Song of the Sirens

Well, I finally have my wife's banking details. She has saved a lot of money over the course of our marriage, and before.

I did not expect her to so casually provide her bank account details to me, especially given her refusal to do so in the past, but she probably thought she had no choice.

This surprisingly does not make me feel relieved or satisfied. In fact I feel more frustrated than ever, especially when I consider why it has taken so long, and why there was so much resistance.

I sometimes think back to when we first met, and I wonder why I never picked up on her "Me not Us" view of marriage. Or if I did, why or how I let it get to this point.

I remember in fact the day that we met, and all the circumstances behind it. I had been about a year out of a long-term relationship, and my colleague and his wife invited me for dinner at a restaurant.

Once dinner was over, they surprised me by providing me a ticket, and dropping me off in the city for what I was to find out was a speed-dating evening.

Now I am not the most charming of men, and I often get tongue tied in these situations, so I felt quite uneasy about going ahead with this, but I thought it may be a good laugh if nothing else, so I gave it a shot.

I waited for an anxious half an hour in a bar with another 30 or so men and women, all strangers to me.

Most of the men and women congregated in small groups. It was obvious to me that women came prepared in groups, while men came alone but grouped up out of necessity.

Despite feeling anxious at being all alone, I felt quite out of my element, and stood there like a statue until the event formally began.

It was at that point that I caught my wife's attention. She too was alone, and as far as I could tell, very shy.

Once formalities began, we got to sit down with each person of the opposite sex for 5 minutes each, and then move on. We were told to make small-talk, but not talk about our work, and not to provide private contact information.

I actually did not like the majority of the women I spoke to, because I felt that they were too self-involved, too demanding, too assertive. But when I got to sit with my wife, it was obvious that we hit it off straight away.

We did not talk about work, money, success, or anything of the sought. It was merely small talk, just a little banter and fun.

So I thought she liked me for me.

In any case I didn't really pursue her, except for the fact that she managed to get my mobile phone number by nights end.

Come next day, I really cooled off on her, and decided that if she called, I would simply make up some excuse, and hopefully she would get the idea.

And so it happened, problem is, she didn't get the message.

So she kept calling, and calling, and calling, and finally I guess I simply caved in to her ongoing request to go out one night.

So try as I may, I can't see how I missed those vital calling signs of things to come....or am I missing something here?

The Lingering Dream

Things have pretty much settled down in my relationship, at least that's what I have been telling myself.

However I have recently had a very vivid dream which has kinda thrown things upside down for me, at least emotionally.

I am still baffled as to what it means, and why it has appeared now.

My dream has me separated from my wife, contemplating my future.

In reality I am 7 years younger than my wife, but in my dream I was 20 years younger than my wife, as irrational as that may sound, but it felt like an unquestionable truth.

In this dream I also felt a sense of comfort in knowing that my wife was probably too old to have another child.

This I felt freed me to consider my future, where I had decided that it was time for me to meet another woman.

Here's the crunch though, I got into a conflicting mind-set, trying to work out whether I should allow myself to enter a relationship with another Chinese woman, or a woman of any other race.

I kept going back and forth, convincing myself of one approach only to realise the problems it would evoke.

The conflict I was experiencing was quite palpable. At one point I felt that for my own well-being, I should try and avoid any woman who has the same cultural emphasis as my wife does.

But I kept getting pulled back to the very real needs of my child.

I kept fearing, maybe irrationally, that were I to have another child who looked 'caucasian', that my son would not see this chiild as his sibling, and in a way my son would see me as emotionally abandoning him for my other similar-looking child.

I felt the only chance of ensuring my son still felt part of my life was to have another euro-asian child, to look essentially like my son.

I know that this makes little sense and quite possibly my son, given these circumstances, would care less whether his half-sibling had blonde hair or black hair, but obviously this dream means something to me, but exactly what I don't know.

It is one of those dreams however that lingers on, troubling me evening when in the back of my mind.

Taking off my shoes in the house

Like most Australians I have always worn my footwear in the house.

As a young boy the only time there was an issue with footwear in the house was when there was mud on my shoes.

When I initially met my future wife, as a matter of courtesy and respect I would always take my shoes off before entering her unit.

I did this as a show of respect for her property, her unit, her home. It did not occur to me at the time that if I was to marry this woman at some point, that I would be forgoing my home life sensibilities for hers.

But so it was.

No compromise, no meeting in the middle, no delicate mix between of east and west.

Basically I live my home life as if I was raised in a Chinese family.

This expectation laso extends to the TV set. In fact watching TV for anything other than the new is  big no-no. The house is almost always quiet, with some activity going on that requires silence, or so I am told.

Anytime I watch sport on TV, I am quickly reminded that I am being lazy. No ifs or buts.

