why i Never Loved my ex Wife [ffbMLkx70Is]

I don't think I actually ever loved my

wife. Even from day one, I don't think

there were ever any feelings of love. And

maybe it's kind of harsh to say that, but

I think it's just the truth. People kept

asking me back then, why do you love your

wife? Do you love your wife? And I kept

struggling to answer that question. And

the reason why is because I just didn't

actually love her. So you might be

wondering, why did I agree to getting

married with her? And I stayed with her

for almost over 2 years even though I

didn't love her. Well, that's what I want

to talk about in today's video. Okay, so

first of all, it was not my idea to get

married. There were some rumors flying

around saying that I begged her to marry

me because I was desperate to stay in

Japan. That is not true at all. It wasn't

my idea to get married. It was her idea.

I just brought up the idea of getting

married. So this is what happened. I was

actually only planning to stay in Japan

for 3 months, and, and I was planning to

go to South Korea and stay there for a few

months before heading back home to the UK.

But nearing the end of my 90-day stay in

Japan, Chihiro started asking me a lot of

questions questions like, do you think you

could live in Japan? Would you like to

live in Japan long-term? And I said yes,

because obviously one of my biggest dreams

in life ever since I was about 17 was to

be able to live in Japan. But I had kind

of given up on this dream to live in Japan

because I realized it's actually very

difficult to try and get a visa in Japan

if you're going to get a job and have to

work there. So I said to her, yes, I would

love to live in Japan. And then she asked

me, how would that be possible? So I

started listing off the different ways

that I could stay in Japan long-term. I

said there's student visa. I could apply

to a language school. There's work visa,

but then I'd have to get a job. There's

the working holiday visa, but I've already

done that. And then finally there's a

marriage visa. And she seemed to really

love the idea of us getting the marriage

visa. It was the easiest way. It was the

cheapest way to get me a visa to stay in

Japan. So she said, what do you think

about marriage? And I said, I guess I'd be

okay with it. There was no grand proposal.

She didn't get down on one knee and say,

Daniel, will you marry me? I didn't

propose. There was just nothing like that.

It was very casual. She just said, do you

want to get married? And I was like,

okay. Actually, I didn't really think or

feel like the marriage was actually going

to go through. I thought something's going

to happen along the way to prevent this

from actually happening, because this

happened before. Back in 2014, I nearly

got married to another Japanese woman. I

got very close to marrying a previous

girlfriend, but it didn't actually go

through because we had lots of arguments

and fights before doing the next step to

actually get married. So in the back of my

mind, I kept thinking Yeah, this marriage

is not actually going to happen.

Something is going to happen along the way

to prevent it from happening. I was kind

of surprised at how shockingly easy it was

to get married. You just sign a piece of

paper and then it's done, and then you

wait for a bit. And I didn't really want

to get married, to be honest. And the idea

of getting married kind of scared me, and

I felt like I was trapped with her now.

But I was too scared to say no. After I

said okay to getting married, I wasn't

able to then say, actually, I changed my

mind, because that would upset her a lot.

And I don't really like to upset people.

I don't really know why I wasn't super

crazy about her. I think she was really

nice and I could tell she really loved me

and she was not bad looking. She was more

attractive than 90% of my ex-girlfriends,

but she just didn't quite look like the

kind of Japanese woman that I fantasized

about. The age gap was also something I

wasn't super happy about. I didn't really

want to be in a relationship with someone

8 years older than me because eventually

she would be in her 40s and I'd still be

in my 30s and it would kind of look like

I'm hanging out with my mum or something.

I remember after we got married and the

whole thing was finalized, we went to this

river and we walked around this river.

