# Marriage Was a Huge Mistake—But I Cannot Divorce



## chrishansonfan8296 (Mar 21, 2014)

Hello all,
This is my fist post. My story is long and very complicated. Please excuse its length, I will do my best to be brief.
I met my current wife in 2011 when I was studying the Urdu language in Lucknow with the US government (I had been on the same program a year earlier in Oman, studying Arabic). I had gotten very interested in India and Indian culture when I was in Oman due to my contacts with Indian immigrants there. Although I did not like to it admit it at the time I am highly attracted to women with dark skin, dark hair, and more “Eastern” features. Indian women absolutely drive me crazy (I am a white American mutt—I look mostly Greek thanks to my mother). 
We met while we were out walking in a park one day. She fell in love with my instantly, but my feelings took longer to develop for her. I told her that I loved her in the same park we met (how young and stupid I was!). She said she felt the same way, but she wanted me to convert to her religion, Islam. I told her this was not possible, I am a Catholic Christian and I always will be, so we could not be together. But we continued to meet and talk. Eventually I told her that it could not work, I got up, got in a rickshaw, and left. She called me half-way home and begged me to come to see her. We went to the Catholic church in Lucknow and we prayed together. She begged me to stay with her, to at least keep talking to her while I was in Lucknow. In the first of many mistakes, I accepted. The program ended in August and I returned to the States.
Her parents were looking to get her married, something she did not want (she’s very independent and wants her own life and career) so she told me I would have to ask her parents for permission to marry her. I was only 23 (she’s two years old than I, 27 now) and a penniless, indebted student about to graduate with a liberal arts degree that would not get me a job. I did not want to do it, but (another mistake!) there seemed no other way. I ask her parents for marriage Thanksgiving weekend 2011. She was ecstatic, but I was ambivalent. I chalked it up to cultural differences. 
I graduated that year penniless and in debt. I moved back in with my parents and went to work at a restaurant. I saved everything I could to go back to India that summer, to get engaged to her (we would need proof of our engagement for her visa—more on that later). I went back in May and June. In one of the most painful experiences of my life, I abandoned my Catholic faith and pretended to be a Muslim. We also had oral sex, something I had sworn I would wait till marriage for. I felt like I had completely gone beyond my moral boundaries. When I came back I went to confession and did my penance, but I felt far from God. I stopped going to church and praying on a regular basis (a process that had started more than a year earlier when I told her I would lie about my religion to her parents). 
I eventually managed to land a good IT job here in Virginia. I moved up to DC with my uncle who lives there, and started working. Since fiancé visas are rejected more often than marriage visas, and since at the time fiancé visas were taking almost 1 and ½ years to process, we decided to get married first so I could apply for her marriage visa (more later). We got married in August of last year—it took me two months total to actually get the marriage registered in the court there, the official took a disliking to us and made things very difficult—if only he could have been more obstinate). I almost lost my job, but I came back and applied for her visa to come here. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a difficult, long process that takes well over a year (nothing like an “instant green card”—even if you have been married for years and have kids!). The separation has been hard on both of us and I don’t want to explain why it takes so long (or how there is no other way to come here if you’re married). Please see this NYT article for more info on what applying for a spouse visa is like: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/u...grants-extends-visa-wait-for-others.html?_r=0
I applied in November, 1 month after getting back (the total application was several hundred pages long, including all of the evidence etc.). I knew the wait would be long and we’ve been long distance for almost 3 years now but it really got to me this time. That same month I moved out of my uncle’s house in Chevy Chase and moved to Virginia, closer to work and to have my own address for the visa application. The loneliness really got to me. 
In February, when the new numbers for spouse applications at USCIS came out, I saw how slowly they were going and had a nervous breakdown. I thought very seriously about suicide. I am just now starting to come out of the depression. I told my wife during this time that I was thinking about divorce. She had a high blood pressure attack and had to go to the hospital. She said she would kill herself. I relented and told her I did not in fact want this. I have told myself over and over again how much I love her, I have tried to fight myself.
But increasingly it seems like a losing battle. Several people mentioned to me before we got married that she’s not that pretty. I am crazy about Indian women, but several of the most prominent features in most stereotypical Indian beauties, such as long, slender noses and big almond shaped eyes, are missing in her. Even she has admitted this much, and before I proposed to her she often said she did not think she was pretty. I am highly attracted to large hips and big bottoms in women, but she definitely does not have this. Altogether her appearance does bother me. I remember, she told me that when she gets lonely she compares me to other men and always comes to the conclusion that she has the best man of all. When I do this, I regret marrying her. I have tried to convince myself that looks are not important because she loves me and is a good mate. But I am finding this argument less and less convincing. The huge lie we told to her family also bothers me. When they find out, they will cut us off from them. I think about the fact that my children with her will be cut off from a part of their family. I fantasize often about being with a woman whose family accepts me for who I am. 
I told myself, and still do, that valuing such things as the eyes or bottom in a life partner is stupid, she’ll grow old no matter who she is and in the end we’ll all be wrinkled and ugly. But I can’t deny the truth any longer, I want these things in my wife, I want them so badly. I have guilted myself, I have told myself that I am a terrible, shallow person, I have tried to fight it so hard. I have prayed to God to return the love I had for her to my heart. But it’s all for not. I am not very attracted to her and I want to be attracted to my mate. I wish I had never married her. 
But marriage is not a game in India, as she reminded me. She would be a pariah in her social circles as a divorcee. She loves me so much, just talking about this subject made her blood pressure spike so much she had to go to the hospital. I married her, perhaps, out of pity (I tried two other times to leave her and failed—she claims she told me she wanted to end it to, 2 times, but each time she did this she told me she hated herself and I was the only good thing in her life and her whole life would be so miserable without me). Now perhaps I am staying with her for it too. Also I am a Catholic, and I believe in the words of Jesus: “He who divorces his wife and marries commits adultery against the 1st wife.” Although I could theoretically try to get the marriage dissolved through the Petrine privilege, since she is not a baptized Christian, in reality another marriage will probably be never accepted in the eyes of the Church. If I divorce her and find another I will be living in sin for the rest of my life. And I will also have to live with the fact that I divorced her and left her alone in India (the assumption is that I took her virginity, although this is not true, I was not her first, but her family thinks so). Her life would be ruined, and I would be guilty. 
My latest decision, what I think I will stick with, is that I will not divorce her but I will not give her my love either. I will take care of her and provide for her needs and bring her to the States, but I will not have sex or any physical relations with her. If she wants a divorce because of this, that’s her business. I won’t bring children into such a marriage, with what we’ve done so far we are only affecting ourselves. I will not punish our children for our sins. 
When she talks about how she feels for me she uses the Hindi word (we talk in Hindi) ghamanD घमंड, it means a pride that takes pleasure in seeing that what you have is better than what others have. I feel like I am her trophy husband, she proves to the world through me that she’s worthy. She always did have very low self-esteem despite how very smart she is. I do not feel that I can leave her but I am not her slave. My body is still my body and she cannot claim it. I’ve read enough feminist theory to know that, she may have trapped me in marriage but she cannot take my body by force if I do not want to give it. That’s my right. I don’t know what else to do. I feel so trapped. I also feel stupid. My whole family and some others warned me not to do this. I feel like a terrible person. I want to divorce her because I want a big @$$? Really? But I have fought so long against myself, I don’t want to fight anymore. Am I insane? Am I a terrible person? Surely a good husband I am not. God forgive me.


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