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My wife arrived in Los Angeles only 3 weeks ago and her first remarks were this is an ugly city.  I didn't pay attention because it was late at night and we were both tired from the plane and traffic was still pretty busy.  

We have progressed from that to where she doesn't like my friends and gets angry and goes to the bedroom and cries if they call my home.  She now searches my cell phoe log to see if I have called them or if they have called me during the day.  A female friend of mine has tried to be friends with her and get her out during the day but she can't stand her.  

I tried to get her interested in schools but she doesn't want to study or work.  She isn't interested in any hobbies.

Now she wants me to get a Visa for her 8 year old niece and adopt her and I said no.

Is this normal or did I screw up.

Jim C, hold me back, cuz my finger is on the trigger :-)

My personal favorites - Akitas, Rotts & German Stepards.

Give him a chance to reply. Maybe he has an appointment with an attorney today, or maybe he took his wife to Disneyland...

Confused in San Diego :-)

Yours truly....WfaCSiNYC

"Waiting for a Clear Shot in New York City"

It has already been pointed out that you didn't give any background on your relationship, so we are all at a disadvantage trying to comment or give advice.

I would encourage you to keep track of all those "negative" response from those who have been in your similar situation, telling you to "kick her to the curb", but use those as a last resort.

For whatever reason you thought this lady was a good match for you, and that you could enjoy a life together.  You owe it to yourself and your wife to try to see if your situation can be fixed.  By fixed, I don't mean temporarily "propped up", I mean that with some immediate adjustments, you may be able to have a happy life with this woman.  Despite what others have said, your situation may be correctable in a relatively short time period.  Maybe, maybe not.  The key is "a relatively short period".  

How will you know until you try?  Giving yourself a short but realistic time period is worth it, but you don't want to waste years on something that isn't bringing your life happiness.

I was married to an American woman, which we separated after 15 years, and we were divorced 2 years later.  I can't say for sure that I regret marrying her, but in retrospect if I had to do over again I would have left her after 2-3 years.  We divorced for behaviors she exhibited in the first few months of our marriage, and possibly could have been corrected had they been aggressively addressed, and had she understood that I would leave her in a "relatively short period" if they weren't corrected.

Maintaining a healthy, loving marriage is a challenge for EVERYONE.  None of us are perfect, and we are ALL broken to a certain extent.  Some of us can be fixed more readily than others.

Before giving up, I would encourage you to:

1.  Look at yourself, and what did YOU do (or not do) to create the current situation.  Are you doing all YOU can do to help her adjust?  Are you investing enough time to bond with your wife?

2.  Have some heart-to-heart communication with her to see where her HEAD and her HEART are.

3.  Get some outside help.  Church, professional marriage counselors, www.MarriageBuilders.com (their counseling "seems" expensive, but worth every bit of it), etc.

QUESTIONS:

"We have progressed from that to where she doesn't like my friends and gets angry and goes to the bedroom and cries if they call my home. She now searches my cell phoe log to see if I have called them or if they have called me during the day."

My novia from Barranquilla is always asking about my friends and family.  She loves talking to my parents on the phone.  She is always "sending my friends a hello".  These are people she doesn't know.  Her viewpoint is that my friends are her friends, and my family is her family.  That's the way it should be.  When I arrived in BAQ, she introduced me to all of her family and friends.  Her friends and family are always "sending me a hello", and I talk to her family on the phone.

Did you guys discuss friends and/or bonding with friends?  Did you meet her friends?  Was there any interest expressed in your mutual friends prior to her arriving?

From what you describe, she seems to be trying to be controlling over you, as a way of feeling secure.  Maybe she sees your friends as a threat to you spending time with her?  This may only be a perception in her mind, but in her mind perception may be reality.  If this is the case, maybe you (or a counselor) can help her understand that YOU are their for her emotional support, and there is no threat.

"A female friend of mine has tried to be friends with her and get her out during the day but she can't stand her."

