Nobody likes a brake-up, especially when it comes at the end of deep, stormy, 8-year relationships. Add to that the respective ages of the people involved: both being above 40 and 50 at the time… But everybody loves a story that ends with finding true love and getting married 3 months after that.
Read on for the true love story of Nur & Askin.
Names: Nur & Askin
Status: Married
Been together since: 2009
I had a fortune teller read my coffee cup years ago. She told me my husband’s name would begin with an ‘a’ and that I would have 3 children. At the time I was deeply in love with a man whose name did have an ‘a’ in it but it was the last, not the first, letter of his name.
It was a very long lasting, tumultuous, deep kind of love that went on for 8 years. I kept asking myself if this was the real thing or not. It was a difficult question to answer.
I am highly intuitive and my dreams are often prophetic giving me a clue of what awaits. I had actually dreamt about this and seen that it was not going to work out with him but I was way too deeply in love. I conveniently decided to ignore that dream.
For the first three years of the relationship this love had me blinded. No matter what he did, I just didn’t see it. After the first three years I started to open my eyes a little but it was way too late by then; I was in too deep and he was an addiction to me that I just couldn’t let go of.
They say that logic and love can’t go hand-in-hand. I have seen this time and time again: Love walks in through the door and logic flies right out the window. Even if you see things, you feel them, you just don’t want to believe them. You delude yourself saying, “Oh, he couldn’t possibly…”
Plus, the thought of starting all over again, getting to know someone, getting acquainted with their ways… it felt like such an arduous task. I didn’t feel like I could go there. So out of habit the relationship continued, but how far can habit carry a relationship?
I wanted to have children, to have a family. We were actually engaged but he had no intention of getting married. It was such a dead end road…
I’m an artist. I sell my crafts at the weekly artisan’s fair in Karsiyaka, Izmir. I ended up becoming quite good friends with the lady in the stand next to me. She was older than myself. Our conversations were wonderful: Deep and very inspiring.
I was still engaged at that point but our journey was about to end – I could feel it coming.
This friend of mine that I liked so much had a brother whom I didn’t like at all. His name was Askin. He used to drop by frequently to help his sister set up or pack up her stand.
You had to see him – he loved himself and he hardly smiled. I found him to be utterly annoying. He said ‘Hi’ when he felt like it and ignored you if he didn’t – so arrogant. I found nothing endearing about him to say the least.
My fiancee used to drop by sometimes. They used to greet each other and say, “hello”. Askin was just over 50 but he had a different girlfriend with him every time and they were always from one foreign country or the other.
Meanwhile, the sales were still going strong and we were all there every week but Askin I and had hardly exchanged more than a few words at that point.
Then a pretty big year-end event was announced. It was to take place in Bostanli, another neighborhood in Izmir, and it was to last 15 days. It was going to be massive event: Huge tents were going up and there were going to be artisans, celebrities, concerts, live music – it was going to be great!
The stands were really quite big. Myself and my friend decided to participate and share a stand.
How the little things influence the bigger picture: My friend is not a morning person and thus not an early riser so she would arrive only in the afternoon. As a result, it was now her annoying brother’s job to fill in for her every morning until she arrived.
That’s how I ended up having to share my stand with this man that I really couldn’t stand!
He told me later: His opinion of me at that point wasn’t too different to my opinion of him. He also found me to be a rather arrogant, annoying, conceited know-it-all. He would look at me and think, ‘I could never be with a woman like that.’ So we were both not exactly crazy about each other.
My relationship had just ended 2 weeks prior to that. It was still a very fresh brake-up but I was coping surprisingly well. I guess it would have been very different if we had broken up during our first few years but I guess the relationship had run its course. And for me, when it’s over, it’s over! I had been able to get over my addiction immediately.
Coming back to my friend’s brother Askin, here we were both pre-annoyed with each other but were having to share the same space. We had absolutely no choice. We were both acting civilized and making conversation. So it began with polite, unenthusiastic, ‘Hello’s and ‘How are you’s.
Then came the gozleme (a type of Turkish pastry) and the teas.
It now became our routine: Every morning we would have gozleme and drink some tea.
Next thing we know, we’re exchanging life stories.
Then the next thing after that, we see that the more we exchange stories, the more incredible it gets as our lives were so amazingly similar.
We had both just gotten out of very long, very deep, 8 year relationships. They had also broken up for similar reasons: They had stopped liking each other, the love started to vanish, the problems had started to get out of hand and eventually the relationship had ended.
We didn’t hold anything back, we told each other everything. He had also never gotten married. He had never liked the idea of marriage and still didn’t have any intentions of ever getting married.
This is where we differed as I had a burning desire to get married and to experience motherhood as soon as I could.
We had these long, deep conversations every morning as we ate our gozleme and sipped our teas. I told him all about my dreams and disappointments in life, everything. I poured my heart out to him.
It wasn’t just our past, our love affairs and our general outlook, even our hopes for the future were the same. Everything except the marriage part that is.
I started noticing a change in my heart, it was alive again. I started to slowly but surely start developing feelings for him.
I was looking at him and thinking, ‘We’re so well suited, he’d be such an excellent match for me,’ but there he was telling me how he had no intentions of ever getting married.
So this was the month of December. We were nearing the end of the year. Those 15 days went by quickly with us having deep conversations as friends. The event ended. Askin had a 2 week trip planned to the far east and off he went. We couldn’t see each other but he did call me a few times for a chat.