What is not appreciated by my wife is that many Australians keep the TV on at all times, simply as background noise that will take our attention from time to time, but we still get all our work done.

Completely different approach to home life, and one that I simply didn’t expect when I entered into a cross-cultural relationship.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

My wife and I have come to an uncomfortable truce, one borne out of necessity rather than preference.

I guess it kind of operates like the Bill Clinton Military policy on gays, where it was a case of "Don't ask, don't tell".

For my part I have come to this point purely as a case of exhaustion, and my strong belief that if I push this issue any further I will simply be labelled a jealous and paranoid husband.

I have also reached the conclusion that I know as much as I will ever know about what has happened.

What I do know however with complete certainty is that there has definitely been no sex or physical contact involved, if that really make a difference.

There are a number of reasons why I know this.

(1) Firstly, my wife simply would not have had the opportunity to make the time for the required rendezvous'. Like many Chinese mothers, she is completely immersed in her career, in her out-of-work-hours book-keeping work, and taking our son to his almost daily extra-curricular activities.

An 'affair' would consume too much time, and would take her away from what she loves doing most.

(2) Secondly, as one of the readers suggested, I did in fact lodge a helpdesk request to recover the emails that were sent from my wifes email address.

What I got back was 6 emails only, and they only provided me the date, sender, subject title and receiver deatils. Apparently there are some kind of privacy provisions to prevent snooping and the like, and thus the body of the email is not stored in the firewall, or something like that anyway.

I got the feeling that Helpdesk were a little suspicious of my request, and I was told that if I cared to get the complete emails, I could simply ask the recipient (being of course James, the lawyer).

Well, at least I got something I thought, but unfortunately 4 of the emails had one non-descript subject title of "re: Hi"

However, two of the email subject titles were more descriptive.

They had the title of "Do you remember what I look like?", and "re: Do you remember what I look like?".

This subject title is in keeping with what my wife told me about James, that they met once, and more importantly she said to me that she doesn't "remember what he even looks like!"

It adds up that is she asked him if he remembered what she looked like, she would likely have also had problems remembering what he looked like.

(3) The third point is the most convincing for me personally.

You see, prior to my wife I had one other Chinese girlfriend, but she was from Hong Kong.

This girl, lets call her Elizabeth, was sexually liberal in bed, and contributed to the love making on an equal footing. She was also affectionate and physically intimate when circumstances called for it.

My wife however has been anything but, from when we first met.

When we first started dating, my wife would not hold hands. I can honestly not recall her ever holding my hand willingly.

What further surprised me was her complete distate for kissing. She in fact regularly rejected my efforts to kiss on the mouth by calling it an "unhigenic practice."

We actually had sex before we had ever kissed or even hugged, which I find remarkable to this day.

And our sex flows along these same lines. My wife lies back and her arms are strethed down along her legs. She doesn't move her arms, and she never touches during love making.

When I face her face, or when another part of my body is in the vicinity of her face, she turns her head to one side, and there it remains.

I remember on one ocassion without any prompting from me, my wife told me that she was to perform a sexual act on me, in order to show me how much she loved me.

Given her frigidity, this was a remarkable offer from my wife, one I still cherish with great fondness to this day. However it lasted barely 2 seconds, with her making strange throat noises and running to the bathroom to spit.

So, my point is, even though I have been content to accept these quirkes because I care for my wife, I simply can't see her having sex with another man as anything but a serious inconvenience for her, and as such, very unliklely.

...but of course, all those emails and all those phone point to something don't they?

Response to some questions

I am grateful to the feedback I have been getting, both from males and females.

It gives me an opportunity to reconsider my own thinking, being fully aware how humans can get things so wrong sometimes.

I am also a very insular kind of guy, so I have no one to talk to about these things. In my world, men unfortunately just don't talk about these things.

(1) Regarding one suggestion to talk to NaiNai, well in some regards there is a lot of merit in this, as she yields enormous influence over her daughter. NaiNai is also very strict with her daughter and I believe would not approve of her daughter risking their current "status" over something as short lived as a fling, for instance.

Of course one problem is that they are mother and daughter, and NaiNai comes from a completely different world to me, so I really don't know how to approach it, were I to try and speak to her.

Secondly, I fear that she will also be dismissive of what I may say, which will mean that I will lose "face" in front of NaiNai, further diminishing any respect she may have for me.

Finally and most importantly, NaiNai only knows two words in English, "Sankiou", for Thank you, and Bye-Bye.

So any talk with NaiNai would need to involve a third party to interpret, and this just makes it too complicated and too risky.

(2) Regarding the suggestion of requesting relationship counselling, well this is of course a great idea, because bouncing your concerns through a neutral intermediary makes communication of sensitive issues all the more effective.