Again, maybe this is a cry for help to try to bond with you, and not someone else.  Maybe she's so scared and maladjusted that she can't bond with ANYBODY until her INNER issues (adjustment, fear, whatever) get dealt with.

"I tried to get her interested in schools but she doesn't want to study or work. She isn't interested in any hobbies."

Did you guys talk about these things while you were dating?  Can't really blame her for this one... unless you're saying she told you she wanted to work, or go to school, and now she is saying she doesn't want to.

As far as hobbies, are you saying she is abandoning her hobbies that were near and dear to her in Bogota?

"Now she wants me to get a Visa for her 8 year old niece and adopt her and I said no."

Clearly this is out of the question.

Good luck and God bless you!
(Buena Suerte y Dios te Bendgia)

Since you know of this forum why did you not ask for advice prior to this fiasco you are now in? I suspect such advice if heeded would have warned you of your present predicament.  

As a side note anyone who thinks Bogotá is prettier than Los Angeles is off their rocker. I lived in Orange County for 20 plus years and I am very familiar with Southern California. LA County has many beautiful neighborhoods and sites that far exceed what Bogotá has to offer.

Engage the Exotic – Latin Women
http://International-Introductions.com

"Lady matchmaker Marsha Winter, who hooks up domestic couples in the Bay area, commented that she is "absolutely" in favor of the new proposed foreign bride laws, calling overseas matchmaking "ridiculous". "Tell these guys we have tons of good women here."

Psychological warfare to scare away guys from searching abroad. Better to date a local woman.

It's a pretty odd introductory post with very little information provided and a rather strange name to pick even if he is feeling confused nor has he responded to any of the comments received.

It also seems ironic that a post like this appears after our two recent "fiancée fast on the draw" posters.  If Confused’s post is legitimate I hope they were carefully reading it.

Hopefully it isn't a hoax post, because I just wasted a lot of time posting a response to try to help this guy :-)

On my first job after college, I was sent first to San Francisco for 6 weeks and then to West L.A. (near UCLA/Westwood) for another 6 weeks of training.  West LA was everyone's preferred location.  It was absolutely beautiful there, not too far from the place OJ later killed his wife....

Pete

They say it's the "Happiest Place on Earth".

1.  This is NOT normal.
2.  You screwed up.
3.  You are not alone, nor are you the first one to go through this experience.
4.  How committed are you to the marriage? If you are really committed to this, then seek professional help for both of you.  This will have to be in spanish.  If you attend a church, start there.  If you need additional resources, the phone book will have scores of counselors.
5.  If she won't get help, make sure YOU are getting help, either from a counselor, trusted mature friend, parent, etc.  Do NOT try to go through this alone.  Living alone with this type of personality will ultimately distort what you love and value, so much so that you won't know it.  In no time, you'll have lost your friends, your social life, hobbies, etc.
6.  Do you think her behavior and outbursts are reactions, or are they thought out?
7.  Does she ever admit to a problem?
8.  Are things ALWAYS bad, or do you two have some "good" moments, too?
9.  Is she expressing anything about what she feels?  Does she make any attempt to answer your questions about why she is acting this way? Or is everything she does an effort to control you?  
10. Is she showing signs of jealousy?
11. Is she physically abusive?
12. Does she escalate problems immediately?
13. Is she verbally insulting you?
14. Did she ever show any of this behavior previously?
15. It sounds to me like she is depressed.  She may also have Borderline Personality Disorder.  Google the phrase and read up on it to see if it sounds familiar.
16. If she takes no responsibility for her actions, blames you for everything, won't talk to any outsider, even a counselor or priest, then I don't know what more you can do other than walk away from the marriage.  

There are guys on here who've been badly burned, have a low opinion of women, or just want to be Peter Pan extending their youth through a younger woman.  When they say you are at risk, they are right.  So it comes down to this: is your wife sick, yes or no?  Does she love you, yes or no?  Do you love her, yes or no?  Are you willing to do whatever it takes to make this work, yes or no?  Is she willing to do whatever it takes to make this work, yes or no?  Is your wife dangerous enough to cause you physical harm, yes or no?  Is your wife malicious enough to cause you legal grief, yes or no?  When you know the answer to those questions then you will know what to do.

