The HIV Test

At some point we talked about doing HIV tests on both of us, just to make sure all was well. She said she feared to have been infected with HIV from her previous relations, but hadn't done the test out of fear to get a positive result. When she got pregnant, we asked the doctor to do the test along with the other testing done at the same time. As we left the doctor's office, she talked about how she was sure she was infected, not only that, but that she feared having infected me with it as well, and she felt very bad. I tried to calm her down, and talked about the very low probability of both cases. The doctor had said the result would be due in two days. In those two days she lay mostly in bed, unable to eat, out of worry that the result would be positive. On the day the result should be due, she called me at 8.01 o'clock at work to remind me to call the doctor's office to get the results. After calling several times during the day, it turned out that it would be a couple of more days before the results of the tests were due. She reacted with rage, debasing the Danish health system and the doctor, while at the same time airing her suspicion that either I or the doctor was lying about the result. Mostly she seemed to think that I was lying, and simply did not want to tell her that it had been a positive test. Two days more of waiting, although she seemed to relax a bit more. I finally got the result from the doctor's office - it turned out negative, as I had expected. She was a little relieved, but still wasn't convinced that I wasn't lying to her about the result, thinking that it had been positive, and that I just wanted to spare her the details. For several days she has kept talking about why I don't tell her the truth, alternating with speculation that the result might be a false negative, or that they probably switched the blood samples at the laboratory. Months later she still isn't convinced her test didn't show up positive, and still asks me if I am telling her the truth.

The "Legoland" Incident

My sister had asked if I could drive her and her family to Billund airport when they were going on holiday. I agreed. When it turned out that they would go to the Legoland theme park the day before flying away on holiday, and stay the night at the airport hotel, we talked about maybe going all of us. However the weather turned out to be not very good, and B. was suffering from nausea and vomiting. Before I left home she was barely able to eat or drink, and vomited even the little water she was able to drink. She would cry and point to some tiny red specks in the vomit, saying, "Look, I am vomiting blood!" While giving the impression that she was on the verge of dying, she also said that this was what it was like every day after I went off to work. She went back to bed, and we agreed that I would only take my sister's family to Billund, and not go into the theme park with them.

The day before she had herself said that it would probably take about three hours, as it would take about one hour driving each way, and the rest would be the taken up by the neverending slowness and waiting she was always accusing my family of.

It did indeed take three hours from I left home till I was back again. Some time was spent waiting at my sister's house, some time I was waiting at a supermarket where they had to buy something, and quite a lot of time was spent waiting while they checked in at the airport hotel, dropping off the luggage before going to the theme park. I dropped them off at the theme park, and called B. to say that I was on my way home now, just to get a scolding for taking so long and not being on my way home sooner.

When I got home, she was very angry that I had taken so long, leaving her alone "to die", just for something as unimportant as taking my sister's family to the airport. The final straw to her was on hearing that I hadn't just dropped them off at the airport hotel, but had waited for them, and drived them to the theme park afterwards. I had abandonned her, left her to die miserably, I should have understood that in reality she never wanted me to leave, but rather to tell my sister that they could take themselves to the airport, that I had a wife who was ill, who needed my care. She wanted divorce, she wanted to kill herself, if it wasn't for the baby. She wanted to throw me out of the house, "go live with your mom", but as I refused she instead took her bed linen and her laptop, and moved to the guest room, where she stayed for a couple of hours. Only when she had to go to the bathroom to vomit again did she come out. When she returned from the bathroom she was crawling on all four, and complaining to the dog of how bad I treated her.

Suicide - Threats and attempts

The suicide issue comes up almost every single day, a few times just subtly and unspecific: "I will never return to Brazil alive", "If you ever leave me I don't want to live anymore", "Do you remember what music you promised you would play while pouring my ashes into the sea?" (Whitney Houston, in The Bodyguard). Every fight however - and many times even just a minor disagreement - leads to new and clear threats of suicide.

Different ways she has attempted, or pretended to attempt suicide:

• Pills: She would swallow, or claim to have swallowed, 5-10 Valium. This has happened both in Manaus, Kolding, Lund, and Hovedgård.
• Jumping out of the window: She would open the window and lean out, as if trying to jump, but finally let me pull her back in. She has done this in Kolding, Lund and Dublin.
• Jumping out in front of traffic: She would try to throw herself out in front of a car, while walking along a street, I would hold her back, and she would fight to get free. She has done this in Kolding and Copenhagen.
• Cut a wrist or her throat with a knife: She would take a kitchen knife, or try to break open a Gillette razor in order to extract the blades, and threaten to cut her wrist or her throat with it. She has done this in Kolding, Hovedgård, and Dublin.
• Jumping off a bridge: Talked about jumping off from a bridge (Vejle), which lead me to hide the car keys over night, so she couldn't leave on her own while I was asleep.
• Electrocution: Talked about filling the bathtube with water, sit in it, and dropping the hair dryer into it.
  

Threatening killing me, or us both:
On a few occations she has threatened to kill me: Once in Ireland she put her hands around my throat, as to strangulate me, although she only tried halfheartedly. On the same occation she threatened to disturb me while driving the car, so as to crash us into oncoming traffic and thus kill us both. Other times she has just made vague threats: "I will kill you if you betray me".