New Lifetime Milestone : Married

Today’s blogpost will be a more personal one…

August has passed and the last weekend of August has been an exciting weekend for myself, my family and friends. First of all, we gave our second Financial Education class to our kids about compound interest. Not an easy topic to teach… but we succeeded in  our objective. We will check later this year what they remembered and still master the compound interest principle.

Secondly August was exciting because I got married. My daughter made this nice LEGO church as surprise for us. As you might or might not know, I got divorced several years ago. A decision which had a big impact on my life but it was a necessary step to refind my happiness and mental health.

I won’t go in detail on the reasons why the marriage failed as the past is the past. Sometimes you have to start over again and go two, three steps backwards before going forward again in life. The divorce decision was tough for myself, the kids, no doubt…and the family but when my son said during our first summer vacation that he saw his dad smile again and be happy without his mom, I realized the right decision was made and kids felt the difference. An unhappy marriage weights also on kids !

So the divorce definitely created a hole in my pocket and cut away more than 30% away from my net worth. During the past years I mainly focussed on the kids’ happiness and creating a financial survival plan. I started to study Spanish and Ukranian language and invested a lot of time studying investing strategies. I can say I master now 5,5 languagues. Ukrainian is tough as they change all endings of all words. However I am happy that I can read cyrillic alphabet and words now.

During one of my travels to South- America, I did meet a special lady that owns this amazing smile I was looking for and shining eyes when she was looking at me. But a relationship doesn’t drive on looks…read below our story…

The challenges of a long-distance relationship

Long distance relationships are HARD. Dealing with the separation that is involved in a long distance relationship, coupled with the hardship of seeing your cross-country lover once or twice a year can take a toll on anyone. Separation is hard and can put enormous pressure on a relationship. But you can allow the distance to make the relationship strained or not. We quickly realized that being together would build the foundation within our relationship and allow us to find out whether the relationship could work longterm, whether we shared the same life goals,etc…

We faced of course some long distance relationship problems when we were apart. They can be grouped under three broad categories:

1. Communication problems
2. Relationship problems
3. Psychological problems

Communication is an important ingredient of all relationships. Especially so, in the case of a long distance relationship, where you can’t see the expression on your partner’s face or establish some form of physical contact as a communicative gesture, say, a comforting hug or holding hands as a token of reassurance. Additionally we had a language barrier. I spoke very basic Spanish and she spoke basic English. This led to the situation that we had a hate/love relationship with Google translate and were dependent on technology. Over time my Spanish improved quickly and today we speak Spanish to each other. However even today it still leads to hilarious and awkward situations.

During the summer vacation we were in a restaurant reviewing the menu. I said to my girlfriend “Nos podemos eligir los dos y partagomos…(In English – we can chose two menus and share them?) My girlfriend did not understand. It seemed that the word “partagar” did not exist in Spanish as it is “compartir”. Lot’s of laughter…Sometimes when I don’t know the Spanish word, I invent a Spanish one which ressembles the French one…It always leads to a nice big smile which is worth it !

Spending majority of our time apart inevitably causes long distance partners to lead lives that are distinctly separate and not necessarily similar in quality to one another. As such, it would have been possible that we would grow apart. But we tried to limit the time apart as much as possible and we stroke a fine balance between growing together as well as individually, so as to avert the possibility of growing apart.

The most difficult part of a long distance relationship is the impact that the physical separation has on one’s mental health. The emotional problems of a long distance relationship are the most daunting challenge of a long distance equation and some of the psychological problems of the long distance relationship are anxiety, insecurity and loneliness.

Uncertainty is the most common issue of a long distance relationship. This uncertainty about the relationship’s direction and the absence of a set of mutually-agreed upon goals can cause the relationship to be ripped apart. However from the start we were and still are both very committed to a romantic relationship with no end in sight.

Patience, trust, endurance, a strong sense of commitment and frequent visits along with an effective, healthy communication has been the key to success for tackling the problems and challenges of a long distance relationship. Emotional fulfillment, strong connection and a deep bond of intimacy helped us to thrive the relationship. So I can state that a long distance relationship can work. It just takes a bit of effort and faith on your part.

The BIG Decision

Before getting married, you don’t only need a solid love relationship but you also need to know each other. People often relate the time of a relationship with the “level of depth from a relationship”. Of course a couple that is 40 years together, will know each other better than a couple that is only 2 years together, but that doesn’t mean anything about the connection between the two people or the depth of the relationship. Many partners live together for the sake of it as none of them wants, can’t or fears breaking apart and starting over again. Many unhappy marriages exist today…why would partners cheat on each other otherwise?

What can I recommend people who are not married yet? Well,…if I would create a “checklist” for our kids when they would consider to marry, I would say the following three recommendations :

1. Do you love each other and do you share the same values?
2. Do you share the same life objectives as your partner?
3. Do you share the same financial objectives as your future life partner?

If one partner wants to buy a big house of 500k and put the couple in large debt, while the other partner wants to focus on living frugal with financial freedom in mind, you have two opposing objectives. A relationship doomed to fail, right?

Write down “Before I die…I want to ” and check how much you share and want to support each other.

I proposed to my girlfriend at the top of the Eiffeltower during our Paris City Trip. When I proposed on my knees, I felt like a rockstar as all the tourists around us, took pictures with flash. Flashes all over….thank God there was a champagne bar at the top level. A moment to cherish forever.

The bumpy road to get married

Once engaged, we decided to marry in her country, Colombia. So we started the journey to collect all paperwork at the Belgian county. Also a copy of my international passport had to be legalized (apostille) by the Belgian Ministery of Foreign Affairs. The crazy part is that a notary has to type over all content of your international passport and put a stamp and signature under it. Pure Kafka !

Once all documents were signed by Belgian legalislation, they got translated in Spanish. In Colombia the process was even more bureaucratic. One notary decided that maybe there was some money to be made….and they did not deliver the documents for free. It got so bad that all paperwork became expired….and we had to reprocess all documents in Belgium and retranslate and reprocess. However this time we hired a trustworthy lawyer to take care of all affairs and paperwork. Guess what…the same notary gave the documents within a week after some yelling . Amazing isn’it? The process took four and a half months for the first process, only two weeks the second time. Imagine that!

Once all paperwork was confirmed to be legally correct we could set a date for the marriage.

Final Reflection – We did it !

At the end of August, we got married in a hacienda outside of Bogota. This hacienda situated in  a beautiful mountain landcape, had a beautiful church and charming wedding party building. My family and friends travelled to Colombia to celebrate with my wife’s family and friends. My girlfriends’ son and my kids had already met before.

On Monday we married officially for a Colombian notary. During the official legal part, we hired a legal representative translator that converted all Spanish in English. One misunderstanding could have led to a cancellation of the marriage otherwise…

A lot of changes will occur for my wife and her son in the near future. We will support them both in every endeavour and objective as we are now a family of five. Please find a picture of my beautiful wife on the right hand side. We share the same life and financial objectives built on common shared family and love values. Together we want to achieve financial freedom as soon as possible and educate our kids how to manage money wisely and be respectful warm loving adults in the future.

We are very happy and hope to be 100 years old together…

Thanks for reading our story to the end. As always we end with a quote.