I married young due to pregnancy and have met someone else. What should I do?

I really only see two options here:

1) Put your happiness first and leave the marriage, and go start a new life with someone new. (Knowing that the new person could be just as rude and unpalatable in ten years as your current husband. Familiarity often breeds contempt.)

2) Stand by the commitment you willingly entered into.
Try to work with your husband to find solutions to fix the marriage, like marriage counseling.

(Or you can have a love affair, but that gets tricky and due to your user name, I’ll say that’s not a good option in your culture.)

Go to counselling to air your concerns. Be careful of your present husbands behavior..I hope nothing abusive will come of this relationship as it already is?
Question If your husband is not happy now, why does he not want to divorce? Is it about money?

I suggested on the pre-edited thread that you have to decide whether you can afford to live if you leave him and he is not willing to divorce amiably. Also realize it is quite likely your children will turn against you and you may lose access to them. Only you can decide if it is worth it. I suggest you talk to a lawyer in your country or to a close friend or relative that you trust. I’m sorry that you are in pain.

@Inspired_2write If I had to guess, due to the culture, it’s very much about shaming the family, as she mentioned above. Nothing would make divorce palatable in some cultures.

I’m finding it almost impossible to give you good advice since I don’t think that you live in the US & any advice I might come up with is based on my experience with US laws!!!

I was married to an extremely abusive man whose daughter lived with us. I loved that little girl with ALL my heart; so, I accepted abuse as part of my life until it got so bad that I couldn’t take it any longer. At one point, the pain from the abuse outweighed my love for that child. My husband kept telling me that IF I left that there was NO place that I could hide & he would find me & kill me. At some point it dawned on me that death would be kinder than the life I was living & finally told him it was over & to do what he felt he had to do as I was dead inside already. Long story short, HE moved out & I got my divorce!!!

In your case with your children almost grown, I think that I would hold out for the 5 years to give your daughter time to reach adulthood. That will stop part of the manipulation of the children that he’s holding over you. He will be able to influence the children but he can’t control you with them. As adults, they will be free to choose how they feel about you!!! IF your boyfriend truly loves you, he will be willing to WAIT for you to become FREE!!! IF, by chance, he doesn’t wait,you will know that he never truly loved you & you are still FREE to live your life on your own.

Now, to the boyfriend…I’m assuming that you live in one of the countries where you can be stoned/put to death for adultery. Once again, IF the boyfriend truly loves you, he will WAIT for you to become FREE. IF he doesn’t wait, you will know that he wasn’t worth risking death for the sex!!!

Did you want a divorce before the boyfriend or is the boyfriend the ONLY reason you want the divorce??? Since I don’t know your country’s divorce laws, you’re on your own there.

Good luck no matter what you decide!!!

@KNOWITALL
yeah too bad he does not feel any shame for treating his wife bad.
Narcissistic behavior from the husband .
If she can move to safety for her and her children then perhaps she could get supportive counselling for both her and her husband.
She should NOT jump into another relationship at this point as it is foolhardy and she could end up with same situation .
She has to find herself first.
Her identity not what her husband tells her.
She needs professional counselling on how to handle this situation safely.

@Inspired_2write Yes but he sounds like a typical male in a male-dominated society. She’s supposed to make his life nice, keep her mouth shut and obey. In some countries he could beat her or anything he wanted. From what I hear, he is choosing to show her respect by not divorcing her, showing her he cares to a degree.

I don’t know if they’re Muslim, Christian or another religion, or live there or in the US, not enough to say more about her options.

I agree and I do feel as someone else mentioned that leaving for the boyfriend is dangerous in many ways. A 25 year old man can fall in and out of love many times in the upcoming years.

To those implying that the OP is fickle, mentioning that she married under duress and that “nothing has changed” strongly imply that she has never been happy with her husband.

Also, India doesn’t allow no-fault divorce without mutual consent. This woman cannot simply leave her husband unless he agrees to it or she can prove to a court that she has a reason that the state considers to be good cause. Different laws cover Hindus and Muslims, but the requirements for both can be pretty stringent.

@Irukandji
Was this marriage arranged by the parents?
If so can she take to court?
Or is the laws there too strict?
If she needs agreement from her husband then she can get an intermediary to talk to him.

@Inspired_2write I have no idea if the marriage was arranged by the parents, but the details in the OP suggest that the pregnancy more or less made it socially mandatory regardless of who got to make the final decision.

Having the marriage arranged isn’t grounds for divorce or even court proceedings in India. If she’s Hindu, she can get a divorce without her husband’s consent only if he is cruel to her, if he commits adultery, if he abandons her, if he renounces his marriage to become a religious hermit, if he converts to a different religion, if he has a mental disorder or communicable disease, or if he is presumed dead. There are different laws for Muslims, Christians, and Parsis/Zoroastrians.

I agree that trying to get her husband’s consent, possibly through an intermediary, is the easiest way to proceed. If she’s confident that her new man will stay with her, then there might be a way of taking the blame such that her husband doesn’t have to feel as ashamed. If that’s his main reason for refusing to consent to the divorce, then that might help. Honor and shame can be big motivators in traditional Indian culture, though, so maybe she’s afraid of the consequences of being the shamed person. But it might be worth the price to get out of this marriage if it’s really as bad as she says it is.