it, I had also earned that money. It was supposed to be a deposit for a house, NOT money for Christine and her mother to have a holiday. I wasn't put on earth to be left slaving away at work to earn money for Chris to have a good time. So we went to Hawaii together, and our life savings were blown on that. A loan was also taken out to give us some more spending money. So, six months before the marriage broke up, there we were. Broke, and starting our savings over again. I ended up changing jobs, and also took on a second job. I was getting up at seven, having breakfast, going to work, working the normal forty hour job to five at night. Leaving work, going home, arrived at home, cooked for myself, washed up everything my ex-wife left (she never did washing or wiping up), then got changed. Then, off to the second job which I worked until midnight or one in the morning. Then, back home, I'd stay up for a few hours and do my University homework. Then bed for three or four hours sleep. During this six months, we managed to save ten thousand dollars. I was pretty excited. If we continued, we'd have twenty by the end of the year. After another year, forty thousand. Enough to hopefully buy a place. Alas, it wasn't to happen. Apparently, during the time when I was working, my ex-wife was secretly out having an affair with a guy. She unfortunately fell pregnant. So, she decided she'd stay with the father of the child, which was the other guy. Well, I was thrown out of the house by Christine, and she basically kept everything. Her rational was that she needed it, as she was having a baby. She also worked at the same place I had my second job. In order to stop anyone finding out what had happened, she resigned me from the job (which took me a few months to get back, as they couldn't legally accept my resignation from my ex-wife). All of this has left, of all people, my youngest brother bitter about women. As he puts it, I did most of the work earning the money, and all she did was spend it. In the end, she kept most of the money, all the furniture and everything. Things I owned before I got married, were now hers. I was earning over twice as much as Chris when we seperated. I also had to pay for the divorce (as she refused to pay anything. She said she'd never pay for it, so the only way I could ever get divorced, was to do it all. Which I did). I admit I am bitter towards my ex-wife, but I am certainly not bitter towards women in general. Most of my life, women have been my best friends. I know that sounds weird, but it is true. At school, I quite often used to hang out with a group of all girls. Before my marriage, I shared a flat with a girl named Lisa who was my best friend (and like a sister to me). Even after my marriage break up, my best friend for a while was a girl named Melisa, and then a girl named Kayleen. (There was never any romance between any of us. ) I know it looks like I change a lot of best friends, but when these girls get boyfriends, usually I get pushed out of the scene. I don't have a problem with that. Their boyfriends should be their best friends. Somehow, my brother Jeff has used this experience of mine with Christine and projected it onto all women. He thinks women are just after a man to earn money for them, while they sit at home doing what they want. (Which is funny, because raising kids is a pretty important and difficult job to do right). He also seems to forget how much our mother sacrificed for us, while our father kept everything he earned to enjoy himself. My mother worked daycare in order to keep us kids fed and clothed. My father never spent anything on us. As he [my father] put it to me one day, he earned the money, so it was his. Okay, fine. My father ignored his responsibilty towards his family. I have learned one thing from my father. Never be like he was. Children come into this world with nothing. It is rather selfish to ignore their needs and hope that someone else will pick up the slack for their care and upbringing. Still, my brother somehow ignores that side of the coin. The only thing he seems to remember was how badly I was burned. (I'm not the only one in the family to have had problems in a marriage either). A lot of his world view about women, was also put into him from some guy at work. A guy married and divorced twice. (Or was it three times!) Entering a marriage with that guys attitude ("Life's a bitch, then you marry them") is bound to end in divorce. Either it is from seeking out the 'bitches' of the world to marry, or it is from projecting that image onto the wives. How can a person do that? As I said earlier, I am an idealist. I still think there is a soul mate out there for me. I have no idea where she is (I'm hoping Japan ... those girls are so cute!), but I certainly haven't let the actions of one individual cloud my judgement. Life might be a bitch, but let's hope the one we marry is a great individual, who is willing to work with us in our endeavours to make it in life. I truely wish to find the one true love of my life. My brother thinks I am mad, especially after what's happened. He thinks I am dumb for not learning from my first experience. Well, I think he is wrong. There are people out there without hidden agendas, and who truely wish to find their soul mates. Imagine life, as a game of darts. Throw the dart, miss the bullseye, give up! No thanks! I'm still in this game, pass me another dart thanks! Terima kasih! Doumo Arigato! Xie Xie! Let's throw this sucker! :-)