This whole way of meeting someone overseas is rife with pitfalls.  The separation and trying to grow with someone via email and phone calls more often feed the imagination than they build up a couple.  The distance really distorts things and should cause us to weight observed behavior differently than that of someone we would date locally, but there's no hard and fast rule for how to do that so we rationalize it somehow when we should give it more importance.  

I really sympathize with your situation since I am going through some similar problems with my PERUVIAN wife (ChrisF please read). I am willing to help you as I can if you need someone to talk to privately.  My email is listed in my profile.

If you are going through "similar problems" it would guess everyones advice here could apply to your situation as well...

We both know Surfscum that South American relationships are not always easy with the adjustment process alone...our wives are learning the customs, rules and language of this country and you do need a lot of patience....

If that had to be compunded with the B.S. you and ConfusedinLA are going through for me it simply would not be tolerated... Your wife, as well as Confused needs to change fast or else buy them a one way ticket home, cut your losses, learn from it, and move on..

Remember...South American women love a MAN...if you are letting yourself be walked on by tolerating this B.S...she is losing(or has lost) all respect for you...

I dont mean to be harsh or disrespectful to you Surfscum...but their are just so many women in South America to choose from...

Both of you dont deserve this kind of crap........

Every successful marriage I'm personally aware of, at least half a dozen if not more, the woman is from Cali not Peru.  In fact I'm not personally aware of one successful marriage where the woman is from Peru, not one.  Now should this fact really mean a lot, of course not.  For every guy who marries a Peruvian and writes about it here, ten or maybe 20 go to Cali.  Cali has the majority of success stories for the same reason it has so many failures, this is where guys have been travelling.  The important thing to do is to be able to find a good woman and one who cares about you.  This can be done in Cali or Lima.

Well Now you have.  My wife is from Lima and we just celebrated four years last night.  She did have some adjustment problems but we worked our way through them.  Their cultures are completely different from ours (gringos) and it's perfectly natural for a woman that has just left the only Country, culture friends and family she's ever known to be a little depressed and afraid.  On the site we run, we have ONLY had two incidents where the Lady Bolted and Left (nver to be found again) once she entered the States.  Both were Colombians (not sure what city at the moment).
Very Happily Married to my Peruaña.
Terry

There's four for ya. Or maybe you meant cases involving people you have met in person.

My post to Sursscum has NOTHING to do with comaring the
women from the two cities....it had EVERYTHING to do with
what not should be tolerated in a marriage

I guess your still a little sensitive from my posts about
Peru and Cali earlier and its been sticking with
you...lol...

Well based on the above quote from Surfscum, it looked to me anyway, that he was sending you a message about Peruvian women, that maybe they're just like women from other places, soom good, some bad and many in between.  Let's be honest Chris, you've been a leading proponet that Cali is bad hunting grounds while Peru is great.  Several people have pointed out the error in your thinking in the past but it's continued to be a theme of yours.  This seemed like the perfect oppurtunity, to drive the point home that your hypothesis is flawed!!  It's based most likely on your bad experiences in Cali and the negative stories we hear here on the board.  But having said that,  it should be obvious that Cali has significantly more negative stories because Cali has many more guys travelling there.  There are many positive stories too, as I said, every successful marriage I know is where the guy is married to a Calena. This fact doesn't really mean that I think Cali has better women, I don't, it just means I know people who married Calenas and little if any who married women from Peru.  I had a novia from Bolivia, does that count, she was a great gal and is undoubtedly a good wife to her husband back home but truthfully I'm happy I married my Calena!  Anyway, all the Latin American countries that I've travelled to are a gold mine in terms of finding a great wife.

