Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Imagining love

Jo who is Catholic met Bob a Muslim while he was visiting the US with a tourist VISA. Bob who is in his mid twenties courted Jo who is forty years old and viola! Two months later they were married. When I met Jo a little over a year ago they had been married for less than one year and she was asking for advice on what to do with him. He had cheated on her multiple times and then moved to living with his Jewish mistress while she lived in an apartment with two roommates. Jo very rarely saw Bob as he didn’t sleep with her and spent most of his time with his friends in bars and clubs. Bob couldn’t hold a job because he couldn’t communicate in English so Jo was the primary breadwinner and took care of him financially through all of this.

Jo was convinced that Bob loved her and that he was rebelling because he had never lived away from his parents or culture and that he only wanted to experience western life. Over the past year Jo dedicated herself to learning about Islam, about his culture and reading the Qur’an. She visited Bob’s homeland and made Muslim friends. Throughout this time, she focused on forgetting that Bob was a cheating sack of kaka, a grown man who may have married her for a green card and focused instead on how good looking he was and that he was only doing what young men do.

Over the year that I’ve known her she never once blamed him for anything. The women that he cheating with she always blamed for throwing themselves at him. Never once did she say that he was an asshole and kick him out.

I managed to catch up with Jo just recently and she was wearing a niqab. Her philosophy is that if she is a ‘good’ Muslim woman that he would love her. I didn’t smack her in the head as I was tempted to do, instead I offered her my sympathies.

Over the years this has become quite a common story. Except, it usually goes something like – old and fat western woman meets very young good looking man online. He professes to love her, she sends him money, she goes to his country, marry him and sponsor him to come live with her. Man gets his green card and tells her to bugger off. Woman runs crying to everyone that will listen to her whining about what a bad person he is and that he took advantage of her.

What the heck makes a 40 or a 50 year old woman think that a 25 year old young man that she’s never met is madly in love with her? What makes her so blind that she can’t step back and consider the facts???? Besides the huge age difference, most times there are religious differences - sometimes they can’t even communicate in the same language. Yes, I’ve met women that profess to be in love and the only way they can communicate is using translators.

I know love is supposed to be blind by when the heck did it become stupid as well?

No comments: