Call It What You Will

I did it. Finally. I ended my relationship with my Thai girl. I did it on Facebook and then unfriended her and blocked her other means of communication.

I've been struggling the last few weeks with this decision and weighed my options and did it for the both of us. The timing was right because she is in Buriram for the holidays visiting her parents. She wouldn't be back to see me until the 1st or 2nd of the new year and that would only leave about 4 or 5 occasions to be with her until I return home to Canada on the 15th of January.

Originally I planned to go through the motions of a relationship and maybe get in a couple more episodes of bedtime and tell her it was over once I returned home and was away from her grip or threats of repercussions. Instead I gave her enough respect to tell it to her straight and cut away clean with my conscious intact.

If the truth be known, I should have done it a couple of years ago, and ended this facade of love. I was never in love with her. I was in love with the fantasy of being in love with someone. She just happened to be my best option because she didn't annoy me too much…then.

My Bangkok friends thought on paper that she looked like a great catch. She resembles an Asian Angelina Jolie and me a version of Nicholas Cage, when I had more hair. At least that's what the Asian girls would often tell me, minus the hair part. They were polite enough not to state the obvious.

My friends back home in Canada probably thought I was a loser for not being able to find a girl in my home town. My mother would often say, "Why can't you find a nice Canadian lady your own age?"

I would tell her straight, "because I would need Viagra to have sex with a women my own age, mom."

I don't have Nicholas Cage money, I'm not famous and there are few girls I would find attractive or intellectually stimulating enough that would have me back in Vancouver. At least that's what my Bangkok friends tell me.

The reality is I'm a middle-aged man, and my looks started going about 10 years ago. Luckily I was too oblivious to realize I was losing my hair until 5 years ago, after seeing some photos taken that weren't selfies.

"Do you really want to stop having free sex and have to pay some Chinese massage whore 150 bucks to get you off, because certainly no hottie would do it for free", my friends in Bangkok are quick to remind me.

Perhaps. But maybe not. Maybe I just didn't give it a good enough try and instead listened to others' opinions about how great Thailand is. The food, the weather, and of course don't forget the hotties that love white skin and older men with a little gut happening.

But I've put up with enough of the nonsense and the trade-offs are too much to pay now.

My girl phoned me 5 times in 5 minutes on Friday night when I was playing a game of speed chess online. When I finished the game, I immediately phoned her and she demanded to know, "Where the hell are you and who is there with you, and why didn't you answer my calls?"

Because she was worried that something happened to me and that she cared about me too much.

"You are lucky that I care so much about you", she often reminds me.

When I told her that I was playing chess she started to cry and said that she can't be number 2 in my life and that she demands to be number 1 always. Being number 2 is just not acceptable at all, and I should really be careful. That's what she implied, before she closed her cam and ended the Skype call.

So I started to think about the math a little and what number would I be on her hierarchy of importance and I came up with number 5. Am I willing to be number 5 on her list?

1. King

2. Family

3. Friends

4. Strangers in orange sheets

5. Me (tied with random Thai Nationals)

I would rather be alone and have my freedom from interrogations to do as I please, when I want, any time of the day and night, especially when I pay my own way and have no other support group in Thailand except myself.

I can't even get her to ask directions or a simple question to another Thai person without her putting up a fuss. She would rather flounder around a mall for an hour instead of asking the ticket lady, "When exactly does the movie start" because they often say different than what is posted online to the reality of the theater and there is no standardization for most things in Thailand and I hate to waste my time.

I have been doing nothing wrong. I'm not cheating on her. I'm not talking to other girls. I barely drink. I keep to myself. I rarely go anywhere without her and I have no secret agenda to visit a brothel or cruise for hookers.

And as you know, Stick, as I have admitted to you in the past many times, these activities of which I was once quite manic for are now, I'm thankfully, quite done with this hollow chocolate buzz.

The reality of the situation is that I am in lust of her. I'm into the way she looks, and I like being seen with her and I appreciate the occasional, although begrudging, translation from English to Thai.