Now I actually suggested this to my wife when we spoke, and although she originally indicated an open mind on this, for some reason she quickly decided that it was "just silly!". I got no further explanation as to why it was silly, despite my repeated efforts.

(3) And finally, I am not sure if I mentioned this, but my wife spoke to James, the lawyer, because she claims she became afraid when she read an article in the newspaper about Australia's Shared Parenting laws.

These laws place an emphasis on separated parents having joint custody of a child, rather than the typical situation where the mother gets sole custody.

I asked my wife how these laws affect us given that we are not separated, but she did not explain herself well. She just kept on saying that as a mother she was concerned because of many newspaper articles claimed that mothers were forced to shared their children with the father, and she wanted to know more.

This was a digression from the issue, but I asked whether this meant that she believes we will be separating soon, and her response again was that I was just being silly.

So anyway, some truth from her but it just doesn't gel together.

It is actually quite draining when someone simply can't give a straight answer, and I have decided that rather than get into an argument, that if she resists answering then I should just leave it be for now, as I am sure more details will reveal themselves soon enough.

So I will try and answer some more questions soon, and I will try and explain why I don't think she was involved in a physical relationship with anyone. But this doesn't really lessen the issue for me, but it is a process of paling away the layers and seeing what's left.

Marriage in Distress

Well, a lot has happened since my last post.

For the longest time it seemed that I simply would not muster up the courage to raise these lingering issues with my wife.

However an opportunity arose by chance, when mother-in-law decided at the last minute to visit Brisbane for a week, in order see family. We decided that it would a great holiday for our son as well, who was on school holidays.

So as a result, we were alone for one week, without any disruptions or distractions.

So I finally spoke up when we were alone at home.

This was the beginning of a conversation that lasted a few hours. It was not frenetic nor was it aggressive in any sense. It was a calm discussion, mostly driven by me. I calmly addressed the issues, one by one, that I thought needed to be cleared up.

The responses from my wife were the most honest she has ever been to me, but not entirely honest.

I know for a fact that certain claims she has made were simply untrue.

I know this for two reasons.

Firstly and as they say in the poker industry, she has a "tell".

When she lies to me she tilts her head in a submissive type of display, she also touches my hand affectionately, but in all such cases she can never bring herself to look in my eyes. This has been a very consistent "tell" from her for many years.

But secondly and more importantly, I know that certain claims are untrue because I checked up on the details before-hand.

For instance, she claims to have only spoken to this lawyer two or three times on the phone. This is untrue. She has called (and/or texted) his number in the hundreds of times, on some days up to six times a day.

Secondly, she claims to have only emailed him two or three times.

Again, this is simply untrue.

Firstly, I witnessed her deleting emails in bulk from her sent folder recently, and this was from her private hotmail account. I knew that this was the email address that she would have used to correspond with him.

But more damning is the following.

A few months ago, she asked me a very strange question.

I did not think much of it back then, but I realised not that long ago that there was a connection between this lawyer, and that question.

She had previously asked me whether anyone at the university I teach at could intercept or recover any emails sent to the university.

I was perplexed by this question and simply answered by saying "I don't know"

But she asked again, with an element of tension in her voice, and to boot, she would not look me in the eyes while asking.

I thought little of it, until I realised that this new friend of hers teaches at the same university as I do.

So I followed this up with the IT section at the university.

Now my wife has never sent me an email from her hotmail account to my university email address.

However I mentioned to the IT person that I wished to recover an email my wife sent me with some important details, but was not sure if she had sent it to my university email address.

Now, although this was not strictly legal, I was told that 98 emails were sent from that email address, but not to me.

So, progress, and a little bit of relief because I was no longer completely in the dark, but also distress because this deception was growing bigger by the day.

Having said that, my wife told me certain things that I do in fact believe.

First is that she only met the lawyer once in person.

Second, she explained to me why she met the lawyer. I will go into this in a later post.

Thirdly, she implied that nothing went on sexually. We did not discuss this explicitly, but it was there between the lines. I also believe this, for good reason. I will explain this as well in a later post.

For now my thinking is all over the place and quite chaotic.

So, in an effort to help my thoughts settle and fall in place, I would ask for those reading this blog to ask me some specific questions, if you wish to, which will force me to think clearly about aspects of my circumstances that I have not given due consideration to yet.

This will help me be more rational in my thinking, as I am a complete emotional wreck right now and wish to ensure that I do nothing stupid while in this state of mind.

The new friend

My apologies for keeping everyone waiting.

It has been a very strange period for me lately. I am a neurologist and see patients daily who are suffering from terrible afflictions caused by injuries or illnesses like catastrophic head injuries, strokes, Parkinsons disease and Alzheimers.

I need to have constant attention to detail, as I am dealing with quality of life, and in some cases life itself.

