The Break-Up

Shoko and I broke up last week. It was probably a long time coming, but I had managed to fool myself by ignoring all the warning signs.

The cracks first began to appear about 2 years ago. After we made an informal promise to get married to each other, the plan was that I would go back to America ahead of Shoko so I could start looking for work and get a job lined up before she arrived. Shoko was very worried about the money, so she wanted to stay at her current job until July of the next summer. This would give her one year to save up as much money as she could before moving to America. It was also important for her to stay until the summer bonus in July, because Japanese companies give out a significant percentage (close to half) of the company salary in the form of bonuses.

I was not wild about the time apart. Since I was returning to America in May, this meant over a year apart until next July. I was worried about the strain that would put on the relationship, and I was worried about just being plain lonely in the interim. But Shoko was firmly decided on this point, and I did understand her concerns about the money.

(We talked about the idea of trying to visit each other during this time, but international flights would somewhat defeat the purpose of saving money. So we were looking at over a year with only e-mails and a weekly phone call. (Shoko, more so than me, was concerned about running up a phone bill, so we tried to limit our time on the phone as well)).

A few months after I was back in America, Shoko had decided to push the date back even farther. "I've been talking to my co-workers," she said on the telephone. "And they all agreed it would be so stupid to quit in July. Then I wouldn't get the December bonus. It would be such a waste to quit just 6 months short of that bonus."

"But that's close to 2 years apart," I said. "I'm not sure we could survive that. It's a lot of strain on any relationship. Plus if you decide to wait for the December bonus, then there's no cut off point. By the time you got to December, then you'd only be 6 months away from the July bonus again."
But Shoko refused to be budged on this point. She was worried about the money, so she would wait until the December 2008 bonus.

....So, I decided to go back to Japan. Well, why not? What was one more year? The decision to leave after 5 years instead of 6 years was fairly arbitrary in the first place.

And it's not like I was doing anything important back home at the time. I was overjoyed about being back in America, (and spending time with friends, eating pizza, browsing English bookstores,etc), but I still had no clearer idea of what I wanted to do with my life than I did when I left for Japan 5 years earlier at the age of 23.

I had hoped that once I got back to America and started settling into life, things would sort themselves out. And even now I like to think that if I had stayed in America and given it a serious effort, eventually it would have worked out. But at the time I was still struggling, and so it seemed an easy decision to go back to Japan. I sent out a couple of applications and video introductions and went for an interview with Nova in Chicago. And decided in the end to go with NOVA. (There were really only a couple choices in Shoko's area). Having lived in Japan, I had heard all NOVA the horror stories of course, but a job was a job, and I figured it would do well enough for a year or so while I decided what I wanted to do with my life.

In the meantime I got a job working at Meijers (just as something to keep me busy). Once the fall started, I got a job teaching English to migrant workers, and dropped Meijers down to part time. When the teaching job finished after a couple of months, I remained part time at Meijers. They had already hired more staff, so it wasn't easy to return to full time. And to tell you the truth, I didn't mind so much. That job bored the hell out of me anyway, and I was perfectly happy waiting out my last couple months on cruise control until NOVA would be able to ship me back to Japan in January.

Shoko was not so happy about it. She began to get increasingly uneasy and say things like, "I really hoped your laziness would improve once you got a change of scenery. But now you're just living at your parent's house and working part time at the supermarket. This is almost as bad as when you were staying at my apartment and watching videos all day. How are you going to support me in America when you can't even find a real job?"

I got angry about this, and it must be admitted that part of the reason I got upset was that it was partially accurate. I was overly complacent to be under employed. If I had really gotten off my ass, maybe I could have found another job in the 2 and a half months I had left in the U.S.