She is not in love with me either. She needs to control someone. She is obsessed and has no interest in anything I say if it doesn't involve Thai food, shopping, Hollywood movies, Thai TV drama or especially HER. Virtually nothing I say other then these (and perhaps soccer) excites her in the least.

So now she has had a few hours to let my lasts words sink in, "It's over".

She is currently begging and pleading for another chance, because I decided to leave one avenue of communication open as a warning to her intentions. I suspect I'm going to see her desperate crazy side shortly. Now that she has lost control over her naughty puppy, it might go into "suicide mode". I want to be able to escape my apartment and live out my last 2 weeks in a hotel, if I must.

Oh and isn't this strange. The only other Thai girl on my Skype contact list happens to have just gone online. Humm, the last time she did this (as her history shows) is last April on the exact day when I attempted to break up with my girlfriend. This girl contacted me out of the blue shortly after I returned home from Thailand two years ago. I wonder if it's just a coincidence?

It's not, this is another one of my girlfriend's accounts or a friend of hers trying to entrap me. This girl is nothing but a temptation and test that my girl concocted. My girl is the mastermind behind several of her friend's "boyfriend infidelity traps" through social networks.

This is her standard pattern. My girlfriend is an interrogator and is always looking for clues and jumping to conclusions. Last week there were 3 incidents where she interrogated me with stupid questions on the same day.

1. I had a charger for my shaver in the wall and she wanted to know whose phone charger it was.

2. She picked up a pink lighter from my desk, and held it up like it was a smoking gun and demanded to know whose lighter it was because it was pink.

3. After the movie I wanted to get some food and take the baht bus the last 800 meters to my room but then I decided I wanted to walk because one of the old Thai drunks sat down next to us and wanted to interrogate us about our goings on. She immediately wanted to know what he knows about me and was I worried that he would tell her something about me and some girl.

Enough. I stayed awake that whole night and at 2 AM I said out loud while she was sleeping,

"I'm not happy with you."

She instantly woke up and said, "Did you just say something in your sleep?"

No I said, I said I wasn't happy with you for many of the reasons I've already told you over the course of the last 2.5 months and I want to tell you how you can save our relationship.

She turned over and went back to sleep. The next morning she ignored me and stalled for an hour before leaving to go back to Sri Racha and her job as a kindergarten teacher.

"Are you going to walk me to the street"? she asked.

"No" is all I said.

I didn't think it would be the last time I'd ever see her face to face, but my hope is now that it is.

If it didn't cost me so much money, I would change my flight and leave Thailand today. I'm done with this sawadee "crap". Gone will be the anxiety of visiting a place full of inconsistency and insane petty emotions and national beliefs, void of any intellectual stimulation. It's not worth it. It was all just a dream and I wasted 8 years dwelling on this place when I was here and in Canada. I'm finally free of its and my girlfriend's mind control. Smell ya later, Bangkok….never.

Stickman's thoughts:

I didn't realise that this girl would turn out to be such a nightmare.

I have previously written about how it can be very difficult to move a Thai girl out. Similar can be said when it comes to break-ups. They can become unpredictable and that term "suicide mode" you termed is a good one and in some cases rather apt.

There is an undertone in this email that coincides with what I am sensing more and more amongst expats with a number of years in country. I got it from my good friend, Pattaya Gary, who was in town recently. I got it from a NZ business owner on Sukhumvit last night who has done elegantly well in Bangkok. When things go bad with your girl, if you're honest you will eventually acknowledge that the next one will probably be much the same. It's at that point that you look around and realise that there may not be a lot else for you here. Take the girls out of the equation and perhaps this place isn't quite what you thought it was.

For what it's worth, I would not rush to go back to Canada. Enjoy those last 2 weeks. Spend time with friends you might not get to spend time with again. Visit any favourites places, restaurants, bars and cafes. Buy some more lens cleaning cloth or any other products that may be cheaper or easier to find here than back home….and don't feel the need to rush home because in the back of your mind you're a little concerned that your girlfriend might flip. She'll probably blow a lot of hot air, but that's usually all they do.