Although it has not affected my work yet, I am doing my best to guarantee that IT NEVER does, so I write on this blog late at night in my desperate attempt to cleanse myself of the immense distress I have been going through.

Anyway, back to that strange weekend, and here we are at Sunday.

For most of the morning my wife was exceptionally nice to me. She would call me "honey" repeatedly, and on a few ocassions she called me by my baby name (the name my mother calls me to this day).

My wife would only act like this when she was extremely happy, or when she was preparing to persuade me about something.

Anyway, about mid-morning, although I didn't realise at the time, my wife started on what was probably a well thought out plan to introduce me to a new person she had apparently just met.

She started making references to a "James", a man she met through her work, but according to her had never met in person once.

She however did mention to me that she had spoken to James 4 or 5 times on the phone (although she mentioned nothing about emails).

Now I counted 7 separate references to James on that Sunday, all I believe designed to sound innocuous, but I could feel that there was more to this than that.

Now James is a lawyer. She met him through work, and because he also has a Chinese wife, she became friends with him. he is anglo by the way.

Sounds plausible right? Well its not. There's more to this than my wife has been letting on.

By the 7th mention of James, my wife said:

"Would you like to meet James? I told him about you."

I replied by saying:

"Why would I want to meet a stranger?"

My response was terse, but I had grown frustrated with this charade by my wife, and it was a desperate display as far as I was concerned, but she still persisted in trying to put an innocent spin on events.

Well, she stopped talking about James after that.

But later on that night, I remembered something that she asked me about 4 months ago. I didn't think anything of it back then, but it was a strange comment none the less.

The more I think about it, the more it all fits.

It seems that James and I are not actually strangers after all. In fact I think we teach at the same university.

Just lying in bed that night I knew a lot of things didn't make sense. The email episode, her claim of only 4 or 5 phone calls, and her strange comment about 4 months ago.

..its starting to make a bit more sense now...but maybe I need to check on a few facts first...but more on that later.

Nothing is clearer, it is just a stalemate for now

Well, since my episode of paranoia, nothing has happened to clarify matters.

I tried to talk to my wife once about my concerns, but she was completely dismissive. Before I had even had a chance to explain my concern, she responded with:

"Oh your just being silly!"

...and she walked away.

So I get the feeling that she does not want to discuss the matter, or that it simply does not register for her and she is not sensitive to how I feel at this point in time.

When I hear her mobile phone signal with a text message, my heart skips a beat, but I try hard to ignore it. She still behaves oddly, as if the message is so private that she cannot read it while in the same room as me.

A few days ago I walked past the bedroom and saw her busily typing a text message on her phone. When I asked her who she was texting, she said:

"Just a friend"

I then said" "Who?"

She responded in an agitated voice, "Just a friend, you don't know them"

Now I keep asking myself whether I am simply being paranoid, in a effort to talk myself out of this anxiety I am experiencing. At the end of the day, I know that all of this can be explained away in a perfectly reasonable manner. I recall not that long ago that my wife suspected something was going on in my life, and it wasn't, so I could just be going through the same thing.

And I can't get over how she would be willing to lose something that she seems to value more than anything else in her life. No, not me, but something far more valuable to her.

I remember when we were preparing to get married, she asked me if once we were married, whether she too could use the title of "doctor", given that her husband is a doctor. She reasoned that this is the case with Knighted men who marry.

I wasn't sure whether she was joking or serious, but I realised early on that my being a doctor meant everything to her, as it does to her mother. I am quite sure that everyone from her mother's village knows that my mother-in-laws daughter is married to a doctor, and not just any doctor but a specialist. I am subjected to some kind of awe from all my mother-in-laws friends every time I come into contact with them, and they all insist on calling me "doctor" instead of my name, and they touch my hand almost messiah like as if some of my good luck would rub off on them.

It seems to me beyond belief that my wife, and just as importantly her mother, would risk losing this title that they wear like a badge of honour, which has given them the right to hold their head up high amongst their community, in a display of superiority.

The chinese I have found to be aspirational to the extreme, and excessive displays of ones success, although being something which may be frowned upon in the west, is second nature to many chinese.

I keep asking myself, "how could they risk losing this?". It just doesn't make sense.

....or am I simply trying to convince myself too hard.

We have been arguing lately

My wife and I have been having a number of arguments lately.

It all began when we started looking for a new house. We have outgrown our current residence, and with our boy getting to an age when he is always running around, we decided it was time to find a house with a big backyard.

Well all well and good, and given my income, we may not even need to sell the home we currently live in.

Well that's where our problems begin.

You see our current home was bought and paid off by me before I met my wife. She on the other hand had no real assets to speak of when we married.

This means that our house is technically owned by me, although this would make little difference if we were to get divorced. In that case of course the house will be divided between my wife and I, according to other factors, like the welfare of our child.

