Without getting overly detailed and long winded I am going to try and explain my best as to what is going on with me and my wife. I am going to assume that you haven’t been reading posts here on the blog nor have you been keeping up with my tweets on twitter.
My wife got pregnant on accident and because of that we rushed a marriage. Quiet, crappy, *stamp stamp*, you’re married style wedding at the US embassy in Korea. My wife sat on a bench while I handed some lady our paperwork, then turned around and we were done. Not really a wedding, but it was legal.
My wife didn’t tell her parents about the marriage for several months, then when she did, it was more of “we finished all the paperwork” and nothing more. Then about 6-7 months pregnant, she finally told them about the baby. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl, and less than a year later we moved back to the states. (Well, I moved back the wife and baby moved)
After several months the brother-in-law moved in with us so that he could study English here and save money living with us. I agreed one night I was spending apart from my wife and was half-asleep. I called the next morning to ask if we could talk about it more, and it was too late. Her brother was with her and she had already told them. These little events became quite common.
After about a year in Tennessee, we moved to New York where he parents came to visit. We were living in a crappy apartment, I was earning most of our income from the internet so was at home all the time. The parents saw this and put pressure on me and started treating me like crap, more than usual. I said in Korea, while in their house I will take it, but I am doing my best and in my house I expect my guests to show me some respect, regardless of what they think. That just pissed them off more, so I told them they are welcome to leave. Well, I might not of been that polite and some language that would make a nun faint may of been used.
They left and went to their brother’s home in California. The wife, brother, and my daughter stayed. After several weeks we got things patched up and it felt like we were getting our lives back on track. My mother-in-law asked my wife to come to California to be a translator for her and help invest into some business as they intended to re-locate to the states.
What I didn’t know was that just before the in-laws left, actually the same day, they had taken my wife to a lawyer and had divorce papers and everything filed. She held them until she was in California for several weeks. I had heard promises that she was coming back but also running into a border control employee at the airport in NY, I played the Army card and he warned that he should probably arrest her since her immigration paperwork isn’t complete. (The lawyer she hired for that is the most incompetent lawyer I have ever known)
All alone in New York, I surprisingly got the letter in the mail for divorce.
Having my wife tell me she loves me the night before, I was beyond confused and called her immediately to explain. I never got a straight answer. More about how I am not how she imagined marriage would be, and how I am not prince charming.
After getting drunk for a week straight I looked around the empty, trashed, foul-smelling apartment and decided that I wasn’t going to quit. I cleaned the house, and sorted everything that I no longer needed. All my Army crap, and old electronics all got posted on eBay. I pulled a state-of-the-art radar detector out of my car and sold it for $450. Haven’t got a speeding ticket since, yet I got around 4 or 5 after I bought it.
With as much money as I could save, I packed my little 4-door Chevy sedan with a list of stuff she meantioned she wanted, which included a toddler bed, and then took as little as possible of my own stuff, then left.
I drove from New York to San Francisco, sleeping in my car the whole way to save money.
Once here I setup a tent on Mount Diablo at $20 per night. Then found a gym where I could shower. After a couple days I packed up and went back to sleeping in my car. One night the car was broken into and my GPS was stolen, I attempted to fight the guy and stop him but was so focused on trying to kick him I couldn’t situate myself and properly aim. He got away and I had to resort to driving around without a GPS in a new area.
I looked high and low trying to find a “real job”, or whatever my wife’s family thought one was. I had no luck. One day while looking I got lost and stumbled into a college campus. I pulled over and explored it a little more. They were still accepting registrations. I remembered that my GI bill pays me a flat rate just for going to school and that as well as my internet income may be enough to live here.
I signed up, and started will all late start classes. I picked whatever I thought was interesting. Now I realize that not a single class can be used towards the degree I want. The GI bill only covered half the classes as well.
At this point I was seeing my wife every couple days or so, sleeping in my car about a mile or two down the road in a safeway parking lot. I accidentally found a cop here on the night my car was broken into and felt it better to sleep where the cops hang out. I had the occasional 3am wake-up and ID check, but after a while all was good. Until someone called and complained.
I had met an older guy who lived alone on the other side of the fence and had offered me to park in his driveway if it ever became a problem for me to park at safeway. Eventually he offered me room and board and after several months I finally accepted.
At this point my wife was convinced that the divorce was best, and would always come back with “look at you”. Implying that I am living out of my car. I got her to agree that she would give me a fresh start, and we would try again at our relationship, but I had to give her the divorce. My condition was that I don’t hear about the divorce and as my wife I would trust whatever she told me to sign.
She didn’t live up to that last part of the deal.
Her mother is now looking to go back to Korea for several months, but my wife has to stay here, since she doesn’t have the proper papers to leave and come back. Living with her mother means that mom pays for everything. So to save money they have all moved to Sacramento where the housing is cheaper than the San Francisco bay area, where we have been living.
Two weeks ago I drive all the way to Sacramento, unknowingly about her intentions for the day. She gets in the car without my daughter anywhere in sight and hands me a manila envelope. I look at the first page and know instantly that they are divorce papers. She gives me a hug for nearly 2-3 minutes, which she has always been terrible at showing affection like that. I almost think she was crying.
