KIND OF LIKE A DANCE

If you are reading this, it may not be entirely influential or dramatically helpful to your lives, but for couples today – getting married and moving across the world with your new husband or wife is something relatively easy and yet extremely daunting all in the same. If I try to think of what it must have been like when my sweet, but crude granny upped and left her home town in Cyprus to pursue my very handsome granddad on his way to Africa (on a ship no less), I look back at our situation and thank my lucky stars for the internet.

Yes, modern technologies that make things like Skype, Facebook, Whatsapp, text messages and even something as simple as a phone call possible, make living life abroad that much more effortless. However, being a newlywed and living so far away from your family, your support system, can make life that much tougher.

Most couples these days do the ‘lets-try-this-out-first’ thing, and move in together before the mere thought of a ring gets involved. Getting married is sometimes seen as too austere a commitment to begin with and then, there is always the chance of the not-to-be-mentioned ‘D word’ showing its face, since, of course… if it doesn’t work out, you can just get divorced, right? Wrong! Even though divorce shouldn’t be something of a contingency plan, it should definitely be something that you talk about to ensure that you are both on the same page.

Contrary to most couples, we never lived together before 2014. In actual fact, the whole while we were dating we lived more than 6 hours away from each other. Some thought we were crazy getting married when we did, others simply thought I was pregnant and that we were having a shotgun wedding since it was so sudden – but sorry to disappoint folks, there is no baby. No, Sean and I simply realized that we wanted to spend our lives together, without the option of divorce.

We didn’t exactly have our own place after we got married either. We were married on the 8th of January, on the 9th we started a 4 week course in order to move to Korea and on that very day we moved in with an extraordinarily generous friend of ours. 4 weeks later we stepped off the 18 hour flight, and were herded like cattle into a 2 hour bus ride to spend a week at orientation. Jet lagged and exceedingly overwhelmed, we sat through the 8 hours a day of lectures aching for some LONG awaited, highly anticipated and extremely overdue alone time.

A week later and we were chaperoned to our new apartment, said goodbye to our new Co-teachers and left all alone. Finally. Let our primal instincts take over! My entire body, from the tips of my toes to the last hair follicle on my head lusted for my partner, my lover. But it was not to be, we were in a new country, a fresh city, a novel home, time to explore.

Some people hear the word newlywed, and immediately you can see alarm bells go off in their heads and their brains automatically leap to the thought of our - the newlyweds’ very personal sexual lives shifting into overdrive. I am one of those people. I honestly thought that now we were alone together in our own apartment for a whole year, possibly longer, that it would be a year of constant, mind blowing sex (sorry to my family members who might be reading this). The thing is, it is literally our first time truly getting to intimately know each other; without a constant stream of friends, work, family or anything really to divert our attention. I wasn’t utterly wrong, but I wasn’t completely right either.

I am sure the other foreigners we met thought the same things. People would ask what our plans were for the evening, or the weekend or even the next week - when we sadly declined - that nervous giggle would involuntarily leak out of their mouths and that subtle yet not so subtle wink would escape them, and we knew that they thought we would be, for lack of a better word, banging all day long. The thing is, as much as we all want it to be, life is not a movie, it is real, it is tangible and there is far more to it.

As I mentioned, we were new to this living together alone thing, so most of our time was spent getting to know each other’s habits, getting to hate some of these habits and then finally getting over them (no one is perfect J). Slowly becoming accustomed to fitting our own movements in with our significant others’ – kind of like a dance. We were learning how to Waltz to our own music. The good thing is that all this dancing led to many great adventures which I hope, if you are reading this, you will follow in our upcoming posts.

Anyway, coming back from my tangent: Is starting a life in a new country beyond reach? Hell no! But it sure as shit isn’t a walk in the park either. Something incredibly vital to remember; is that although you are newly married and attached at the hip – some things you don’t always have to do together. Despite the fact that you now form a uniquely extraordinary unit, you are both still exceptional individuals, interested in your own things and your own hobbies. You have your own likes and dislikes, your own opinions, own hopes and dreams. Be understanding and give each other space to breathe, and it will all work out in the end.

Written by Sophia Phieros

#southafrica #southkorea #travelling #newlyweds #couples #marriage #movingtoanewcountry #gettingmarried #korea