However this still bothers my wife. She is annoyed that our current house is only under my name, but as an accountant she is fully aware that to transfer the deed into both our names would be an exercise in wasting money, as the stamp duty incurred would run into the tens of thousands.

So my wife, in order to "balance the arangement", as she puts it, wants to purchase the new house in her name only.

I find this a remarkably bizarre request, and I have tried to ask her to explain how this will benefit us. She keeps saying its fair this way, but this really is not a reasonable explanation to me. It simply does not make any sense.

Anyway, while we were viewing a property last weekend, my wife starting complaining to the real estate agent that I was not willing to "buy" her a new house. This confused the real estate agent because he thought we were looking at the property precisely for that reason.

I tried to explain to the real estate agent what my wife actually meant, and he simply said "oh!", nodded his head, and continued showing us the property.

On the way home however, my wife kept on repeating that the real estate agent said "ohhhhhhhhhh!", indicating that he was embarassed that I was not buying her the property in her name.

It seems to me that she was convinced that the real estate agent sympathised with her complaint, where in truth he didn't care one way or the other, as long as he got a sale.

So he we are, locked in dispute, over a pointless little detail. Part of me says to simply give my wife what she wants, but something else in the back of my mind is nagging at me. I keep asking myself why she wants his and her property, when we are married.

I don't know. It simply doesn't make sense.

DNA envy and the dinner conversation

We recently went to a friend's house for dinner. They were celebrating their 10 year wedding anniversary, although they lived together for a further 5 years.

Invited that evening were another 3 couples, all being doctors and doctors wives (2 of those wives were also doctors).

The couple celebrating their anniversary are a very loving couple, he being a surgeon and she being a stay at home mother. They are very compatible, although quite different in many respects. Their ongoing adoration of each other is quite palpable, and quite refreshing to experience.

During dinner, the conversation naturally turned to the other relationships in the room, and eventually to mine.

I was asked what it was that attracted me to my wife originally, and I responded in what is probably a typical male fashion, stuck for words but then falling back on the typical qualities such as sense of humour, looks, emotional connection and a sense of compatibility.

Well, then it was my wife's turn, and I could hear the whole room quiten down as she was asked what she found most appealing about me when we first met, and what it was that made her consider marriage with me.

Naive me, I thought she would say that she thought we were compatible, that I was caring and loving to her needs, that I was a good provider and responsible, and maybe, just maybe that she felt that she loved me.

Instead, my wife responded by saying:

"I liked the fact that he was left-handed, and that he had blue eyes and blonde hair. We Chinese admire those physical traits"

When further prompted about the qualities in me that she liked, she continued:

"I liked the fact that he was a doctor. I knew that all my friends and extended family would be jealous of me if I married a doctor."

Everyone at the dinner table smiled, out of politeness I think, but I think my poor wife simply didn't realise that she she was being asked for human qualities, not pragmatic ones.

I tried to interrupt and hopefully change the topic, but I was gently brushed aside, in a helpful and supportive way, by one of the wives sitting beside me, who said to my wife:

"Love, what we mean is did you marry him because you thought he would support you through thick or thin, or did you maybe think he would make a great father to your child?"

My wife seemed like she understood, she took a deep breath, smiled and then said:

"I thought about what my child would look like if I had a child with him. I wanted my child to have light coloured hair and eyes, and to be a doctor too. I liked him for, how do you say, for his DNA?"

Everyone laughed, I guess because no other response was appropriate, and we simply moved on to other topics.

I felt somewhat embarrassed by my wife's response, truth be told, but there was a huge language and cultural barrier that made it difficult for her to talk in those terms, so I simply put it aside and tried to forget it.

At work however, I still get a jibe from my colleagues, who while diagnosing a condition for the ocassional chinese female patient, ask me whether I think they have DNA envy, and then they smile and wink.

Yes, its funny, and simply part and parcel of a cross-cultural relationship.

Some cross-cultural problems in our marriage

I have been having some ongoing issues with my wife that unfortunately aren't going away.

It involves children.

Firstly, I have been hoping to having a second child, but it seems my wife is not receptive to this. She is of the view that another child will get in the way of her career. Although this may be true, I just don't think one child is optimal, and it is actually not fair on our first born either.

I keep telling my wife that there is no one-child policy in Australia, but she simply won't budge.

At the end of the day I have to respect her wishes, but what she told me the other day really upset me.

By way of explaining why she didn't want another child, my wife told me that she asked her mother whether she should have one, and then her sister in China whether she should have one. They both told her that it is too expensive to have another child, and for her to refuse my requests.

I became very upset by this revelation, because my wife should be discussing these matters with me, not her mother and her sister.

