jak

Yeah, exactly. I love Germany, but I don’t think it loves me back.

I’m not sure how you intended your first line, but it bristles a bit. Especially given that my comment started off explaining that Germans tend to dismiss the difficulties of immigration.

Things are very different city to city (as your wife is probably aware if she has any immigrants as friends), and the differences aren’t what you’d think. I have a couple of Arab friends in Halle, who get two year visas in the middle of their studies that basically get rubber stamp approved. Köln, on the other hand can be awful in terms of bureaucracy. I’m in a big college town, so a lot of international students live here and the office is totally overloaded (the university is not new, they should have hired more people in the fifties and kept up with immigration), but unlike Berlin, they are less likely to grant you residence because of that.

I’m still waiting on permanent residence, ideally it will be easier after that. I have to visit or call the Ausländeramt multiple times to make sure that they actually process my renewals (which they do for only a semester at a time because of Uni), including reassembling documents (bank statements, insurance, school status) for them every six months. They can’t give me permanent residence yet, because they fucked up the paperwork on our marriage license, listing me incorrectly, so they have to reprocess things. I assume they’ll forget until I remind them again at least twice, and then there will be at least one more fuckup before things get pushed through.

I suspect it’s more that the requirements are lower and the buildings are on average older than in Yakutsk, which contribute to less effective insulation.

I love small gods and nobody ever talks about it

I love being an immigrant in Germany. I’m white and not Ukrainian though, so my experience is mostly Germans telling me that this would never apply to me, then spending on average two hours a month to stay legal here, even though I’m fluent in German, pursuing a master’s degree in German language education, and married to a German. It’s honestly not a lot of time, but it’s constant. Then, if I ever fuck up, I get deported.

Pufferfish poison can cause zombification

That’s the benefit of English- it’s not Latin and can ignore Latin-derived grammar rules

It’s a standing desk!

I do understand how you want that. I would prefer not to, though. I’m still lonely, if someone is taking advantage of me, I just don’t know it yet. I also don’t know if people expect others to be as bad as they have been in my experience.

Before I met my husband, I dated people among others who: stole my medication from me and then resold it to me, lied to me about whether they were fit to come to my country (he didn’t tell me he had paranoid schizophrenia before he left his whole support network and came to a country whose language he couldn’t speak and where he could not work), and one who murdered his mom (before we dated, but I found out during).

It took a long time to start dating again after each of those, obviously. I don’t know how I could protect myself more while still dating though. I had friends vet profiles with me and meet people sooner rather than later, but it didn’t help much.

I know how wild that sounds, but honestly I’m a relatively attractive woman with no ability to tell if someone’s trying to trick me. It’s tough, lol. I’m glad I haven’t been trafficked. I’m very excited to be in my early thirties now, because people expect me to be a better judge of character and they’re less likely to try shit. I also come off a little jaded (because I’m not dumb, I just don’t notice if people are lying)- for example, I would never try the autistic dating app, because that’s a gold mine for someone looking to trick their date. I would love to date like that, I just couldn’t trust it.

All that said, men are obviously dangerously lonely, and I understand that it’s a real, serious problem. I’m sorry you’re in that situation, it sounds awful.

(Advice if you want it, though no offense taken if you don’t want it from me 😅) Do you have close female family members (around your age) or friends (male friends’ SOs count)? I second having a woman go through your profile and picture options. Or even the autistic dating app, because not everyone is as suspicious of it as I am and you’re in a less statistically vulnerable position (though if you’re rich, maybe don’t make that clear?).

And on the other side, I’m a terrible judge of character, so getting bombarded by messages felt like walking into a car dealership- I knew the majority of what I heard was probably dishonesty, but I couldn’t figure out what.

I ended up exclusively looking for keywords instead of charisma, and figured I’d assess a spark in person. Thankfully my husband referenced magic the gathering, banjo, cats, and bondage (he just listed that he was a rigger, no crass jokes or sexualization), so I figured he was either casting a wide net or telling the truth about his interests.

It really is. I’ve asked all of the immigrants I know if there’s a word for “end of shift” and an accompanying common greeting in their language, but so far, nobody except Germans does it.

In Germany, people wish you a happy close as a business, or a happy end of shift. Every time I work nights, I wish customers a happy close of business 🤦