....One the other hand, she knew very well the reason I didn't have a real job is because I had turned down 2 teaching jobs offers in order to return to Japan and be with her. And she knew it because I had consulted about this with her on the phone ahead of time, and we both agreed that the best thing for the relationship would be for me to return to Japan for the time being. So the accusation that I couldn't find a job in America was totally baseless. I tried to remind her of this several times, but it never seemed to sink in. Every time she got worked up she would forget about it. I would point it out one week, but the next week I would still be back to "the boy who couldn't find a real job in his home country."

As for the accusation of watching videos all day in her apartment: well, again, there is an element of truth here. There were four times when I was staying at Shoko's apartment for extended periods of time. (August 2004 when I was between jobs, Spring Break 2005, August 2005-summer break, and April 2006, after finishing my job in Gifu. ) During this time it must be admitted that I was somewhat at loose ends for how to occupy myself. For the record I didn't watch videos the whole time. (You can search my blog archives for detailed descriptions of my various other activities). But I did - watch - a lot of videos, about one a day, sometimes more.

In my defense:
*There wasn't a lot else to do in Hita. It was a rural town, there was nothing there and nothing to do, I knew absolutely no one there, and it was too hot to go hiking around in the blazing Kyushu summer heat.

*This was scheduled time off of work because of the school year. I didn't ask for this much time off, it was just given to me. Whether I used this time to relax and watch videos, or whether I was wrestling polar bears in the Arctic, my pay and financial stability would be the same. (In fact arguably the staying put and doing nothing vacation was a lot better for my finances).

* I had gotten rid of my TV in my own apartment long ago. So this was literally the only time during the year when I even had the option of being able to watch videos.

*...and lastly, being stuck in Shoko's apartment in a hick town in the middle of nowhere wasn't a barrel of monkey's for me either. The reason I did it repeatedly is because I thought it was important for the relationship. Those 4 times were the only periods in which we spent any significant amount of time together. Even when we both lived in Oita prefecture, her apartment in Hita was an hour and a half drive from my place. Plus even if one of us made the drive, I worked during the week days and she worked weekends. Once I went up to Gifu, we managed to see each other no more than once every two months. If we were lucky. Sometimes it was as long as half a year between meetings. I figured the relationship would never have survived without me spending the summers at her place.
So, I sacrificed my paid holidays to hang out with Shoko in the middle of nowhere. I did my best to occupy myself during the day without complaining, and I was happy just to have the evenings with her and her days off.

.... As I talked to Shoko on the phone now, I began to realize that far from appreciating this gesture, she had actually resented it. I knew that because she said, "I really resented the way you got to stay home and watch videos all day while I had to go to work."

If I had only known my sacrifice was not only going completely unappreciated, but it was making the relationship worse. Think of all the other things I could have done with that time off! I mean, the mind boggles at the possibilities. I think of what my co-workers did: the scuba diving, the trips to Thailand, the backpacking in Europe! And here I find out, long after that vacation is gone and used up, that she resented it! And she waits till now to tell me this!

But what can you do? It's not like you can appeal to an outside authority on the matter: "Your Honour, I move that since I was under the impression it was what she wanted, and since the statute of limitations has clearly expired, the court has no choice but to count the time spent as a credit to the relationship, and not a detriment."
No, when you're in a relationship, and all you want is the other person's approval, all you can do is apologize. I made a brief attempt to make her see my point of view, and then I had to apologize to her for sacrificing my vacation time at her apartment.

Nor was this the last word on the subject. Shoko had been reading several books warning about the dangers of international marriages. According to these books, many Japanese woman marry American English teachers in Japan, and then return with them to America only to discover that the whole reason they had been in Japan in the first place was because they can't find good jobs in their own countries. I had to spend a lot of time reassuring her on these points, even though I was already planning on coming to Japan.

All of this resurfaced the first night I came back to in Japan. Shortly after we moved me into our new apartment, she started crying. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'm not sure if I love you anymore," she answered.