It seems that important decisions about my family are being made by an elderly lady whose view of the world is of a by-gone era, and by a woman who lives in China and was only allowed to have one child.

Well, what about my views? What about our child who has often asked for baby brother?

And regarding it being too expensive, well I am a medical professional for heavens sake. Money is simply not an issue.

What really bothers me is that she would not have told me this if I didn't push her. She simply decided, between herself, her mothera nd her sister, and I would have not even been informed of this very important decision had I not been persistent.

In her defense, she claims that Chinese women do not involve men in these decisions. I told her that I find that quite remarkable, that this is a human right, and that no father would willingly take no interest in the size of his family.

She keeps trying to explain things by saying that as a Westerner, I do not understand.

I think that's true, I do not understand. But that does not excuse her behaviour.

Inter Racial Divorce part 3

Well, this news item below is quite timely as it relates to my previous post on false allegations of child sexual abuse made disproportionately by separating Chinese born mothers. On the surface at least this is becoming all too common and very distressing for all Anglo fathers in inter racial marriages.

================================

Sex abuse accused father fights back

LAURIE NOWELL | From: Sunday Herald Sun | January 24, 2010

A DAD cleared of claims he sexually abused his kids is now hitting back at his ex wife.

The man is accusing his ex-wife of perjury, assault and threatening to kill.

The legal action, believed to be a first for Victoria, will set a controversial precedent and could open the floodgates to similar cases.

"Bill", whose identity cannot be revealed for legal reasons, is alleging his wife deliberately lied when she made allegations that he had sexually abused their children.

His affidavit was accepted by the Melbourne Magistrates' Court last week, a hearing date has been set for next month and a summons was due to be served on Friday.

The case stems from a criminal trial during which Bill spent two years fighting charges based on his wife's allegations.

He was eventually acquitted, but the ordeal cost him his job, his home and about $450,000 in lost income and legal costs. The case is also based on similar accusations of sexual abuse of their children made by the ex-wife during a bitter Family Court battle.

The Family Court judge found Bill's ex-wife to be violent, untruthful, lacking moral values and responsible for the psychological and emotional abuse of her children - but still gave her custody of the two girls, now aged 9 and 11, because they had become estranged from their father.

By contrast, Bill was found to have shown "laudable forbearance in the face of the most challenging circumstances".

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show about 2.5 million Australians are denied access to family because of family law proceedings, and about 680,000 fathers see their children as little as once a year.

ABS figures also show 700,000 children have no meaningful contact with one of their non-custodial parents - mostly fathers.

Bill said yesterday he was bringing the case because he felt betrayed by the justice system.

"The Family Court have cut me off from my children effectively because of false evidence brought by my wife," Bill said.

"In 2005, she went to the police and made the allegations and then prepared the children on what they should say. The result was my kids were taken away from me.

"I proved my own innocence and that she had lied on both occasions - in the criminal trial and in the Family Court matter.

"My life with my kids was destroyed. If people can lie in court and hurt others by their utterances and statements, what is the point of the law?"

The case will intensify the current national debate over the operation of the Family Court and the principle of shared parenting, which is under attack by women's groups and is being reviewed by the Rudd Government.

Bill's ex-wife is facing charges of perjury, assault and making a threat to kill.

The charges allege that she knowingly and wilfully made 10 pages of false statements to police in September 2005 and perjured herself by repeating the allegations in a sworn affidavit during a Family Court hearing in 2008.

She is also accused of threatening to kill Bill in 2004 and of assaulting him with chopsticks and fingernails in 2000.

Law Institute of Victoria chief executive Michael Brett Young said private criminal prosecutions were rare, but not unheard of.

"This man will have to prove his case, like anyone else, in the criminal courts," Mr Young said.

Inter Racial Divorce part 2

We have another friend who is going through a divorce.

He too is anglo, and his wife is Chinese.

What makes their circumstances so exceptional to me is that having known them for about 7 years, I have always considered them to both be responsible, decent and  level headed.

They have a 6 year old son, which they seem to dote over, and they were both clearly very good parents.

Now in the past Ms B made some incidental but ominous comments about the wife, which I disregarded at the time. Ms B told me that the wife would bitterly complain in private about her husband, but there was no substance to the complaints. Ms B described the complaints as being "child-like" and repetitious in nature.

Had my wife not told me this, I would never have thought this woman was child-like, nor someone who complained about her husband behind his back. She just seemed too nice and empathetic in public. In fact, she really won me over as a great mother and a great wife.

But clearly I was wrong!

Well, this couple separated about a year ago. Since then the husband has wanted to see the child 3 days per fortnight, but the wife refused. She would only agree to 8 hours per fortnight.

So after failing to get anywhere in mediation, the husband filed for greater access to his son via the Family Court.

In response his wife filed allegations of child sexual abuse.

