Wednesday, April 10, 2013

How to be not married

It would be very difficult to do a more thorough job of ensuring one's eventual divorce than this man has managed:
Now my heart is broken once more due to a swath of life events culminating in my wife’s recent confession of her ongoing infidelity. My wife is an honest woman, and says she is truly in love with this other man, and she does not love me anymore, so she does not want to reconcile. She told me the man she loves is a more solid man, an assertive mature man who makes her feel like a woman and confident to be around.

People tell me I need to let her go. I tell people that marriage is a covenant which people need to take seriously. This is not a situation of abuse, but rather my wife had a change of heart because she no longer saw me as a man she can be with. I left my job in marketing a year ago with my wife's consent and support, due to stress as my job was making me miserable. My wife then became the breadwinner while I was actively seeking new employment....

I am devastated and feel empty inside. I am working through a range of emotions and find it difficult to think clearly. I am working to acknowledge my responsibility (or rather irresponsibility and sin) in the events leading up to her falling out of love and leaving me. I am working on improving myself. I want to save my relationship and marriage, and I want to make it stronger.

Wife is from Bulgaria. Her religion is Greek Orthodox. I'm Catholic. She came to the U.S. seven years ago to work and study. We met through a mutual friend back in 2007. We've been married for 3.5 years, together for over 5. She received her permanent green card in the mail a few days prior to her confessing having an affair.
While it is true that Christian women are considerably less likely to divorce, there are no shortage of those who put their female imperative above the Bible's marital directives.  Look at the things this guy balanced against his wife's Christian commitment to marriage:
  1. Green card seeker
  2. Non-dominant husband
  3. Left his job because he was unhappy
  4. Let her become the breadwinner
Men seem to think that it matters when a woman agrees to something that she doesn't like.  It doesn't; it merely means that she is intellectually repressing her feelings, but she isn't going to be able to do that forever. The fact that she agreed to let him quit his job and agreed to become the family breadwinner doesn't mean she was genuinely okay with it; that was probably when the thought of finding a man who would actually behave like a man and the head of a Christian household began to occur to her.

Is she to blame for her infidelity?  Of course.  Is it his fault?  No, she's the one who voluntarily elected to permit another man to penetrate her.  But he did do the male equivalent of a wife inviting the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to move into the house, instilling a pole and a jacuzzi in the bedroom, then leaving for nine months for Tibet in order to "find herself".  While moral failure cannot be justified in this manner, in circumstances such as these, it should hardly take one by surprise.

Also, I've seen so many of these "green card" marriages fail at administratively significant times that I think they are to be avoided by men and women alike.  Unless the foreign spouse is completely fine with the two of you moving to the foreign country instead of living in the USA, the chances  that she is marrying American residence and not you are likely more than fifty percent.

As for what this guy should do, I believe he he should divorce his wife for infidelity, move on, and learn to become a man before he seeks to become a husband again.

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