This is my first post here, I don't think there is any one big thing that is an issue in this marriage, it just seems to be a lot of little things that bother me, probably more than they should, and I don't know what to do.

My husband is American, I am not. He was stationed in my country where we met a few years ago. At that time he was separated from his wife.

We were in a long distance relationship for about a year, I would fly to see him once a month for 1-2 weeks. During one of my trips to see him we decided it was too hard to say goodbye, and we decided to get married. He was still not divorced however.

This because issue number one. He was staying married to his wife, even though by his statements she mentally and physically abused him throughout the entire course of their marriage, so she would still be covered under his health insurance. He told me he would file for divorce and she would not contest it in June after she was covered under another plan, and we would get married. Well June rolled around and he did not file, I would ask him, and he would say on next week, next week, I called her and she needs me to wait a week. Well come July he comes home one day and says "Great news! She told me she will be covered in late August so we can get married then instead of September!" I was floored, I said "what are you talking about, you never said we were waiting until September!" He told me I just must have forgotten him telling me that.

There is no way I would forget that, as if we had waited until September I would have had to leave the country and get a marriage Visa to come back, and that can take months. This turns into a huge thing, I refuse to stay in the States illegally so she can have health insurance, which was what he wanted me to do. He goes through with the divorce and we get married.

The actual marriage is another thing I am still angry about. He has told me many times about his first marriage, how it was on a beach, he bought the woman two wedding dresses, a very nice ring etc etc. I never wanted to hear any of this, I do not know why he would tell me, it would just come up in unrelated conversation. Oh and he keeps their wedding pictures on a disk he keeps by his computer (I refuse to look at them). He tells me we cannot afford a big wedding. That is fine, I understand. He tells me we will have a small ceremony with a man who does discounts for people in the military.

I go shopping, I spend days and I am so happy, I find a very pretty dress for $10 (please do not laugh). The day of the wedding we drive into town to where the man who will do the ceremony works. It is a post office. The man is not there. My husband never even called him apparently, he just found his information on the internet and assumed he would be there. Two college students in the post office are there and they are the ones who stamp our marriage certificate. They laugh at us. I am so embarrassed.

Our honeymoon. I never expected one. My husband says he will make up the marriage ceremony with a very nice honeymoon the next month. It never happens. I ask, he gets mad and says it will happen later. I don't bring it up again, I don't want it to seem like all I care about is him spending money. I really just want him to care about our marriage, I want it to be special to him.

He talks about the things he used to do with his ex wife all the time. One of the things is horseback riding. I love horseback riding. I ask him if we can go. He gets mad, says he does not have the time. He gets home from work and hardly says anything to me. At night he wants sex. I don't want to anymore, but I do so he will be happy.

He spends hours every night on the computer playing video games and looking at porn. I tell him all the porn bothers me, he tells me he will not look at it. This is a lie, he starts leaving it on the desktop, and on the iPod I bought him before I quit my job and moved here. I don't bring up the lie because I do not want him to be angry.

I clean the house and make all the meals. I do not leave the house during the day as I do not have a car, and there is nothing within walking distance. My immigration is processing still, I cannot get a job.

I quit my job to move here, I hate it here. There is crime every day, people were shooting guns outside our house a month ago. My home was not like this. I love my husband but I am so alone and so scared. If he divorces me I do not know what I will do, I was very lucky to have the job I quit when I moved here, I do not know if I can find another one like that.

There is more to this, but I have posted too much I think, it is long enough already. I feel so much resentment to him, how do I not show it? How do I move on and be happy? Please help

I'm sorry, but I don't see a marriage to save. He stayed with you and led you on for convenience. He was married. That makes him unfaithful whether they were separated or not. And on top of that, he still WANTS her.

Cut your losses and get an anullment and and return home. You will never be happy with this man. He used you.

Jenn, it has been a couple weeks since you posted. How are things now? I am newly married and have some of the same frustrations as you, not all the same but some. But I am seeing your post for the first time today and am worried about your well being. Please let us know how things are going.