Now I won't go into detail about these allegations, but to say that they are completely preposterous and bizarre.

I read the wife's statement and the allegations in full, as did Ms B. We both agreed that the wife was either lying or she is so disturbed by the divorce that she is deluding herself. In fact I had to pinch myself a number of times as there was no logic in the ramblings, apart from references to women's intuitition and references from the internet about bed wetting being linked to child abuse. She also supplied some selective snippets from the internet suggesting that any form of shared care was disruptive to children.

My final take was that this was all about child support, given that in Australia child support reduces if the child sees the other parent on overnight stays. Its the only way I can understand what has happened.


But now to my point, and this is eerily similar to one of the comments by a poster to a previous post.

The husband has hired a solicitor and barrister to represent him in Court.

He told me recently that while in a briefing with his barrister, the barrister said that in his experience, Chinese born wives are particularly malicious during divorce. In fact he mentioned that of the 5 most spiteful wives that he comes across per year in his work as a barrister, about 3 tend to be Chinese born.

Now make of this what you will, but if true, it is a worrying statistic for many fathers out there.

History of Interracial China

I found this reference the other day about the history of interracial relationships in China, and found it quite interesting and insightful, and worthy of posting here.
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There have been various periods in the history of China where large numbers of Arabs, Persians and Turks from the Western Regions (Central Asia and West Asia) migrated to China, beginning with the arrival of Islam during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century.

Due to the majority of these immigrants being male, they often intermarried with local Chinese females. While intermarriage was initially discouraged by the Tang Dynasty, it was later encouraged during the Song Dynasty, which allowed third-generation immigrants with official titles to intermarry with Chinese imperial princesses. Immigration to China increased under the Mongol Empire, when large numbers of West and Central Asians were brought over to help govern Yuan China in the 13th century.

By the 14th century, the total population of Muslims in China had grown to 4 million. [18] After Mongol rule had been overthrown by the Ming Dynasty in 1368, this led to a violent Chinese backlash against West and Central Asians. In order to contain the violence, the Ming administration instituted a policy where all West and Central Asian males were required to intermarry with native Chinese females, hence assimilating them into the local population. Their descendants are today known as the Hui people. 

The new car

We have been looking to purchase a new car recently.

The car is for Ms B, who currently drives a car that has given us many problems.

My focus has been to find a model of car which is both stylish and safe. We have a 7 year old child after all so safety is a priority.

Ms B however is more interested in a status symbol. She has argued that many of her friends drive a Benz, so why shouldn't she.

We visited a dealership that had one car that I was ineterested in, and one that Ms B was interested in.

My choice was a modestly priced but stylish looking car with ample safety features, including full curtain air-bags.

Ms B however insisted on a very expensive and luxurious sports car, which I believe was not appropriate for a family of four.

The salesperson was of Chinese heritage, and he would obviously have made more commission if he sold us the sportscar.

Well, sensing the tension between Ms B and myself over what style of car we should purchase, he began addressing my concerns over safety.

He said the following to me:

"We Chinese believe in fate. If you are destined to get hurt or killed in a car accident, then you cannot avoid this. This is your fate. Whatever car you choose will not change your fate, so why not choose the luxurious car and enjoy life."

Ms B immediately latched on to this comment and pushed for us to purchase the luxurious car there and then.

I told them both that I did not accept that line of thinking, and would not put my family in a car that was designed for speed. In particular I would not agree to placing our son in a car that was designed primarily for two people, with compromised back seating.

Ms B was very upset with me.

This belief in fate, which I am sure provides some form of relief for people who have experienced tragedy in their lives, was really not an appropriate way to view the purchase of an sportscar. In my way of thinking it was merely an excuse to be reckless in one's decision making.

Anyway, we ended up buying the modest model car, despite fierce resistance from Ms B and her mother. They even co-opted my son to argue for the sportscar.

However I felt it was sensible under the circumstances to purchase a family car, not a sports car, and I purchased a few extra safety features to boot.

To appease Ms B I also purchased some luxury additions for the car, including in-built GPS, in-built phone, window tinting, better stereo system, nicer wheels and a special paint job. In fact I was happy to purchase whatever luxurious features Ms B wanted, as long as the safety of the vehicle was not compromised.

Now to be fair, the car actually looks great, and could even pass for a very expensive label car.

But Ms B is still upset with me. You see she wanted to tell people that she owns a Mercedes Benz. It was not the car so much that she wanted but what it represented.

This emphasis on "labels" dogs us time and again. Both Ms B and her mother have an unrelenting desire to telegraph their status to the world by purchasing products that are for the most part no different than cheaper versions, but for their label.

It seems that even a pair of shoes cannot escape this kind of scrutiny.

Anyway after about a week of getting the silent treatment from Ms B, I sat her down last night and told her that it was her destiny to get a smart looking, stylish family car, and no amount of sulking will change this.