Oh, great! You couldn't have mentioned this before I turned down to teaching offers, quit my job (such as it was) said good-bye to all my friends and family, bought a plane ticket, and flew half way around the world! And now I'm supposed to try and comfort you on this point?
But what can you do? So I rubbed her back and gave her the usual "there, there's" and only afterward suggested to her she was being unfair to me: that she should have mentioned this before I came to Japan, or else kept her mouth shut about it for a few more weeks until she had made up her mind one way or the other.

Over the next few days, I turned on the Swagman charm and within days she was feeling a lot better about the whole thing, and after a few weeks we were even joking about it. "Remember that time I came all the way back to Japan to be with you, and I had barely even gotten off the plane when you told me you didn't think you loved me anymore? Ah, fun times!"
When I first came back to Japan, the original plan was we would still return to the States, just delay it by a year. Shoko exacted one promise from me: that I wouldn't ask her to quit her job unless I had some stable income already lined up in the US. She had a job with a large salary (a lot more than I made teaching English) and in Japan once you leave the workplace, it is very difficult to return, and almost impossible to return at your previous salary. So she needed proof of stability before she made that jump on faith.

And it was an entirely reasonable request. I couldn't reasonably ask her to quit her job unless I knew what I was going to do in America. It was now time to face the age old problem that has haunted me all my adult life: what do I want to do?

My degree was in teaching, but I had never been very enthusiastic about that from the start and now I was positive I didn't want to do it. After teaching English for so long in Japan, I was sick of kids, sick of classroom control, sick of yelling. And this was Japan! God knows what would await me at some inner city school in the US. Plus every one I knew in education was complaining about government bureaucracy, No Child left Behind, and endless paperwork.
But most of all, the idea of being a teacher was something from my younger days, when I had imagined my shyness and social awkwardness would shed off as I became an adult, and I would become an energetic, extroverted, decisive adult figure who could handle rowdy kids, angry parents,and the other stresses of teaching. Now well into my adult hood, I'm just as shy and socially awkward as ever, and perhaps teaching isn't the best route for me.

I had no interest in the world of business. Although at this point I would certainly have done it eagerly enough for a decent paycheck. But I knew plenty of history majors back home who were struggling to get jobs, and applying instead for telemarketing jobs. (For that matter I knew business majors who couldn't get jobs in business, and joined the army instead).

I had long fantasized about social activist work, but when I was back in the activist scene in Grand Rapids last year I realized most of these people were working for almost no money at all. It was not the kind of job that would promise Shoko the life she wanted. (And that's even if I did get hired. Despite my enthusiasm for various causes, I have little practical skills to offer these organizations).

Then there was the old dream of pursuing a graduate degree in history. Which most of the time I recognized for what it was: a dream. It was 4 years of hard work and financial instability, at the end of which was no guarantee of a job. I had heard the horror stories from all the graduate school drop outs who teach English in Asia. I had even mentioned it to Calvin career services when I made an appointment with them last summer, and they tried to talk me out of it. Still, history was the only thing I was interested in, and whenever pressed about career goals, I would usually answer I had graduate school in the back of my mind.

On the whole, it looked less and less likely I would be able to get away from Japan. But maybe Japan wasn't that bad. My job had its ups and downs, but on the whole it was a nice combination of all the pleasures of teaching (human interaction, helping people) with few of the downsides (classroom control, paperwork, lesson preparation).

Every once and a while I would get homesick, or get a dangerous delusion of self-importance that I was destined for greater things than teaching English in a small rural town in Japan. But more and more I was beginning to resign myself to life in Japan. If I could be with the person I loved, how bad could it be?

The first bump in this road happened when Shoko began telling me she would love to quit her job and become a housewife, if only my salary could support it. And my current salary (roughly $25,000 a year) couldn't support a family, as Shoko repeatedly pointed out to me. She also contrasted my salary with the other eligible Japanese business men she knew, and how much more money she would have if she was marrying one of them.

This was a bit of a surprise, because up until now Shoko had always maintained she wanted to have a life outside of the house and it was important to her to continue working in some form or another where ever our lives might lead us. So, in all my economic calculations until now, I had only worried about supporting her in the event we moved to America. The idea that I should support her in Japan really complicated things. Especially since the job options for a foreigner in the Japanese countryside are rather limited.

