my wife's sexual past effecting my marriage big time,

[Truce71]

I am originally from Middle East and residing in USA. I am coming from a culture where premarriage sex is forbidden. I am divorced with one kid and my current wife has never been married. She is 12 years younger then me and we got married about 5 months ago.  When I met her, I learned from a friend of mine that she dated a guy for about a month. I know the guy well. After dating with my wife for about 3 weeks, I had confidence to ask her if she had sex with him and she said "yes" . She said only once happened and she did not like it as he was unexperienced. Anyway, this bother me for about couple months but later,  I was over with the issue. I convinced myself it is no big deal. Anyway, after about 3 months dating with my current wife, a friend of mine told me that one of the guy which I also happen to know him well, had sex with her. Then I called the guy and he said about 6 years ago, they got drunk and had sex. He claimed it only happened one time. I confronted her. She said they got drank with coupe of friends, she stayed overnight in his apartment but did not have sex with him. I believed her. At least I wanted to belive her so even this hurt me so much, I was in love with her and that was more important for me. It was 6 years ago anyway, people make mistakes when they are young, right ? Anyway, I  got married to her imagining this issue will pass. She is a great person and I am happily married besides those issues. Anyway, the issue with one night stand stucked with me and I told my wife that I don't believe her and she needs to take a lie detector test to convince me and she refused. Problems started to escelate and I kept pushing and then she later told me that she just does not remember if she slept with him or not, she was just too drunk. More I pushed, more things  I learned about her sexual past. She lied to me about the amount of guys she dated, some of lasted for couple weeks, some last longer but she had sex with most of them. She says when you are involved in dating, sex is part of it. However, she lied to me about that before we got married. She said she is in love with me and if she had shared, I would break up with her.  I personally have been careful about not sleeping with every woman come accross, It is to me religious perceptive and a sin!!  however II have had partners, made mistakes in life too but hers is just bothering me so much,I seriously want to end this marriage. I am just not happy at the moment and that as a result makes her unhappy as well.  I took therapy, I have spoken this issue with couple of reliable friends, I have been reading many articles, I watch some hypnosis youtube videos about letting go of the past, but nothing is working. Any suggestions from a person have been in this kind of situation ? Many says let go of the past but it is easier to said then done!!

[becca1222003]

Everyone has a past, I get it's your religion but she doesn't care about you believing in no sex before marriage. she might have lied but with the way you're reacting now, I can sort of understand why I'm not saying it;s right that she did lie and that needs to be talked about but it's not like she cheating on you with these men.  

[becca1222003]

I don't mean to sound horrible but could you not talk it trough and maybe get over. She loves you and you married her for love not for her past.

[AnxiousNoMore]

He married her for virginity and is unwilling to accept that he knew that was not the case and can't be the case.

[RDVW]

You wanted her to take a lie detector test? You should be ashamed of yourself. It's in the past. Get over it. Stop asking stupid questions. She did it. You can't change what happened. It's up to you now: you can start being happy or destroy your marriage. You're not in the Middle East anymore; bend or break.

[Joker_0001]

Just Don't blow up over this....:}

[specialmom]

I appreciate your honesty.  In my culture, most people have had relationships early on and I wasn't the first to get to them.  Helps to not picture it.  I also am one of those people that believes that a person's sexual past is their business and they don't have to share it.  In fact, I don't recommend it.  Why create a picture of something with someone else in your partner's mind of your sexual past?  See no benefit of that.  But that's me and it's too late for that for you.

So, most people learn throughout their life. Do you not have anything you regret doing when you were younger?  Not sexually speaking but just in general.  I'm sure you do.  This is how we grow and our immature selves make all sorts of mistakes and that is what we are supposed to do. And then we grow, mature and EVOLVE.  I would try to see this as that same thing.  If you got into trouble for doing something wrong in your youth . . .   you wouldn't do it now, would you?  But did it help you to learn?  Same thing for her.  Cut her some slack.  She was learning.