Hopefully we can leave this chapter behind now and move on with more important things in life.

Inter Racial Divorce

My wife and I have known an inter racial couple for many years.

Lets call them Don and Leung.

Don, the husband is of anglo heritage, is a professional and a high income earner. This was his second marriage.

He married Leung, a Chinese woman who was close to 20 years his junior. She did not work and apparently attended some college course.


Leung is attractive and very stylish, but I have always felt uncomfortable around her.

They met through some dating service that arranged get togethers between anglo men and chinese women.

When they decided to get married, they flew to China to get approval from Leung's father. Her father asked to see proof of Don's high salary, and only then gave his approval for the marriage to proceed. This emphasis on money was also very much a part of Leung's views on life. Everything revolved around money, and she made it clear that she would not have married Don if he did not make such a high salary.

After the honeymoon period, serious cracks started to appear in this marriage.

Firstly, Leung objected to Don financially supporting his two daughters from his previous marriage. She complained about this bitterly.

Secondly, she refused to allow Don to even see his daughters. Don eventually resorted to secret meetings with his daughters.

Not really what marriage is supposed to be like, is it?

Well, tensions grew in the household, and one day when Leung realised that Don had seen his daughters the previous day, she took a knife from the kitchen and lunged at him.

He had a large cut on his torso.

To top it off, she immediately called the police and alleged that he attempted to hit her.

The end result was that Don was evicted from his house. This was the house that he paid for exclusively, including all the household furniture, give that Leung only owned a car at the time.

This couple has now divorced.

As events unfolded, Leung claimed the bank account of the couple (circa $80,000), and fought bitterly over the house.

She eventually agreed to a 50% spilt on the value of the house, but kept all the furniture and the bank account. Don simply couldn't fight this any longer, and so agreed.

Interestingly, one week after separation, a new man moved in with Leung. He too was an older anglo male. They too are now separated and in legal conflict as well.

When I first met Leung, both Ms B and I agreed that she was a leech, a gold digger. We both approached Don separately and asked him to think through his marriage plans carefully, because leung was making some comments not in keeping with someone who was genuinely in love.

Don listened to know one, but simply wanted to tell us how he could't stop thinking about his lovely Leung.

I mention this because there seems to be a high divorce rate amongst inter racial couples in Australia, especially amongst the Anglo-Chinese variety.

And Don and Leung's situation is mild given what I have recently heard about another couple.

...more on that next.

Its a Sport thing

I realised early on in my relationship that Ms B had absolutely no interest in Sport.

She does not follow it, she does not play it, she simply has no interest in it.

I remember asking her to attend a Rugby league State of Origin game many years ago, and after reluctantly agreeing, she wanted to leave at half time, because it was "too loud." The fact that it was a remarkably exciting game escaped her. We did stay however and witnessed an amazing last minute victory by Queensland.

This evening I was looking forward to attending a boxing match between Australia's very own Danny Green, a great boxer who was the underdog, against a man who is widely regarded as the best boxer, pound for pound ever, Roy Jones Jr.

Well, try as I may to get some of Ms B's male Chinese acquaintances to tag along, it was a no go. I simply went with my mates and although it was a very short match, it was well worth it.

Danny Green beat Roy Jones Jnr inside the first round. Spectacular stuff!

While driving back home I called Ms B to let her know that I was on my way, and I just happened to mention that the Australian boxer, Danny Green, the man I (and most of Australia) was supporting, had won in spectacular style.

Ms B's response to me was: "Did you win any money?"

I said "No."


Then Ms B said, "So why do you care who won?"

Well, its just sport, and sometimes its just about enjoying the competition, but I guess this is a male thing, so I just told her that I should be home soon.

Introduction

This is my first post on what I hope will be my opportunity to explore my interacial relatiotionship.

I am a father of one living in Australia. I am of anglo heritage. My wife is of chinese heritage. She was in fact born in mainland china and migrated to Australia soon after the tianemen square incident.

We met professionally. I am a medical practitioner and she is an accountant. I needed to find a new accountant, and well, as they say...

Anyway, we met, developed a relationship, got married and had a child (actually, she got pregnant first).

Now, this all hapenned quite smoothy, as I would imagine is the case with most relationships.

Once the honeymoon was over though, I realised that there were cultural differences between us, so much so that it has progressively caused more and more tension within our relationship.

I think my error was that because I saw a woman who dressed as a westerner, and seemed to participate in the same leisurely activities as a westerner, I assumed that her values would also be the same.

Well, this is definitely not the case. In fact had I known that there would be such significant cultural differences between us, I would have thought twice about entering a relationship to begin with.

So this blog is an exploration of those cultural differences, in a brutally honest fashion.