It was cold outside but I was harboring the warmest of feelings. I just couldn’t open up and admit it though. Oh, all those things I had told myself about how he was so arrogant and how he was so not my type – I just couldn’t take it all back now, could I?
January came. He finally returned from his holiday. We met up and went to the movies. He was a gentleman and didn’t try any of the old tricks like trying to hold my hand. We went to a cafe right after the movie.
That’s where he made ‘that’ announcement.
He said, “Even though I had no intentions of ever doing this, I decided I’m getting married on the 19th of May,” right out of the blue.
I almost choked on my tea! I was so stunned I could hardly get single a word out.
I barely managed to say, “What do you mean?”
‘Yes, exactly that. I’m getting married. I have no idea with whom but I have a feeling I will find someone by then.”
So he has the intention but he hasn’t found the person. This made me quite mad – there I was sitting right in front of his nose, wanting to marry him, the man of my dreams, and he didn’t see me! I was choked up, unable to open up and tell him how I felt!
On the one hand I was too shocked to digest what had just been said but I also had a very quiet voice telling me that this might be a joke and I was the truth hidden behind it.
A little while after this conversation he took me to his sister’s house.
As he three of us were sitting chatting, Askin told his sister the same thing.
“I’ve decided: I’m getting married on the 19th of May,” he said.
His sister was also in shock. When she managed to say, “With whom?!” I also jumped straight in, “Yeah, with whom?!”
He turned to me and said, “With you of course, who else?”
Now we were double shocked! Apparently he had also always told his family he had no intentions of ever getting married. Nobody expected to hear those words from him ever.
And talk about a sudden change of heart: We had met in December, had tea and gozleme for 15 days, had been on one date to go to the movies followed by a cup of tea at a cafe and hadn’t crossed the lines of friendship. It was now mid January and here he was saying we would get married on the 19th of May. Alrighty then!
He said let’s get engaged on the 5th of April.
We got engaged on the 5th of April.
Since the 19th of May is a national holiday in Turkey all venues were booked.
So we got married on the 30th of May instead.
So just like it said in my coffee cup, I ended up getting married to a man whose name started with an ‘a’. And just like they told me, I almost had 3 children. I was actually pregnant with triplets but I lost 2 of my babies during pregnancy. Our lovely daughter is now 5 and a half years old. So everything they predicted actually came true.
We just finished our seventh year and just celebrated our anniversary. I finally am happy and peaceful.
A man who is responsible, conscious and considerate already knows what his intentions are towards a woman very early on in the relationship. He always knows if he intends to marry a woman or not. If you are under the age of 30 perhaps it makes sense to wait for 2 or 3 years. But it would be a big mistake to wait for someone for more than 3 years if you are past your 30’s.
If I knew then what I know now, I would never wait for the outcome of a relationship for more than 3 years. It is such a shame, all those years just gone, never to return.
Looking back, I see how all my other relationships had so much drama. This story was more like a fairy tale, like Cinderella, in three months we met and got straight to the living happily ever after phase.
You must be asking what in the world happened to make this man change his mind. That was also the first question on my mind.
When I asked him how come the idea of marriage had never appealed to him he said, “Everyone I came across was normal. None of them ever inspired the feeling of marriage in me so I thought I just wasn’t the marrying kind. I didn’t realize I actually did want a marriage partner but wanted a different type of marriage and a different type of a wife. Seems I needed to have a woman who was a little on the crazy side but the realization only hit me when I met you at the age of 51.”
If I was between the ages of 18 to 25, I wouldn’t have gotten married so quickly but I was over 40 by the time we met. I had already experienced all that is to be experienced, seen what I should and had become wiser with a few solid lessons in life tucked under my belt.
By the time you are over 40, you are more mature, your character is better developed and you have a different outlook. Perhaps this is why marriages that take place over a certain age are healthier and longer lasting.
We didn’t receive any negative reactions to our sudden decision to get married. Our friends and family were very excited and supportive telling us how well suited we were. They even told us there was no need to wait for three months and to go ahead and marry immediately. They all saw us as pieces of a jigsaw – we fit together perfectly to complete the picture.
What advice do you have for anyone who is looking for love?
You don’t look for love, love will come and find you. If you found it when you looked for it all love stories would have a happy ending.
And it’s also important to know what you mean by love: Marriage or not. That’s quite important.
It’s very rare that one will marry the big love of their life. Even if this does happen, it’s very rare that this goes on forever. Divorce follows in a maximum of 2 years. So it’s not important to find love, it’s important to know how long you wish to keep it going.
What advice do you have for couples going through a hard time?
Depends on what you mean by ‘a hard time’.
If one of them has lost the love, the love of only the other one will not be able to carry a relationship forward for too long. A relationship needs to be fed with love on both sides. Or it will die.
My suggestion in this case would be for the one who has lost the feelings to sit down and openly explain this to the other partner and to button this up and move on. There is no point in perpetuating the suffering for either one of them.
If the problem is financial and both sides still love each other then the problem will resolve itself anyway.
Of course, age comes into play again here. From what I have observed, the reason for most of the marriages of people aged 18 to 25 to hit the rocks seems to be finances. They can’t get their expectations met and cannot wait either. They have no patience.
But if you are over 40 and know what you expect from a relationship, if you have figured out what will suit your character, if you have sprinkled this with common sense, there is a very high probability that your relationship will be durable and healthy.
One thing I have learnt about love is…
As someone who has experienced love in the extremes, I say love is a magical four letter word which is quite unreal.
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Read about our previous couple Zeliha & Howard
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