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Becoming Dutch

We agreed to have a budget for shopping and her personal expenses. We opened a shared account for that purpose, so that she wouldn't have to ask me for money. In the meantime, I put the money weekly in a teacup. This worked fine. In addition, she had still some money on her own account. It was the first time I took financial responsability for someone. We were not rich, evidently, but we should be able to manage. We were both willing to learn.

She was a beautiful girl and very lively. Everybody around me liked her. I was considered fortunate to have her. And indeed, I was proud. I was proud to have her as my wife. I was proud to give her my name, and I was looking forward to start a family with her, to live with her and have a child together. "I am here to stay", she said on my son's birthday. "I will become a Dutch girl."

A few weeks before the wedding we had a little crisis. I had a strange feeling when sending the cards to my family and friends, formally announcing our wedding. It was not really my style. She was nervous and called people in Paris, her aunt, her analyst and her ex-lover. They reassured her, I believe, by saying that a little stage-fright is a normal thing before a wedding. For some days she thought about going to Paris for the weekend. I was reluctant to let her go, a little paranoid, afraid that the wedding would be postponed or cancelled. For a while her aunt called her daily, telling her how happy everybody was with the marriage.

Actually, she was nervous quite often. She had been taking neuroleptics, anti-depressiva, for several years. She also had been seeing an analyst for years. She stopped seeing the analyst when she came to Amsterdam, and she stopped taking the neuroleptics after a few weeks living with me. Instead, she took ordinary calming pills, in a light dose. When she became nervous, I usually tried to calm her. Making love often helped. Sometimes, I got nervous myself.


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