Relationships  Discussion Forum

I am 28 Years old and married for 3 years now. My husband is very nice, very caring & very understanding. Both of us are extremely dedicated, honest and loyal to each other. But this doesn't mean that we have not had our share of problems. Just to give a little background - My husband came to the US to study & he has been here for almost 10 years now. He is the only son of his parents and his mother expired in 1998, so his father is all alone in India. I grew up in India and we got married in India and I came to the US. Just after 5 months of our wedding my husband called his father here. This was a severe blow on our relationship. I was looking for a job & managed to find one & started working but I had a really tough time at home - with my father-in-laws expectations of cooking & being like a traditional Indian daughter-in-law. Being the only child of his parents my husband did not support me much. He too strongly agreed with his father's expectations from me & also expected the same from me. Overall, I had a very tough time - I still was adjusting to the new country, to the new job & had to go through all this. On top of this, my husband had also lost money in stocks and was under credit card debt of about over $100K. I worked hard to cut down our expenses to be able to come out of this huge debt. I postponed spending on any thing that I wanted for myself - like buying a car & being Independent. My husband's first priority was giving as much happiness as he could to his father. I struggled & explained to him the pain I was going through - He understood & apologized since he had also noticed the sacrifices I was making to move our family ahead. My husband has numerous good qualities - he is sincere, hardworking & very caring & sensitive & he understood my pain & that's why I continued to remain attached to him but his father always intruded my sphere & my space & my husband too is too much attached to him since his father had sacrificed a lot for him & spent all his money to send him to US to study.
Anyway, there is still more to add to all this - Ever since I got married, I never experienced a good sex life. Even when we were newly weds, we used to have sex just once every week or every two weeks, then the frequency decreased - now its just once a month or sometimes not even that. Seems like my husband is extremely sensitive & gets stressed out a lot at work but the impact this has on me is that I am deprived of even that basic thing in life. But I always used to think that probably this is not something to be worried about as all other aspects of my husband are good - he is loyal to me, he is so down to earth, he doesn't drink or smoke, he helps me a lot, he is caring & he never had a girlfriend before marriage and he never had sex before marriage BUT what I happened to come to discover very recently while arguing with him that he had dated someone for a month (that's what he has told me) & had sex with her 2-3 times. I had known that he had gone on a number of dates before we got married but I did not know that he had sex before marriage. He always gave the impression of a very pure kind of person. Knowing this is unbearable for me. Although, I can be assured that he would never do this again with someone else, yet I am extremely hurt and disturbed. Am I overreacting - Is it very normal to have sex before marriage? Can somebody please tell me what should I do & how should I take this considering everything I have gone through. uma replied. You have some challenges to overcome, like everyone. So don't feel alone, okay?:)

Firstly, your husband should not expect you to do as your father-in-laws demands of you. He needs to understand that you have your own dreams and that living those dreams aren't impossible or unreasonable. You don't have to do what your in-laws want you to do or expect you to do. You need to speak up for yourself and stand your ground. If you want to work, than you should work. If you think that having your husband help you cook or clean around the house will ease some stress on you, since you are a working woman, then you need to let him know that.

About you finding out that he had premarital sex... I would let it go as long as it was before he met you and not during. And, it is also dependent on whether he has become untrustworthy. Can you trust him, now? I assume you had an arranged marriage. Maybe he was afraid of letting people know he had sex already, just as it would be hard for a female to admit to such behavior. But if this was during your marriage or courtship, you need to figure out how to trust him again.

It isn't abnormal to have sex before marriage, for a girl or boy. It's natural. Risky, but natural. And it certainly isn't a sin like most societies try to make us believe. Just as long as you are engaging in sex for the right reasons(deep respect for a person, love for a person, etc.) and not for the wrong reasons(wanting attention, a need to be assured of one's attractiveness, etc.).

I hope this helped. Hang in there. YOu sound like a very intelligent, wonderful person. You'll get through this.:)