Relationship – Completely messed up, Me (28F) and my husband (29M)

Going to be a long story. Apologies.. (Husband – 29, Wife – 28, relationship – 3 years (2 married)

So me and my husband, we used to be in the same university and didn’t date at that time and I had another BF while he had another GF. Things didn’t workout well, and after the initial breakups and maybe two years of being just friends, we started dating. The dating picture did not start as normal as you think because he was initially interested in me, and then we started kinda dating and later he said he likes me as a friend, and then we broke up, and he never stopped texting, and I got severe depression, and was hooking up to him for some sort of comfort and then later he said he wanted to date me, ‘Seriously this time’, because ‘I wasn’t giving up on him‘. And later we married (we are asians so we did the legal thing, but not the customary thing so we are living separately)….

His excuse towards saying he wasn’t ready for a relationship was the trauma he had from his past relationship…

And two days before our legal marriage ceremony, we had a casual discussion about what exactly was the colour I should chose, and one thing led to another, and I asked him what his type of girls was. And his response was, ‘Well, you know my ex-gf was half-(another country in Asia with very fair people). So you obviously know how she looked and all, and you and her, you guys are like in the complete opposite ends. So I do not have a type‘.. And regardless, it broke me.. I already have childhood trauma added to literal adults calling me out right now for being dark (not black but brown) and fat (not that fat, just some belly fat which comes and goes).. But, I could not muster the courage to stop the engagement, so we went ahead with it.

And after our engagement, we went out (I normally don’t wear open-toe slippers because I feel my toes are ugly), and he saw my feet and straight-up said my toes are disgusting. For which I spent a good 10 minutes crying in the bathroom.

And, then, I was supposed to travel abroad for PhD, and I was busy and all, and however, on the night I was supposed to fly, I was casually going through his phone to add selfies of me for him to remember us by, and I saw that he had been flirting with another girl he met after our marriage. It was literally replying to all her stories and talks about being cold at night and stuff (nothing sexual but completely flirtatious). I confronted him but he avoided the talk. It took me about 1 year to get my visa status completed in the country I travelled to, and during this time we had so many arguments about this flirting thing because I could not trust him at all. It took him about 7 months to even accept what he did was wrong in the first place. And during that time, though I was asking him to come to where I was (EU so obviously hard to get visa but still he could come and visit me) he was pointing out finances (as an excuse), and then literally said that he did not want to come and get stuck with me without being able to go home whenever he wants to.

I tried to divorce him and talked to my parents but my parents are strictly cultural and they see divorce as an embarrassment. Not sure if they would see me die rather than getting divorced. And now today is our wedding anniversary and he has been a sex addicted kind of person from the beginning, and so was I (matching energies), but I have grown very distant from him and do not find him physically attractive, which always results in him lashing out at me. I understand his frustration but I just don’t want to have sex before mending our relationship, and all he sees is sex. Yesterday, he planned a complete day-out, in a hotel room for our anniversary, which is going to be nothing but sex, but our conversations heated up and he said he lied to me and though he had relationships he was a virgin until he met me. I have done the deed in the past, and due to cultural reasons I told him at the very beginning to maintain honesty, and he has been lying straight-up for 3 years now. It also hurt me and now I feel like he is a complete stranger for some reason even I don’t understand.

I also think that most of these are in my head, and if I am victimizing myself. Maybe these are not even serious problems, but I think I am slowly going insane. I feel like crying but then not crying, I can’t focus on work today, and I try to smile but joy is not there anymore. Knowing that my parents want me suck up and be in this marriage has made me contemplate ending my life a couple of times already, and I might just do that. PLEASE HELP ME.

TL;DR: Relationship completely messed up (29M, 28F), and I don’t know what I should do anymore.