And then on the way back home, I was

thinking to myself, oh crap, I'm actually

married now. This is going to be the rest

of my life forever. I made my bed, now

I've got to lay in it, I guess. And I

really felt this feeling of dread and

despair. I kind of felt pity for her

because from the very first day I could

tell that she really liked me and I kind

of had her, and I felt sad for her because

I knew this was not going to end well. So

I tried to make the best out of a bad

situation, and I thought to myself, okay,

this is not so bad. There's a few reasons

why getting married was actually a good

decision. Number one, I get to finally

live in Japan now. Got a visa. I didn't

have to do all the hard stuff like getting

an education, going to university,

becoming an English teacher, and getting a

work visa the long hard way that 90% of

foreigners in Japan have to go through to

be able to live in Japan. I kind of felt

like I lucked out in a way. I felt like I

got this golden ticket that allowed me

entry into this forbidden land that I

wasn't able to enter before because I

didn't have the work ethic or the drive to

be able to get a job in Japan and actually

hold on to it. I felt kind of smug because

I found a way to achieve my dream of

living in Japan and getting a visa the

easy way, or so I thought. I also really

didn't want to live with my parents

anymore. I was 27 or 28. I spent my entire

life and my entire adult life almost

living with my parents. And I was getting

kind of fed up and I could tell they were

getting fed up. They didn't explicitly

tell me to get a job, but I could tell

they were getting kind of annoyed that I

didn't just get a job and move out. So I

felt like it's about time that I should

move out and find my own life, create my

own home, and find a partner to settle

down with. So I thought for those reasons

as well, it was a good idea to get married

and not have to go back to living with my

parents. The idea of being a 30-year-old

or in my 40s and still living with my mum

and dad kind of terrified me. Things were

also getting kind of tense back home. My

dad was getting more and more annoyed and

irritated with me not getting a job and

just sitting around doing online surveys

or selling wooden boxes on eBay, making

like 50 pence an hour. So not wanting to

go back home and live with my parents

anymore was a big motivating factor,

helping me to decide to try and stick with

the marriage and not just ditch on the

first date. But there's actually a second

reason why I thought getting married was a

good idea, and it was probably a bigger

and stronger reason than the first reason,

and that was for YouTube content. I

thought getting married would be a great

way to get people interested in my channel

and it'll be a great idea for content. It

was around the end of 2017, beginning of

2018, I started to notice my channel

started to gain a lot of traction and

people were finding the channel more and

more. People were really interested in my

personal life. Life and my relationships,

and they saw me as this kind of quiet,

nerdy, weird guy who wasn't very good with

women, living in his parents' house,

who's now moved to Japan, who managed to

get himself a girlfriend and move in with

her. And I thought the best next step to

this saga or storyline would be to get

married. Imagine the shock on everyone's

faces when I suddenly release a video

announcing that I'm getting married to my

girlfriend, and it did so well. It got

over 100,000 views, which was like 10

times or 15 times more than what I was

usually getting. It was such a great

storyline. I couldn't have written a

better storyline myself. It was just easy

because it was actually happening. This

wasn't like a fictional story or something

I sat there at night writing out the

details for. It was my actual life

happening and playing out, even though I

wasn't really doing much to influence the

direction it was going in. So it was like

a great story seeing this character

development of a loser guy move out of his

parents' home, grow his own wings,

conquer his fears, and find the love of

his life, and then settle down in Japan,

one of the most popular countries in the

entire world. Well, in the entire

internet, Japan's very popular. Everyone

is interested in Japan. There's so many

people who are interested in moving to

Japan and living there. And it was just

such great timing. It was a few years

before the pandemic happened, so I had no

limitations on being able to move about.

I was still quite young, like 28, 29. I

still had that spark of life and optimism

inside of me, which has kind of fizzled

out now that I'm older now. It was like

the stars were aligning. Everything was so

perfect. The timing was great. The

location was great. My age was great, and

I still had pretty good energy and

optimism when it came to trying to become

a big name on YouTube. I felt like I

already had my foot in the door and people

loved it. They were so interested in my

married life and moving to Japan and life

in Japan. And at that point I thought,

yeah, getting married was a really good

idea actually. But then after we got

married and things settled down and I

settled into married life, I think most

people who are married can agree with me

when I say that day-to-day married life is

kind of boring and dull and uneventful.

And I found it really hard to maintain the

interest in my channel just from

documenting my daily married life. It was

getting boring and People were not

watching anymore and the views were

dropping, and I panicked, and I had to

think quickly, how can I get people to

come back and stay interested? The easiest

answer to that was drama. The only reason

the marriage lasted that long was because

of the drama and because of how good the

views were. I kept going back to her even

though I knew it was a mistake and I knew

it was going to end eventually anyway,

but I kept going back to her and I kept

trying to keep the marriage afloat.

