In May of 1988, I boarded the airplane in Los Angels CA. bound for
Seoul, South Korea. I had left
America and all I knew far behind to begin my married life. I know at this point I had been married for over two years, but it did not seem like it since I had spent only from April to November of 86 and 3 weeks of December of 87 with him. The rest of the time within our marriage, he was in
South Korea.
We spent the first few weeks in a hotel, which I did not mind at first. After a few days, it was getting very hard to keep our daughter who was now one and a half happy in a hotel. With one American channel, and no VCR it was hard to do. With little to read, as an avid reader I became miserable. He had brought his medical records home, for some reason. Not sure why he did, but it was reading material I wish I had never read it. I did read it however, and I was floored. Within the past year (87) he had been treated for a rash, that he had received for sexual contact. I was floored and kept reading this page. I was living with his parents half a world away. I asked him about it when he got home, and he told me it was only something the doctor had written but he did not cheat. I believed him after a few days.
After living in the hotel for 3 weeks, we got an apartment off post, and moved in. Luckily, someone who was going back to
America had a full bevy of household items and sold them to us for dirt-cheap. Life was better in the apartment. I bought sheets from the PX (department store) on post and used a pair for curtains.
The Olympics were being held in country that year and being in communications, he was often out in the field that summer. I hated being alone with a small child in a foreign land but I was determined to make a go of my marriage. I did make a few friends with other GI wives, and made the best of it. I saw my husband a few hours every two weeks for the summer, which sucked.
It was September when I admitted to him that my daughter might not be his, I wanted to be straight up with him, as I felt he was being straight up to me. When I had gotten pregnant with her, I was with him and my old boyfriend. The guilt was killing me, so I confessed and he did not speak to me for three days. I deserved this I suppose, but it was scary, for if he had kicked me out then I would have been stuck in a foreign land.
On that third day, he came home from work and told me, he would consider her his daughter always but he wanted a child of his own. I watched as he pushed the birth control out of the packet one by one and into the toilet. He never asked, he just did what he wanted. He became a man on a mission, a mission to have a child.
It did not matter if I was sleeping or ill, if he wanted me he would not give up. I was caught up in the excitement of having another baby, that I let too many things slide. I had never had problems with asthma in my life, but over there in South Korea, I did, in a huge way. It was so bad I carried the eppi shot wherever I went, along with the inhalers.
Marital rape is when sex occurs with penetration and is not consensual by the other party. How can I give consent when I am sleeping? This was just the beginning of this type of stuff. I stayed because that was what I was raised to do. He did not hit me so I never thought this was abuse. It got worse.