Great women can still be found there..in my opinion how
ever...I feel its a tad more difficult now compared to a few
years back....it took Heat YEARS to find the right one...and
he lived there........

I am NOT an expert on Cali or any South American city for
that matter....I would classify an expert as someone who has
lived there....so in my opinion...Pete as well as Heat would
be considered experts...

Now...why dont you check the archives from June of this year
and read Heats posts again(My exeriences in Cali)..if you forgot...it is
one of the
best well written posts this year here..

Read it yourself.......while their is SOME positive aspects
to the posts...the overall theme is negative..... and if you
dont like what he said..you can cry to him as well
too!!.......lol

Peace out and Happy Holidays!!

We both have differences of opinion here....we can agree that we both can disagree!!..lol

I will say again that only IN MY OPINION...that its whoremongering gringos and misfit grigos that can cause damage to ANY CITY quality of good girls...

Therefore...this happens in EVERY CITY IN SOUTH AMERICA......BUT.......if more guys (good guys and bad) go to Cali..IN MY OPINION its going to hurt that city maybe more so then others...

Just my 2 cents...

Again...Happy Holidays to you and you lovely wife...

Peace out...

I only say this because of the women that I did meet and chatted with, whenever we talked about agency dating, they all stressed to me that they didn't like the group dates and the parties because it didn't feel personal.

No need to reply and tell me I'm wrong, it's just my opinion.

Now..what expeiences do you have in Cali or South America?

I would love to hear "your views" of the places you have
been.

   I went thru the same thing with my Peruvian wife, I took care of the problem I
showed her the door. I could do nothing right and why the hell would I want to
live like that for the rest of my life. I wish it could have worked out but it was not
to be. Now I am married to a very beautiful Colombian woman who I cannot wait
to come home too!

Women are women.  

Women's thought processes are exactly like cats. (I said cats not dogs)

Anyone who understands cats understands women.

Instead of wasting money on preachers, shrinks, boyfriends, girlfriends, mom, etc. a man just needs to have a pet cat for 8 months.  At the end of eight months,(if he has not killed it in the interim) and for life there after, a man understands any woman's thought process without fear, malice, prejudice, and has the ability to live happily ever after with or without one. (women on Venus and men on Mars just sells books)

I agree with most all in that you should take action, but only you can decide what is best for you and your new wife... If she is truly unhappy in her new life, then it's in both of your best interest to end the marriage quickly... If she does love you and is terrified of her new life, she may need a higher degree of hand-holding during the first few weeks... The first few months are very difficult for your new esposa...

As another poster advised, the only way to know is to have a serious talk with her... She needs to explain the radical change in her personality & behavior once she arrived in the US... You need to find out exactly what the problem is... If her explanations are unreasonable, highly emotional or lack clarity, then I think you know what you're in for if you stay together...

My wife is from Bogota and adapted to life in the US very well... She has several Colombiana amigas around the US that she stays in contact with via telephone / email... My email address is in my profile if you want to contact me...

It looks like you're trying to help her by suggesting things to help her to become more active.  But depression if severe enough can lead to despair or hopelessness and this may be the situation she feels herself in.  Once despair sets in, a person begins to withdraw and everything you suggest or do will have the same predictable results.  I wouldn't however throw in the towel at this point but you need to really get to the bottom of what's going on and soon.  If it is just that, depression, then you and her may be able to work through it.  If it's anything other than that, in otherwords this is who she really is, you may need to send her home.

My wife and I are a bit isolated out here in the Central Valley of California, nevertheless she's been able to make friends (primarily by phone) with a few of the other Calena wives here in California that we've met along the way.  For my wife, I think this has been a big positive.   As in everything there are always a few bad apples but I try to give my wife the freedom to discover these things on her own.  Anyway, you might try to hook your wife up with a few wives from Bogota who have gone the same route as you and who are still HAPPILLY married.  Ask around on the board, you might get some guys wife who is willing to befriend her.  I'd stick with Bogotanas as they'll be a more immediate bonding.