Hi GodessLacey, thanks so much for asking. Things are okay. I really believe he wants to do well in this marriage and he cares for me, but I am not sure if he understands how some of the things he does affect me.

Yesterday was my birthday. For his birthday I made him all his favourite foods and decorated the house. Yesterday morning he asks if I want to go out to a Korean restaurant. I say no thank you, I don't like Korean food. I should note that his first wife was Korean and the place he wanted to go to was her favourite place. He and I did go there less than a year ago and I was very sick afterwards. He ended up making a dinner he learned to make for her. For my birthday.

I didn't say that it upset me because at least he was trying, so I will have to use this thread to vent. Why doesn't he care about what I like? I cook every night and most nights I either make something Mediterranean or something he requests. Why was he so fixated on having something Korean?

Thanks everyone for listening.

Because he isn't in love with you.

You are a placeholder until he can have her back.

Your husband divorced his first wife and married you straight away. He didn't take the time to be alone, to get past the habits of his first marriage, to get over his first wife, to learn about himself, to recover from the divorce, to be his own person before joining you in marriage. Because he isn't over his first marriage, he's treating you as though you were his first wife. I even wonder how much he knows you when he would want to take you to a Korean Restaurant when you don't even like Korean food but his first wife did.

She certainly got the better deal when it came to the marriage. A $10 dress? Married at a time that suits her insurance? And as for photos taken at his first marriage being where he can look at them frequently, that tells you something of his thinking.

There's no easy solution to your problem. Maybe if you hang around long enough, maybe he'll forget about his first wife and get to know about you, or maybe not.

I wonder about what it's like for you, too. You seem to be making all of the concessions to please him. In doing so, you're losing yourself. You're risking waking up one day after doing all this to please him and wondering who exactly you are. You might well end up resenting that you gave up your job and your country for a marriage that has taken so much of you away.
You're also at risk of resentment. In time, you may well come to resent how much effort it's taken you to keep the marriage going and how little effort he's making.

About the only suggestion I can make is that you do do something for yourself. A hobby, an interest, visiting people from your own country, whatever so that you have something to talk about and so that you have a life of your own.

I think you need to try and get to know each other again, a friend suggested that to me in my own marriage. I can't say much about the dress situation cause mine was only $35, but it was exactly what I wanted. I do agree that you need to start doing things to make you happy. If you don't you will resent him so much to the point of hating him.

Give yourselves the time to find who you are as individuals as well as who you are as a couple. With the whole thing with your birthday, does he know what your favorite meal is? Or what your favorite restaurant is? Hence the need to get to know each other. Yes it is possible that he is still hung up on his ex, but it is possible that he's just stuck in a routine that he had with her. But I suggest that you take the time to learn what each other like and don't like. If you need to make a game out of it, like the NewlyWed game.

Thanks for the advice everyone, it really does help.
I'm posting today because I have a question, I really don't want to blow this out of proportion and I am hoping there is an explanation other than the obvious one.
Today I was using his computer, and I was bored and waiting for a program to load so I went on craigslist (I have been looking for a used aquarium). I noticed that one the main page under the personals section the woman seeking men was link was purple (meaning it had been read recently), and then I went in there and saw that he had read a few adds from the past week.
Do guys do this out of boredom or should I be concerned? I will be honest I am upset, but maybe I shouldn't be.
How do I bring this up?

To be honest, I sometimes read the craigslist ads out of morbid curiosity. And I'm a girl.

Could you do additional snooping without causing a fuss, or driving yourself crazy? Check his emails? If you can get into his email account, you can usually arrange to have incoming mail forwarded to another address (yours!) automatically while keeping a copy in his inbox. That way you can see 'em before he deletes them. If there's phone numbers in the ads he's read, look for them on the phone bill.

He could just be blowing off time. It could be more. Better safe than sorry...do some additional looking around.

Don't spend a minute wondering whether you should or should not be upset. You are upset, and that's fine. Right now, keep quiet about it and sleuth.