And everyone lies.  I know for a fact that not a single person leaves this earth without telling a lie or two.  It's human. She didn't want to lose you.  She loved you.  Personally, I'd take the truth to my grave had I gone to that route . . . but she did divulge the full truth.  Because she trusted you with it.

Don't let her down with that. She trusts you to love her.  

And I do think you have to decide to move on from this.  She's the same person she was when you married.  Let it go.  good luck

[Chima7]

You should divorce her so she can find a man who won't judge her for things that she did before they even knew each other existed. It's very unfair to her to keep her trapped in a marriage with someone who is so judgemental of her over things that she can't change.

[Truce71]

I won't divorce her, I acknowledge the issue and I need to work on it. My wife has been supportive. Escape is the easy solution, no marriage is perfect, some have financial problems, some children, some housing some gambling etc. You can just simply divorce and run away from all of that or work on the issues to resolve to keep a good thing going. I did not post this just to have someone tell me to divorce but providing suggestions to address this issue.

[AnxiousNoMore]

You should not have asked her questions whose answer you knew would bother you, considering you have a double standard and feel it is ok for you to have pre-marital sex.

You have to either deal with your culture by changing your attitude or accept that this woman had the right to choose to not live within her culture before she met you.
Personally I can't fault her for lying to you when it wasn't your business what she did before marriage, yet you persisted in forcing answers from her. She didn't choose to have these questions asked but you insisted, purely for cultural reasons.


Why do these guys tell you what she did before she met you? Are you hunting around for information or are they thinking you need to know this information because of your culture? If you are hunting for info, I can tell you that no one is perfect, so everyone would fail the testing and you will never be satisfied because the perfect person does not exist.

Consider your words
"It is to me religious perceptive and a sin!!  however II have had partners" and realize that you have mixed up the sin and your pleasure but are justifying it, because you claim that you didn't do it as many times as others did.

Also consider this " I watch some hypnosis youtube videos about letting go of the past, but nothing is working. "  -  Then ask yourself why it isn't working and you can't let go -
and if the reason is you don't want to let go, because instead you just wish things were different, then you will never be able to let go. Successfully letting go is about changing your attitude to not grasp for something, -- and letting go is not about escaping from what you don't want, because aversion just leads to clinging harder to what is not possible.

[AnnieBrooke]

If you believe in chastity for yourself except when married and have never had extra-marital sex, because it is against your religion to sleep with someone to whom you are not married, that is your belief based on deeply held religious convictions.  It is admirable if you  behave according to this belief.

If on the other hand, you don't act according to this principle when you are not married, in other words if you feel that it is OK for a man to tomcat around but it would be shocking for a woman to do so, then someone could correctly say you were being unfair or applying a double standard.  

But ... if you yourself in truth do not sleep with women when you are not married, it is not unfair to expect this from the person you marry.  

In the modern era, especially in the United States but also in Europe and Asia (almost everywhere except the Middle East and India) it is rare to find a woman who has not had sexual experience.  Cultural norms have changed.  

If a woman who has had sexual partners in the past is unlucky enough to fall in love with you, she will have only two choices.  She can tell you the truth and lose you, or she can lie.  Evidently your wife lied, because she loved you.  That is too bad.  She should have told you the truth and lost you.  And this has made you angry, probably partly because others were the ones who told you otherwise and you have (in your eyes) lost face.  And now you want to end the marriage.

Well, I'm sorry for your wife.  She didn't have much choice if she wanted to marry you.  But even though I am sympathetic to the spot she was in, I still would not suggest you stay.  Because you can't forgive her (for whatever reason.  I would assume the losing-face part is at least as much of a reason as your religious convictions).  If you can't forgive her, frankly, you are now bad husband material.  You basically don't like her much any more, let alone love her, and it is no position to be in, to be married to someone who doesn't like us.  All it will do is hurt her over and over and make you an angry husband.  You say you can't get over it.  Then give her the freedom to find someone who will not be bothered that she had sex with someone in her past.