Good luck and try to discover what's at the bottom of this now rather than later.

Ask yourself first.  Am I doing anything differently?  Am I acting like a 47 year old now, and not like a 25 year old while I was down there?  Did I maybe give her false impressions of what type of person I am?  Examples being, exagerate income, exagerate lifestyle, etc.?  Am I treating her any differently?

Now if you answeres these questions honestly with a no, then proceed below.

Let's consider the fact she may be homesick.  If this is the fact then ask her how she would feel more comfortable.  Would she like to make a trip back down to see her family?  And then she can make the choice whether she wants to return.  But don't tell her that she is going there to think about the relationship, let her believe that it is just a family visit.  If it is true love and her being homesick, then her family will encourage her to try harder.  If she just really doesn't like the experience, then she won't return and she will tell you.

Now, let's consider her being a green card shark.  She has landed and has her green card.  Offer her a way out.  Ask her if she would like to get a divorce and offer her to help her get settled on her own.  Not so much financially, but with moral support and maybe a bit of cash.  If she jumps on the opportunity, then you know you had a shark the whole time.  What you want to do at that point is your discression.  I would recommend giving her a plane ticket or $5.00.  

Lastly, but firstly, you should try talking to her.  Communication is the key to everything.  She probably doesn't like your friends because they are all much older than her.  Maybe try to find friends her age.

As for the niece, unless you agreed to it while you were dating, then it is a definate no at this point.  You can even tell her that it is not fair to bring someone else in the house when she herself is not 100% happy.  It will be a way for her to change for the right motivation, or at least that she will know where she stands and if this was her goal the whole time, then she will move on.

Exhaust all attempts at solutions before giving up, but don't try to long at the solutions if you see they are not making any difference.

*By the way, LA is an ugly city.

Before you can give advice, you need to have SOME experience. Good or bad...where's yours?

So, although I may not have experience with agency girls, I do have experience with latin women and with marriage.  So this is where my advice comes from.  Do you have any experience like that, or do you just have experience with dating women in SA and thinking the worst of them at all times????

Experience in a successfull marriage doesn't qualify you to give advice in a situation that you may not have any experience with, since yours was so successful. Personally, I would consider success to last longer than six years, but that's just me. Also, if you are going to open up your situation as successful, what advice may have you given yourself to compromise with your wife to have prolonged the marriage? This question is rhetorical as many advice givers seem to think they can fix everything even when they haven't been able to for themselves.

I am not trying to get on you, and I hope the best for you, but you have shown that you aren't willing to take advice, so it's comical that you are trying to give it. Time will tell in all situations, yours, mine, this guy's, and anybody else's.

By the way, your fiance is an "agency girl". For you to make that distinction and label those women in that way is highly offensive and disrepectful to them and to her.

I don't mean any disrespect when I say "agency girl".  There is a reason that I put quotations on that term.  I use that term because almost, if not all, men on here are using agencies to find women.  And many of these men describe these girls as green card sharks or other negative terms.  I believe that there are some women who would fit this category, but I also believe that many of these women are good women.  This includes my novia (by the way she is still my novia and not my fiancee yet).

As for the suceess of my previous marriage, I do believe it was a success as the love was always there, the communication was always there, the give and take parts of the relationship were always there.  It was a storybook marriage for the most part of it, including the point where we decided to become seperated.  Not many people can call thier ex's thier best friend.  I can and still do even though we are 2 countries apart.  Everything in my marriage was as close to a perfect marriage as it could be.  The only thing that went wrong is we got married too young and she didn't realize the strain it would be on her, an only child, living so far away from her family and her culture.  If it was not for these things the marriage would have lasted forever probably and I wouldn't be a member of this forum and sharing these words with you.

Also, if you noticed in my post to this guy, I told him it would be difficult to comment on the issue properly without knowing more of the story.  I simply tried to open his eyes to some things that he may not have realized, or to some options that he may not have known were there, while others just siad pack her up and ship her back.  We shared actually simular advice, just with different words.