We found a nearby park to get some privacy versus the parking lot to the large apartment complex and talked everything over. After an hour I said I want to read everything carefully first but now I want to see my daughter and enjoy the time there. We went and got her first haircut, which I hate. Then got something to eat and had a fairly decent night.
Then yesterday happened…. before I left she told me to make sure I brought the papers, she read over my notes. Then we went to a Kinko’s and she edited everything to suit our needs. I will get my daughter 54 days a year, and pay $200 per month in child support directly to my wife. There is no third party involved at all for anything. Educational decisions are made by my wife only, everything else is joint. (I still don’t understand why I couldn’t be trusted with educational decisions)
We got everything notarized, and now she just has to mail everything to her lawyer and do that part of it.
From here I don’t quite know how to handle what I am suppose to do with my wife. Part of me is ready to move on, another part wants a happy family and I think that’s still possible. My wife, or the ex-wife/girlfriend, isn’t the same person I married. But, neither am I. I am still going to try to work this out, just not as hard as I have in the past. Her parents won’t even let me in the house or so much as look at me so I know they are placing an influence on her as well. I just can’t believe that even though I have don’t everything to try and save this marriage she is still ready to throw it away so easily.
If you want to know more then all I can tell you is to stick around and follow me. Subscribe to the feed for my blog, which is where I post my long stories like this one, or follow me on twitter and get the news faster, but in smaller pieces.
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Sounds like something of a hell that you went through.. I can only hope and perhaps pray that it gets better. I my self struggle with finances.. and two children.. and sperm doner that’s what I call him. If it we’re not for my mother and step father my children and I would be homeless. Now recently (By that i mean 2 years ago) I damaged my back from a flight back to California from Canada (not a story i am getting into right now nor relevant but that was a crappy so called vacation). Now I am trying to get disability because I can’t work. But I continue to go to college at dvc. I make on a lucky year less than 12 thousand dollars.. All because I fell in love with someone who didn’t love me.. Weee lifes grand eh! Things have got to get better hold your head up that’s all I can say.
Hey Adm, that sounds like something that might happen.
My brother got married just before he left for OT school (he was a warrant officer in the Army), and his wife got assigned Korea about six months before he got there. They’d only been married a couple of months. When he got there, he found his wife didn’t want him anymore, so they had the marriage annulled.
Then, my brother rescued a Korean hooker and married her, here in CA. In the end, she was just using him to gain US citizenship so she could be with her boyfriend in Guam. When she returned from Guam 3 mos. preggers after being gone for four months, my brother divorced her.
Then he married his current wife and adopted her niece and nephew, and they all live in TX. The mother-in-law visited once, and my brother knew right away that he had to kiss some major butt if he wanted to keep his family together, so he did and her mom has not been back.
She doesn’t always treat him very well, but he sucks it up because he loves his kids. He knows how important it is that his kids have the one they consider their dad in their lives. It’s an option he knows he can live with, because he’s lived through worse.
Adm,
That sounds pretty messed up. I guy that I used to work with found himself in a similar situation. While in Singapore, he was dating a girl. She got pregnant… they got married and moved back to the states. She had the kid and wanted nothing to do with him (the baby). She didn’t work… but made him do everything (late night feedings, tending to illnesses, etc). He was exhausted… he would literally fall asleep in the middle of a sentence at work. One time while he was on the job out of the country… he called me to ask if I could watch the kid for a while because she had a headache. After being here for a couple years, she filed for citizenship. About a week after the papers were sent in, she filed for divorce and split. And since she never wanted anything to do with the boy, he got full custody. She was a worthless, lazy, waste of food so we were all glad to see her out of his life.
anyway… I wish you the best of luck with which ever way you go (or it goes without you).
Dang.. what can i say love sucks?! See you’re not alone Adium! *hugs*
I am going thru the same thing just different ethnicities. My life partner is doing decades in the federal penn. for a non violent crime. His mother treated me soooo nasty because I don’t have a job… The fact that I am 1 semester from completing a college degree, never been convicted of anything more than a traffic offense means nothing. The fact that I support myself through scholarships from excellence in academics while raising 3 sons does not matter. The fact that her son has 40 years to go on his sentence does not matter. She wants him to have someone better than me. Someone who has a 6 fig income and lives in an exclusive Cali neighborhood like them. Trying to be like them is why he is where he is.
I broke up with him but missed him dearly and we’re back together. I am wondering what the future will hold with these battle ax women in his family… So far he says I don’t have to speak to them anymore. But, will this change?
Dude. I think you know what I think. I would say that you can do everything you can to be in your daughter’s life and to be a good father to her, but you owe it to yourself to be true to what you need in life. You need to do what makes you happy, and if that means only seeing your — whatever she’s called — as is necessary to be involved with your daughter, then so be it. The thing that concerns me most is that your daughter will not have a role model of what a man really is. You will always do what’s right by her, I don’t doubt that for a minute. But the adult female person is denying you the chance to demonstrate for your daughter what a husband (or life partner) truly is. I fear that all your daughter will learn to do is see men as people who are born to be controlled and dictated to.
You can believe me or not, but I have personal experience with a similar situation, and now that the little girl in question is 18, she is a complete and utter mess in so many ways.