Divorcees - any red flags from the beginning?
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Anonymous
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This thread is sort of opposite that "Why did you marry your husband?" thread.
It's easy to gush about how "you just knew" your husband was the one for you, when your marriage is great and everything's hunky dory. I'd like to hear from the ladies where everything seemed dreamy, you just knew he was "the one", love at first site or whatever, then you ended up divorced. -What caused the divorce - How long were you married -Were there signs or red flags there in the beginning, that you ignored or thought were no big deal, that ended up causing issues for your marriage The reason I ask is that I am a never married 37 yr old, and dating. I'd like to get married, and I've met someone and it's starting to get serious. I've fallen in love before, and even been engaged, but ultimately those relationships ended, and usually due to things that were there in the beginning that I thought I could handle. My parents' marriage is a mess, so with therapy and by observing friends in healthy marriages, I'm trying to learn how to pick my husband wisely. I'd like to hear your experiences, and any words of advice you have for me, especially those who started off in what they thought were wonderful loving marriages to the man of their dreams, but ended up divorced. |
Anonymous
| Please also mention if your ex-husband was the only guy you'd ever dated, or if you'd dated others before him, and therefore had experience in other relationships before settling down. |
Anonymous
| It wasn't until we were married that I discovered he had some issues. I guess you'd call them physical issues. Not sure how to put this in a non-explicit forum. He had, you might say, an ascension deficit disorder. A less-than-magic johnson. He kept serving up boneless pork. Know what I'm saying? |
Anonymous
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I was married before and even dating we were on again off again. He had anger issues that became physically abuse rather anger issues once we were married.
I am now remarried to a wonderful guy. It was always clear how he felt about me. There were no games. |
Anonymous
| DW had body image issues from early on. Never could be comfortable in her own skin. Sex became more and more one sided, I always seemed to do all the work. If she can't manage her own orgasms, run. |
Anonymous
| I dated a decent amount before I met my husband but I met him young, at 22, and we were married when I was 24. I didn't recognize any red flags while in the marriage but was very codependent and I always put myself last. And he always allowed it. It got to the point where I was literally doing everything around the house and taking care of everyone but myself. My needs never got met (it took a lot of therapy for me to recognize this in retrospect). I was exhausted all the time and didn't have the energy to devote to the marriage itself. The marriage died due to this and other reasons. And now my ex is much kinder to me and treats me so much better. He's now very attentive to my needs, it's bizarre actually but I'll take it. We were married for 18 years. |
Anonymous
What do you mean? That it is not your job to make her orgasm? |
Anonymous
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I'm responding to your post because I know someone (family member) who has a very unhappy marriage. They aren't divorced mainly, I think, because of finances and codependency. The wife says that there were no red flags, but I disagree. She talks a lot about how when they first dated, another guy said something crude to her and he grabbed the guy by his shirt and told the guy never to talk to her like that again. She speaks of it as an example of chivalry and how flattered she was. But I see it as a red flag that he had anger issues, didn't deal appropriately with conflict, was quick to revert to bravado. Needless to say, his temper grew worse, and now that behavior she thought was so romantic has been turned on her. The moral of the story is that it isn't just important to watch how a guy treats you. Of course he's going to be on his best behavior and maybe even put you on a pedestal, but that is temporary. It's important to watch how he treats other people, how he deals with conflict, and most important, how he treats people he doesn't like or doesn't get along with (how he behaves in arguments). |
Anonymous
| He was divorced. His mom had been married three times. His brother had been married three times. Now we are divorced and he is remarrying. God bless the new wife |
Anonymous
| 21:43 again my XH was not the first man I had dated I was 34 yo when we met. Overall he is a nice guy but emotionally he is effed up. |
Anonymous
I couldn't make her do anything, it was all in her head. and looking back was a big red flag, if she is not comfortable in her own body, run, it only gets worse. |
Anonymous
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Anxieties
20 years They got worse and worse and worse |
Anonymous
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Cause of divorce: he was more interested in / committed to his work than he was to our marriage and after a few pretty egregious demonstrations of that, I left him.
Married five years. Together for five prior to marriage. Yes. Ex has always had a tendency to to become immersed in a new project or adventure. For the first couple years of our relationship, that was me. Then we got married and moved here and it became his work. He wanted to have a baby, so we did and for a while, she was the new thing. Then it went back to being work because he got a new job. Since we split another five years ago, I've seen him move to another new job and a couple new girlfriends and it's been the same pattern. I just didn't really notice it at first because I was the thing he was excited for. He wasn't my first relationship, but he was my first very serious long term relationship. My previous longer relationships were not more than 2 years. I'd say that I had experience, but marrying someone and maintaining a connection with them through life's ups and downs is different. My advice to you would be to pick someone you like being around, who you have a connection with and who shares your priorities in life. You can't always see someone's flaws if you haven't been with them a while. In my experience, some major character issues take a while to emerge. |
Anonymous
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Red flag was her hinting I was being cheap on our wedding spending compared to her sister's husband. After comparing budgets, our (modest) wedding still cost 10x what theirs did. Significantly more if you count the rings.
She's that bad at money. |
Anonymous
I agree with this. I was married for 16 years. By the time I got divorced, the red flags were flying high, we had three kids and I was doing everything I could to keep our family together. I dated quite a few men before I met my ex, and had a couple of serious relationships. We met in our early 30's and married within 2 years. That was probably too quickly, but as we were both "older", I felt ready. There were a few issues in the beginning but I rationalized them away and told myself that no relationship is perfect. He was dx'd a few years into our marriage with ADHD, which explained a lot of his behaviors. Unfortunately, he did not take responsibility for his health, and remains untreated. This developed into a very unhealthy dynamic of my "parenting" him along with our kids. He started losing jobs, disengaging from the family, became increasingly less responsible for his behavior. It was like living with a teenager, not a life partner. This went on for about 4 years, and despite counseling and therapy, he continued to pull away. The more he "left", the harder I tried to get him to step up and be a husband and father. It was awful. It brought out the worst in me. He was completely passive aggressive, and basically refused to participate in anything related to me or the family. He just bailed. I finally realized that one spouse can't save a marriage, and he was clearly not interested in being married. So I asked for a divorce. He never batted an eye. I have full custody of the kids, and he barely pays support, or sees them. I learned several years into our marriage that his childhood was far more dysfunctional than he had admitted and included alcoholic parents, neglect and abuse. I think he buried that until our kids were born, and then he couldn't handle raising children of his own, increased responsibilities at work, owning a home. Being an adult. My advice to my younger self would be to go to pre-marital counseling and explore how we would handle LIFE together. More pointedly, how would he handle difficult life situations? Because dating is fun. Life is fun, but life is full of mundane responsibilities and sometimes curve balls that are big and scary and have to be dealt with. You want to know you have a partner you can depend on. Who has your back. I liked being around my ex, we had fun, we shared the same goals, the same values, and I thought he was a genuinely kind and caring person. What I didn't know was how ill-equipped he was to handle adult life and responsibilities. And that when things got tough, he shut down completely. I didn't know he had zero ability to manage conflict, and that he avoided taking personal responsibility for anything at any cost. He is so broken that he has literally lost everything. His family, his career, his home. He has chosen to live with his own dysfunction than to work through his issues and have a full adult life. |