There was also another misunderstanding that would grow more and more serious. Shoko saw my chances for success in grad school and eventually a University professorship. I saw grad school as a pipe dream I would talk about whenever I felt tired of the job I was doing now. This turned out to be a serious communication error.
I had mistakenly thought that the desire to return to America and go into grad school was mine entirely, and that Shoko would be just as happy (probably more happy) to stay in Japan. I never realized that she viewed my going to grad school as her ticket out of the work force.

Thus throughout that year, Shoko would ask me, "Are you researching grad schools like we talked about?"
And I would answer something like, "Yeah, yeah." By which I meant I was occasionally thinking about it in a dreamy eyed way over a cup of coffee during my noon lunch. Sometimes it seemed tempting. Usually all the difficulties associated with it convinced me I'd be just as happy staying where I was. Again, I was thinking this was entirely my decision to make, and Shoko would just sigh with relief when I told her I had decided against grad school after all.

Then, one day in the fall, she asked me what schools I was thinking about attending next year. "Next year?" I said. "Oh no no no, next year is way too soon. Now is the time of year where I would have to be wrapping up applications, and I haven't even started. And I would need to get letters of recommendation, study for the GRE test, take the GRE test, talk to professors, etc. I couldn't possibly apply for next year already."

This lead to fireworks like you wouldn't believe. I was never fully forgiven for this. "You told me all these months that you were researching this," Shoko yelled. "And I believed you. What you were really doing was just thinking about it! Anyone could think about it! A smart person researches it while they think about it! I had everything all planned out. We were going to get married this year. Then you were going to start grad school in the fall! I was going to pregnant right before you started studying, so that by the time the baby came around you would already have one year done, and then I could get a year maternity leave and come to America with you. Then I would go back to Japan the third year and get pregnant again....
But all this is ruined now because you lied to me when you said you were researching this. I can't trust you at all."

This was, by the way, not a fight that lasted just one night. This went on for weeks during which I had to beg forgiveness nightly. She threatened to leave me then, unless I would promise to somehow manage to apply for grad school this year. So I promised. I ordered a whole bunch of books off of amazon about GREs and grad school and started working my way through them.

And, if things aren't bad enough, Nova goes bankrupt in October, and for the next 3 months I am officially the unemployed boyfriend, sponging off of his girlfriend's salary.

I already detailed the drama that went on in those months in a seperate post over here:
How none of us were sure if we would get our jobs back or not.
How Shoko wanted me to start up my own company, but I was resistant to doing it.
How we were going to work with another couple to set up our own company, but then Shoko had a falling out with them and wanted me to go solo.
And how finally, when she gave me the option of starting my own company, going to grad school, or getting kicked out of the apartment, I chose to go to grad school.

But, as I also wrote before, I changed the plan. This time I was thinking about going into Japanese history. It wasn't my first love, but it would allow me to build on the past 6 years of living in Japan, it would allow me to study in Japan (taking the financial burdern off of supporting Shoko) and if all else fails, hopefully the Japanese language skills might lead to other job options if I failed as an academic.

This was assuming of course I had Japanse language skills. The programs I looked into were English based, but I tried to convince Shoko it would be pure folly to attempt to study Japanese history at the graduate level without some fluency in the Japanese language. "But it says right on the website it's an English program," Shoko said.

"Trust me," I said, "I can't expect to be competitive in the field of Japanese history without being first competent in the language."

Shoko was very reluctant to agree to this because it meant delaying grad school by yet another year. "Remember we're not so young anymore," she said. "You'll be 30 this spring. You can't delay any longer."
She also refused to believe that Japanese language proficiency would in itself be beneficial. "I hope you're not thinking if you learn Japanese you can get a lot of jobs," she said. "Because you can't. Japanese fluency by itself will at best just get you some low paid entrance position in a Japanese company." (Well, on this point she might well be right. I can't begin to count the amount of people who have much better Japanese than I do and are little better off financially).