Go ahead with the divorce, staying as responsible in your tone as you are in your letter above (it is impressive that you say "It bothers me enough to leave over the issue" not "She slept around and is a ******").  
In order to keep civil during the discussions of the dissolution of your marriage, leave some space in your thinking for the fact that in the world today, women *are* pretty much expected to have sex when they date.  (There are even ugly names for women who refuse sex, just as there are ugly names in your culture for ones who have it.  Ask any devout Christian woman, she will tell you what she has been called by men who feel they have the right to insult her for not having sex.)  

Good luck to you.  I would also find a counselor perhaps from your own cultural background, to discuss things with, in regards to what part of this might come from the fact that you found out in a way that caused you to feel you lost face.  I am sorry your wife lied to you, though I feel she was between a rock and a hard place.  I am sorry it is enough to have killed your affection for her.  But that is the way it is.  You are done.  Don't prolong the pain.  

ps -- Don't sleep with her any more, either ... the LAST thing you need is for her to get pregnant.

[Truce71]

Thank you for your answer and suggestions Annie, I appreciate it.

[AnnieBrooke]

If you are sure you do not want to end the marriage, despite saying above that it "is just bothering me so much, I seriously want to end this marriage," I guess I would say find a better counselor, the one you went to did not do much good.  Try to find someone familiar with the culture in which you were brought up, as well as the culture in the U.S.  

Then try to sort out the three threads that are crossing each other at this intersection and tangling you up.  They sound like they are:  
1) Your wife lied to you about her sexual past + you are someone who wants to know everything about your wife's sexual past. (Some couples simply don't ask each other.  The past is the past, once they met.  But you had to know and you kept pushing to know.  Find out with the counselor why you did this.)
2)  You learned (that she had not been totally forthcoming) from someone else.  This caused you to lose face (at least in your own mind) and that bothered you a lot.  The notion that people you think of as friends knew about this bothered you a lot.  (But of course, they didn't know whether you knew or not, so there was no reason they should have said anything.) But the fact that these men were men you know bothers you a LOT.  Talk to the counselor about this.
3)  You have religious scruples (which, since you also say you have had sex before apparently not just when married, seem to be brought out now more because they tend to help justify your reaction rather than because they have always ruled your life) that tell you not to have sex except within marriage. Unfortunately, you seem to be applying them more stringently and far more angrily to your wife, who it sounds like had fewer incidents of sex outside marriage than you did.  The implication that the root of the problem is your religious indignation obscures the emotions of the first two points, and kind of takes the whole analysis off track.  If with the prior counselor you talked only about the religious aspect, no wonder you didn't get very far.  It is not really the problem.

I think the part where your anger has a point is #1 above, that she lied to you. I see why she did it, but a lie is a lie if you cannot forgive it.  I think the part where you need help from a counselor is all of that stuff about  knowing the people she had relations with and all the other points in #2 above.  That will keep you angry and brooding long after annoyance at being told a lie (due to her fear of loss of you) goes away.  I think #3 above is mostly just a smokescreen for you to justify your anger, because if living with a truly religious attitude is the most important thing, you would have long ago understand that she repents.  (And even why she lied.)  And you would have forgiven her by now, and the two of you would have gone ahead in your life together looking to golden, happy days in the future.  But alas, that is not what you are doing.

I do think if you can't let this go, you must let her go, so she can find someone who will love her for exactly who she is.  A marriage should be a place where there is unconditional love.  If you want to try to keep the marriage together in the face of all your anger, in your shoes I'd focus on item #2.  If you are able to fix that, you won't have to let her go and the two of you can be happy.  

If you cannot stop brooding and nurturing a sense of grievance over this, you really should seriously consider not staying married.  You are judging her by a standard that was unfamiliar to her at the time she acted, and are furious with her for something that is in the past that she cannot change.  (And frankly, think about it.  Past sexual history is not that important.  It is an eyeblink in a life.)  

Talk to the counselor about insecurity, male-dominant cultures, and cultural differences.  Talk about why you felt you had the need to and the right to demand an account of your wife's prior sexual experiences that happened before you met her.  Talk about why it bothers you to know the men.  Talk about why you are taking it out on your wife.

Good luck.