Because the views were so good and people

were still very interested even after a

year of drama. And I knew that if I left

the marriage and I didn't have anything

interesting to pivot into, like a new

relationship, then people would just lose

interest. You see, during 2018 and '19,

basically everything I did was

meticulously planned and calculated in

order to maintain maximum interest in my

channel. And sometimes I had great ideas,

sometimes I didn't have very good ideas.

So the days in between uploads, I would

just be thinking for days, trying to

think, what's the best next step? What

should I do next? Another argument?

Another cheating thing? Maybe I pretend to

get kicked out again and stay a night in a

hotel. I had to think very carefully if

the benefits and advantages outweigh the

costs or not, if I go ahead with this

video idea. And it was like a delicate

dance like a delicate ballet on eggshells,

tiptoeing around. If I say this thing,

would it upset too many people? If I do

this idea, will people think it's fake and

all scripted and then leave the channel,

not watch anymore? Everything had to be

thought out very carefully, and sometimes

I made really bad decisions, like the

whole pretending to get divorced and, oh,

I'm kicked out now. That was kind of a

silly idea, and because of Elvis the

Alien, I had to come clean and admit the

whole thing was fake. And that probably

did irreparable damage to the channel. I

had a taste of what it must be like to be

a story writer for some kind of drama

sitcom or soap opera on the TV. You know

that UK show called EastEnders? You

probably don't know it, but it's like a

bunch of degens who live in London and

there's constant drama and the writers

must constantly have to think of plotlines

and character development. And it was so

difficult, endlessly trying to churn out

storylines and different drama. So the

viewers wouldn't get bored or frustrated

was very difficult and too difficult for

me. Eventually I just ran out of ideas and

I couldn't do it anymore. I just wasn't

intelligent or clever enough to be able to

play that game. It used to really annoy me

when people criticized my videos for being

low effort, very minimal editing, didn't

use expensive gear, didn't have like a

team, a cameraman or anything, all shot on

a phone camera. And they thought it was

all low effort and poor quality, but they

never appreciated or even realized the

amount of effort and the amount of

thinking I had to put into each and every

video. I had to think every single minute

of every single day. I had to put insane

amounts of hours and time and effort into

thinking, okay, which direction is the

story going to take us in this week?

What's the next video going to be about?

What storyline? What plotline? What

characters can I use? People thought I was

just sitting around in Japan doing

nothing, playing video games all day,

being bored, when they don't even know

that every single day I had to spend

thinking and busting my brains off trying

to think what videos to make in this

episodical series that is the soap opera

of my life in Japan. And then finally,

after about 2 years of this, I started to

get burned out. I just couldn't do it

anymore. It became impossible. And then

added on to the fact that people were

losing interest even with the drama— it

was around the end of 2019, I think, with

the Hong Kong guy drama— and even with all

the theatrics of that series, they're only

getting— the videos were only getting like

30k views, down from 50 or 60k views

from the previous year's drama. And I

started to notice, yeah, there's not much

left I can do with this marriage. Even

with all the drama and the cheating and

the craziness like smashing her door

glass, I was only getting 30 to 40k views,

and I could see the views dropping and

dropping and dropping down to even 20k

views. And at that point, I thought to

myself, Yeah, I think it's about time to

ditch the marriage. It's not really worth

it anymore. It's not worth spending

hundreds of dollars on Shinkansen bullet

trains and hotel fees and love dolls

trying to make this exciting content when

it was only making me about $250 per

video. I was actually losing money doing

this, and it was causing me a lot of

stress in my own personal life with all

the fighting and the arguing. My mum

messaged me, calling me a horrible son,

all this stuff. It was extremely stressful

for me. So the beginning of 2020 comes,

and I'm very stressed out. I'm very tired.

I don't have any ideas. There's not really

anything to talk about. There's no drama.

I see the views dropping below 20K for the

first time ever, and it freaks me out. I

don't have the energy to create any more

drama anymore. I'm just tired of it. I

want something new, something fresh,

something that's authentic. So when the

opportunity came to get divorced

I just said, okay, let's get divorced.