Eventually Shoko agreed that I could take the Japanese language course. With the promise that I would continue working while I did it.

Regular readers of this blog of course know that I was eventually successfully in re-arranging my schedule at Nova, and the Japanese language course began about 2 months ago. I have since been exhausted just about everyday.

You would think all this hard work on my part would have alleviated our problems somewhat. But instead things only began to intensify. Shoko began to become more and more uneasy about my prospects at grad school. She repeated to me all the things I had said the previous fall about why I was ambivalent about going, and the horror stories about trying to find secure work as an academic. I shared these concerns, but at this point I had decided this was the path I was committed on, so I gave half hearted rebuttals. It was extremely discouraging to have committed to this course, only to have someone at your side telling you constantly why you couldn't do it. Shoko, for her part, was being continually set upon by her friends and her mother, who were telling her to break up with me because I couldn't possibly have a reliable future.

"But you don't know anything about Japanese history," Shoko repeatedly reminded me. "How do you expect to get into grad school?"

I countered that I was trying to study it in my free time now. But this was a weak argument, because I had no free time.
The irony was I would have loved to sit down with a bunch of textbooks and some snacks and really read up on Japanese history. But I had absolutely no time to do this. I didn't really even have time to keep up with my daily homework. Shoko was also reminding me that I should be researching grad school departments and studying for the GRE test at the same time.

I was searching for various ways to cut my work load down. My first proposal to quit my job was rejected outright and angrily by Shoko. (I wasn't thinking I'd quit working all together, but simply trying to make a go of it teaching private lessons. Shoko was strongly against this.)

Next I asked Nova if they could at least scale down my hours. They said since they were sponsering my visa, I would need to work full time. However If I got my visa changed to a student visa it might be possible.
But In order to get a student visa I would have needed to pay $1000 in entrance fees to the school. (This had been initially waved for me because I was on a working visa). The school suggested that if I was planning on getting married this year anyway, I get a spousal visa instead.

Shoko was strongly against cutting down my hours by even one lesson. Nor did she want me to quit the private lessons I was currently doing. (I have been teaching the daughter of one of her co-workers, and I had picked up a few more private lessons during the time Nova was bankrupt). I tried to tell Shoko I couldn't keep this up and I would have to quit one or the other.

Shoko, on the other hand, was having more and more doubts about the relationship, and would at times cry, at times angrily burst out at me about how little progress I had made researching grad schools, and at times just be stonily silent.

On top of all this, the car broke down and we had to go shopping for a new car. By which I mean primarily Shoko had to go shopping for a new car, because I was busy from 6 Am to 9 PM pretty much 7 days a week.

I began to feel like something had to give. Either I had to cut down on my hours at work, or I had to give up my private lessons, or I had to move closer to Beppu and cut out this 2 hour and 40 minute commute that I was making 5 days a week.

One Friday I got home after an exhausting day of driving back and forth to Beppu, going to school from 9 to 3, and teaching 5 classes in the evening. I wanted to talk to Shoko then, but she was already asleep when I got back.

So I waited for the next day. It was Saturday, I taught 9 lessons at work, and then had to go teach Shoko's co-worker's daughter. I came back again exhausted. Shoko was again asleep, but I woke her up to ask how the search for the car had been. Then I said maybe it would be better if I just got an apartment closer in Beppu so I didn't have to drive a car at all, and maybe the money I would save on car, gas, and insurance would even itself out. Shoko began getting upset again. So finally I said, "Look, if you want to break up with me, it's okay. I'm tired."

She agreed with amazing rapidity. And immediately begin talking about how soon I would move out of the apartment.

I regretted the words as soon as they had been said, but they were said. I guess I'll always wonder what would have happened if I hadn't opened my mouth.

