Dear Ms. Vicki,
I need your help getting rid of my foreign wife. Her manipulative ways have hit me like a tsunami and every time I turn around I get hit again.
I met her when I was a guard at an embassy overseas. She was a student intern and worked at the embassy. I was warned that women overseas just want a one-way ticket to the U.S., but I didn’t listen. I was away from home and now realize that I was just lonely. She spoke the language and was familiar with the culture and I liked that she was educated and working on a Ph.D. I felt like I was somebody when I was with her.
Fast forward. I married her, and my life has been hell for the past six years. I brought her to Quantico, our first duty station together, and she refused to work. She whined and complained about everything, including our finances. I was used to only taking care of one person and found myself having to provide for two. Every day I would bring her the want ads and help her look online for work but she would say, “I can’t do this, I can’t do that, that doesn’t pay enough, or that’s not a job for a doctor.” I would tell her that a doctor still has to eat, even if it means working at McDonald’s. She would say that she couldn’t get hired because employers said she was over-qualified. I told her to stop putting all of her education on her resume. Why would she apply for a job as a cashier at McDonald’s and write on the application that she has a Ph.D.? That’s just crazy.
Needless to say, my debt has increased because we’re trying to make it from week to week on just my income. She wanted to send her family and friends my money to help them financially and when I told her no, she lost it and destroyed our living room with a knife!
Fast forward one more time: now I’m stationed at Camp Lejeune and she’s on my travel orders so she moved with me. I wanted to send her over-educated self back where I found her, but she refused to leave, so I moved out and I won’t tell her where I am staying. She’s roaming around Jacksonville, North Carolina, running up my credit cards.
I thought my wife got a Ph.D. in International Relations so she could get a high-powered job working for the Department of State, or at least that’s what she told me when I met her. Now she says she wants to study the history of German medicine! Ms. Vicki, who wants to study the history of German medicine? Please tell me how I can get rid of her?
Sincerely,
Been Had by a Foreign Wife
Dear Had,
There’s a lot going on in your marriage. It sounds like you were caught up in the moment when you were dating your wife. She was educated, she spoke the language where you were and she knew the culture. Those are all good qualities. However, it sounds like you two never really knew each other. You dated, you married and she accompanied you to your next duty station, and then you saw was she was really all about.
I don’t know everything about every degree, but I agree that it may be hard for her to find a job studying German medicine. That doesn’t sound very practical, though maybe if she wanted to be a professor or do research she could find work in that area.
Here’s the thing: you can’t leave your wife destitute, she is your responsibility. She could report you to your command. In your defense, it sounds like this marriage was over before it started so I don’t think that you need marriage therapy. I do think you both need legal counsel.
It will look better for you if you file legal separation and pay your wife spousal support or whatever the court orders you to pay in the interim. Yes, she is educated and she obviously has the ability to support herself, but right now you have to help her financially. Which brings me to my next point: you should take her name off of your banking and credit card accounts so she doesn’t continue to put you more in debt.
Hope this helps,
Ms. Vicki
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