celebrating 30yrs married to an Algerian man

Submitted by silver (United Kingdom), Nov 9, 2008 at 15:31

First of all I just want to ask you why you went ahead and married this person, as it sounds like he was a total jerk from when you first met him. When did you get married and are you still with him now?
I've been reading the posts on this site from women involved with Algerian, Moroccan, Turkish, Tunisian ......men and a lot of of them appear to have the same warning bells ringing - control, deceit, manipulation, dishonesty are to name but a few. If these signs are showing in any relationship, no matter the religion, culture or whether you met online or at your local pub, then surely common sense tells you that it's time to get out of the situation.

I met my husband (Algerian) way back in the late 70's when he was studying here in Britain. I visited Algeria a few times before we married to get to know the family and his sister and brother came to Britain to meet my family before we got married. We moved over to Algeria when he finished his studies and probably would still be living there now if the political situation in the late 80's had not become too dangerous for me to continue living there. Algeria went through many years of internal terrorism where 1000's of people were slaughtered, raped, beheaded .... and it was safer for me to return to Britain with our children.

But my time spent living there was a good experience, my husband's family were and still are fantastic, they treated me with great respect and went out of their way to help me adapt to the lifestyle changes that living in a different country/culture brought. I learned the language and integrated into daily life with very few problems. Oh, I was homesick, especially in the early days when I was pregnant with our first child but they helped me through these times with their love and support. I made my own friends outside the family and could get out and about on my own without difficulty. Not once did they expect me to change my views, character, morals, values, behaviour etc nor did they expect me to become muslim, cover my head or change the way I dressed. Yes, they informed me about Islam but did not push me into accepting this as my faith, they knew I had no religious interest whatsoever.

My husband and I are still together, we will celebrate 30yrs marriage next year. We have had our difficult times like most married couples do, but we worked through these together to build a strong life together. We have 3 well adapted children (male and female) whom we both encourage to live their own lifes, make their own choices, travel and live life to the full.

My point in writing my story is that there can be sucessfull marriages between different cultures/religions BUT if I had seen any of the warning signs in my relationship that appear in many of the posts in this site then there is no way I would have gone any further.
So to all you ladies that are considering marrying someone you hardly know, or have doubts about just be very careful. My marriage has worked and is still going strong but I had an English friend when living in Algeria who had a very different experience to mine and lived a life of hell.

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