I tried to put the break on things a little bit. "Look, there's no need to move out tomorrow," I said. "Why don't we think about things for a week? We can always break up later." But she responded firmly that she was decided.

While I figured out where I would live, she decided to move back to her mother's house and leave the apartment temporarily to me. But it took her a week before she decided she had enough energy to put up with the hassle of moving. It was a long painful week in which we were living in the same apartment, but she avoided talking to me as much as possible, and I felt like my guts were slowly being ripped out of my stomach. I couldn't concentrate on school, I couldn't concentrate at work, all I could think about was, "she's leaving me, because I don't make enough money."

It was a painful situation to begin with, but the sense of powerlessness made it worse. I tried everything I could think of. I promised to never complain about my work load again. I promised to cut down on my sleep even more, and use the extra time to research my future for an hour every night before going to bed. I made up a list of 15 promises, promising ever single thing I could think of. At every point Shoko just responded, "I told you my mind is made up. The only reason I haven't moved out already is because I haven't had time."

I tried pleading with her, but Shoko said, "Look, if you lose your confidence over this and become pathetic, you're only going to get more unattractive."

I tried to do everything for her I could think of, but she said, "stop treating me like a princess. The problem was never how you treated me. The problem is about your future."

"Look, graduate school isn't that important," I said. "I'll just stay and work at Nova. Lot's of Nova teachers get married to Japanese women and raise a family here in Japan and are perfectly happy doing it."

"On that salary, their wives must have to work also," Shoko responded.

The more I tried to talk to her about what was going on, the angrier she got whenever the subject was brought up, and told me she was sick of talking about the same things over and over again.

"Please try and be a little bit nicer to me," I said at one point. "I came all away around the world and re-arranged my whole life to be with you."

"I know," she said, "and that was so stupid. A man should never re-arrange his life for a girlfriend."
...Well, at present I guess I'm in no state to disagree with this. But I said to her that if she felt so strongly about this, the time to have mentioned it was BEFORE I had come over.

"A Japanese man would never have left everything for a girlfriend," Shoko continued. "The man's purpose is to find a good job and beome financially stable. Then the girlfriend will come to him."

Obviously this is a partially a culture clash, but part of this is universal as well. I seem to have severely underestimated how big a part financial stability plays in being able to form long term relationships. How naive I've been all these years. (Feminist jargon may make a man sound enlightened at a cocktail party, but woe be to the man stupid enough to actually take it seriously).

I wish to hell the break up had been over any other reason besides money, and my inability to promise her financial security. It makes me feel like a failure at life.

Although she did add at one point, "It's not your fault. Partly I'm just tired of dating a foreigner. You can't do anything by yourself in this country. When you get registered for health insurance, or when you buy a car, or when you do anything, I always have to come along to help you understand. In most relationships the man is supposed to do things for the woman, not the other way around."
This didn't make me feel any better actually. In fact it made me feel worse because it was another factor outside of my control.
I said I had asked for her help because I thought it would be easier to have a native Japanese person by my side, but I could probably have struggled through alone. I promised in the future I would never ask her help for anything, but, like all my other promises, it didn't do me any good.

I'm not exactly sure where things stand right now to be honest. Shoko told me that part of her still loves me, and she wants some time apart to think about things. As part of this arrangement, I had to promise to continue at my present job, continue going to school, and continue all my private lessons as pre-conditions for her even considering getting back together with me. So I promised to continue.

However during this time she also said we were officially broken up, and free to date other people while we thought about the future. (Which, may I just say, is a lot nicer deal for her than it is for me. Under the schedule I've agreed to continue, she knows damn well I wouldn't have time to date anyone else even if I wanted to.) I told her I didn't think I could handle her dating other people, but she said, "Think of us as already being broke up and finished. With just the possibility of getting back together. If I wasn't free to date other people, that would defeat the whole purpose of being broke up."

She then added, "If I look at things from a coldly rational standpoint though, I can't see any reason why I should get back together with you."
The frustrating thing is she's probably right.

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