I'm done. Let's, let's go. Let's finish

it. Let's end it. And I grabbed it by the

neck, the opportunity that is to get

divorced. And I thought, thank God, now I

can just jump from this sinking ship into

another sinking ship. And it was a gamble,

you know, because I didn't have anything

lined up. I just had a vague idea of what

I wanted to do, which was to travel, to

meet viewers, to try and find a new

girlfriend, to continue this drama series.

And luckily it did work out because you

know what happened after in 2020, and I

managed to get like a whole new toxic

relationship to create drama out of. So if

you want to know the easy short answer as

to why the channel became boring, why I

don't do this drama stuff anymore and

create like a storyline, is because it

was no longer profitable anymore. It was

costing me more money to make this stuff

and costing me a lot of stress and mental

distress to make this stuff than it was

worth doing it. Anymore. If it was— I

mean, trust me, if it was getting millions

of views and I was making like $50,000

every month, I would still be doing that

stuff today. It's just it didn't work,

did it? It was not a popular form of

content. It never got more than 100K views

after the initial marriage announcement,

and it was just like a downhill— like a

slow downhill descent and decay into just

becoming irrelevant. And I could see it

coming, and I decided that Yeah, I don't

want to do this anymore. In an alternate

reality, imagine I stayed with the

marriage, and in order to make the

marriage work, I would have had to make

massive compromises. Chihiro wanted me to

stop talking on Discord because that was

causing a lot of arguments. She wanted me

to stop talking about her, stop talking

about us, stop talking about drama on

videos, stop making drama for videos, and

obviously stop cheating. So I had to stop

doing all of the things things that made

the channel interesting in the first

place. And yeah, I could have stopped all

that and had like a happy, boring

marriage, and then the channel would have

become what the channel has become now.

Basically, you see the amount of decay and

how much the channel has died off nowadays

compared to how it used to be. And you

know why? It's because it has none of the

things that was making the channel

interesting back in the day. There's no

drama, there's no toxicity, There's barely

any cheating, and when there was cheating,

I didn't make a video about it. I'm not

doing any of the things I used to do now,

and that's why the channel has fell off.

And the reason why I'm not doing it is

because, like I said earlier, it's no

longer profitable, and the amounts of

money I would have to spend on hotels and

flights to travel here and travel there

would not outweigh the amount of extra

money I would get from the slightly extra

views I would get if I go back to the

drama ways. You see the current state of

my channel now and how dead it is, and how

bored people got of the channel. This is

exactly what would have happened if I

stayed in the marriage and I tried to make

the marriage work by not doing drama and

not causing arguments. And I tried to be a

nice, normal husband. Another reason why I

got fed up with all the drama and trying

to maintain what the channel was all about

was because I found out I could get

similar views or even sometimes more views

just by talking about video games and tech

and smartphones and gaming stuff, I

realized there's other ways to get views

on YouTube that don't require you to

completely destroy your entire life and

relationship and go through all the stress

of being a one-man story writing team all

by yourself. I don't really enjoy story

writing, and I'm not really a passionate

story writer who's like really into

creating characters and plotlines. That's

not really something I care deeply about.

I was only really invested in doing it at

the time because it worked so well. And

there were fun parts of it, such as

creating this character for myself to

play, this annoying, stupid,

irresponsible man-child, man-baby who just

complains about everything and blames

everyone else for all of the problems in

his life and doesn't take any kind of

responsibility or accountability. I find

it kind of funny that everyone— I managed

to convince everyone so strongly that that

was actually me, and they couldn't see

that I was playing a character. At some

point, the character and the persona— I

mean, I did kind of become the character,

and I find it difficult nowadays— well, I

found it difficult to kind of separate the

real me from the persona because they kind

of merged at some point. They became one

person. It's kind of like having a split

personality. I had my true self, my real

life self, that I know deep down I

understand what I am. And then I have my

on-screen self, the character and the

persona of— I guess you could call him

Danny Boy, which is what the viewers used

to like to call him. I had that character,

that role that I played, and I played it

so well to the point where I even

believed, wait, maybe that is me at some

points. But anyway, I'm starting to

realize that I'm just rambling on and on

and on about something that's not even

anything to do with what this video is

supposed to be about, which is why I

didn't love my ex-wife. So I think we'll

end the video here. Thanks for listening

and goodbye.