"I got married and went on a honeymoon in China. We were both PhD students at the time. I was from the working class, and her family was middle class. Her father gave her $10,000 for the honeymoon. So we went to China to celebrate, and she wanted to do some light pre-dissertation research while there for a month or two. It turns out I spent the entire two months alone in tiny hostels while she did research. I only spoke a few words of Mandarin, and I was a broke graduate student, so I couldn't really afford to/didn't have the means to easily get to an airport to fly back home (I also had 0 family support back home, even if I did manage to make it home)."
"I felt trapped. I talked to her about how the trip felt like a research trip, not at all like a honeymoon, and how I was alone almost every day. We were sharing a laptop while on the trip (I was too poor to own a laptop despite being in grad school). I opened the laptop one morning before she left to go survey a field site without me. Her email was open. She left a message open on the laptop. It's to her father, stating she wishes I wasn't there on the trip - our honeymoon. Again, I was told this would be a honeymoon w/ maybe a slight detour for research. It turned out to be a research trip where I was a burden. She apologized. We stayed together for a few more years after she got sick and I became a caretaker. I wish, in hindsight, I had left China after reading that email."
"On the wedding day. She spent a fortune on unnecessary things, and I knew I'd be the one fitting the bill on the credit card she ran up. So."
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