Whatever any of us say here is not going to change how he is going to handle it, but he needs to hear that this may be one of those times where it's time to go.

As for novia meaning fiancee and girlfriend, I have heard that before.  When I was learning spanish with my first wife, I found this confusing, so I called her novia when we were dating and mi prometida when we were engaged.  Just made it easier for me, and I guess it sort of stuck.  Sorry about that.

Funny fact:
"wife" in spanish is "esposa"
"Handcuffs" in spanish is "esposas"

When I first heard this I laughed for about a week.

Unless you have already blown the situation with threats, etc etc. and she has already gone bananas, buy her a round trip ticket back to Colombia as a loving husband trying to comfort his dear wife missing her poor family.  Once she is there half your problems are solved.  Now think intelligently (at your age you ought to be able to, and in any case you are half dead from age and your years left are numbered) and unless she is from a middle class Colombian family or higher you can figure out the rest.

I would suggest trying to find a female latina "friend" for her that is really working on your behalf to find out whats really going on. Perhaps another gringos wife or something.
Maybe all these guys are right but somehow you need to find out from her what she is saying and thinking. If you speak enough spanish then what does her family tell you?

People wont always tell you directly the real bottom line of whats going on.

Good luck

TE AMO PERU!!!

jim

Maybe if she gets around some other Latinas, she can move in with one of them, and work on the domestic violence charge.

Like he said,  be a loving husband and get her a ticket home to see her family.  Leave her there.

These mistakes don't have to ruin your life if you don't let them.

Homesickness is real and can be severe for some of the ladies arriving here. Yours sounds like one of the extreme cases, IF it is in fact only homesickness.

Since there is no legal basis for you to petition her niece for a visa, she will have to get over that idea. As for adopting her and then petitioning her for a visa as your child, the government makes that extremely difficult for obvious reasons. I believe that you have to legally adopt her in her country, then live there with her for at least 2 years before she would be eligible for a visa. If she is a bonafide orphan, it may be considerably easier. My question for you is this: Are you absolutely positive that her “niece” is not actually your wife’s child? I only ask because I have seen this identical thing happen before.

I don’t know your friends so I can’t speculate why she doesn’t like them. However, I would advise anyone with a newly arrived foreign partner to spend as much time with her for the first couple of months as possible. That would include taking at least the first 2-3 weeks off from work and getting her out of the house as much as possible. Take her to Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Knott’s, etc. Take her to the beach for a walk at sunset. Go to a movie together. Maybe back off from your friends temporarily and focus all of your attention on her for the first couple of months or so, then slowly introduce her to your friends.

Make sure she has plenty of discount phone cards so she can call home frequently if she feels the need.

If nothing works over a period of 3-6 months or so, then you should seriously consider terminating your misery through divorce. For the guys that are telling you to send her back, you cannot just send her back if she doesn’t wish to go since she apparently has a Green Card already. If you suggest that she return home and she refuses, then you can be assured that she had a plan to screw you over all along. It’s called “Green Card Shark” :-)

Good luck,

Ray

Soltero is being very gentlemanly and generous assuming she is suffering from extreme homesickness rather than a scammer.  But in either case, the OP would be wise to encourage her to return home to "talk things over" with her parents before they try again.  If he even hints that he's considering breaking things off while she's still here, "confused" will soon find himself in a jail cell on trumped up charges of abuse so she can self-petition to stay.  When it's obvious things are going south, you gotta get smart and sneaky and start protecting yourself.

In two years when she applies for Removal of Conditions, she can file on her own if she is divorced. All she would have to do is convince CIS that she married in good faith (not hard).

“IF” the niece were actually her own daughter, it wouldn’t be the first time that a foreign lady hid that fact from her husband/fiancée. But if a lady falsified her documentation by hiding the existence of a child, she could “theoretically” be busted for visa fraud and deported. If he has doubts, I think it would be easy enough to check out.

Ray

I don't know their full situation, but she doesn't seem like she is willing to do anything to make this work. I am not trying to make her out as a villain, but she definitely does not appear to want to be with the guy in that she is not trying to compromise at all. If you take his story at face value, he needs to cut his losses now.

But if she refuses to even try to make it work, then he doesn’t have much choice but to get out. Anyway, it’s his decision, not ours.

Ray

How about some details about how you met and how long you knew her.  Do you speak spanish? Does she peak english? What was the initial attraction?

Good Luck
Fathertime

The fact that you have to ask this question is the most troublesome of your post.

Of course this isn't normal and a start to a good life.  You're back in the hunt.....

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back in the hunt.  If you have traditionally had lousy judgement with women in the past, get consulting from your friends before you make another bad callnext time.  Some guys just don't read women well and need outside consulting.

I see so many guys trying to speed this whole process up and settle down.

What is the hurry?

Enjoy every minute of this, because after you find the right girl and you settle down, you will likely look back on the hunt and remember how much fun it was.

I don't disagree with you, but I don't think it is totally about reading the woman. In her natural environment, she may actually be a decent person and that and distance provide the smokescreen. Taken out of that comfort zone, you may have a raging lunatic. I say give the process time like you would in any normal relationship to find out if she is a closet psycho. I rushed this once believing the agency hype but never again and I am loving it now. I know what to watch out for and I have been getting better at finding quality women there with each new acquaintance. The slow and steady will win the day, I am sure.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "uneducated"?

Are you talking about being educated to the ways of the USA and/or USA culture, or are you implying that she is not college educated, or what?

Here is an example. I am not judging my ex, but when my friends would come over, she would go into the bedroom and refuse to come out. It was embarassing because they had come over to welcome her. They had been out of the country for two years living in Germany, so I was really happy to see them. I can see it from her point of view in that she was tired of meeting people that she couldn't actually talk to because of the language difference, but an educated person may have handled it differently. It was embarassing, but these being good friends, they never said anything. She acted like a child  in my opinion, and showed a lack of class to me. Class that may have been there through enlightenment that may have come from being more knowledgable.

I don't blame her, I blame me for not taking the time to understand all of the ramifications. Having been through it now, I have a better understanding of what may happen and how to prevent it the next time. I make it a point to understand what the perceptions are of the US on a much deeper and simple level now. I don't try to feed any of the fanatsies about what life is like here and give a more realistic picture. I also explain how difficult it would be to be here "fresh" without any understanding of English and will not bring a person here who has no or little understanding of the language. An educated person can understand that not knowing just means they need to learn because they know that's all it is. An uneducated person just doesn't want their lack of education to be discovered, and they usually become belligerent to cover it up. There is a huge difference between being ignorant and uneducated. The educated person grasps the fact that ignorance is not a permanent condition. One can learn. The uneducated person is alot slower to make that distinction.

Poverty plays a role as well, but that's another one of the many issues that have to be surmounted in the choosing process and another story altogether.

Assuming that she has a basic level of English language skills, I have found that a real good way to expose her to a more realistic view of what life here is like is to send her a local Sunday newspaper from time to time. My prospective wife and her family really enjoyed reading it and there is enough information in there, both good and bad, to keep them busy for at least a month or two. And it will go a long way to dispel some of that “Hollweird” stuff they see in the movies.

You might also want to send her some of the local Spanish language newspapers from your area, if available.

Ray

 Deadly combo indeed. I am still going through that with a former employee in Brazil who is now suing me fraudulently. It's amazing how dumb, ignorant people are the most likely to be obstinate know-it-alls.

It's called  SUCKERRRRRRRRRRR

And more guys then want to admit it have been in your position, Myself included . It is only going to get worse i am afraid for you. I put up with it for 2 years longer then i should have because i thought that i could put that square peg in a round hole. Just not possible.I wish you much luck with all

KB