“I never loved her”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My ex and I never loved each other. It happens. We married due to expectations and in his words: I “looked good on paper.” I had a lot of family pressure to marry.

This far more common than people want to acknowledge.

I am the PP…I agree and wish people understood this still happens quite a lot

For both people? Save everyone the money and time. It’s all in your head that this is what they wanted. It’s what you wanted.

I would take this excuse if you had an arranged marriage in your teens but 25+ adults signing a long term legal document are responsible for their actions, blaming it in others doesn't absolve you from owing your dishonesty and failure.

[Anonymous]

Age isn't what matters, maturity does. You can be 20 and mature and 50 and immature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My ex and I never loved each other. It happens. We married due to expectations and in his words: I “looked good on paper.” I had a lot of family pressure to marry.

This far more common than people want to acknowledge.

I am the PP…I agree and wish people understood this still happens quite a lot

For both people? Save everyone the money and time. It’s all in your head that this is what they wanted. It’s what you wanted.

I would take this excuse if you had an arranged marriage in your teens but 25+ adults signing a long term legal document are responsible for their actions, blaming it in others doesn't absolve you from owing your dishonesty and failure.

Look--we both had age pressure to marry. You don't get it. My mom literally said "you should just get married anyway" when I wanted to end it. He had pressure on his side too. We were in our 30s and it "looked right." We had geographic pressure to make a decision. Long distance. We made the wrong one. It was a miserable decade. Once you are married, then there is pressure to stay no matter the cost. It was hell. He wanted me to get married anyway despite my reluctance and my family was really pressuring me. It was not acceptable not to be married. I was 32. If you are raised super tradtionally, with strong non-American culture in your family, you have no idea what the pressure is like.

[Anonymous]

Its always the other person, I've not met anyone who wasn't married to a narcissist, either every divorced person is a victim or everyone , in denial or a lier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this could happen when the person wonders if what they feel that might be called love isn't really love, or at least isn't nearly the same as how the other person in the relationship felt which they called love. Or maybe compared to other people they know and how they experience love.

I think it's not uncommon at all for some people, maybe especially men, to question what their feelings really are. Love vs companionship, admiration, attraction, protectiveness, appreciation, or just plain strong like.

I think it's also possible if someone decides or discovers they didn't love their spouse of 30 years, the mother of their children, it's also likely they aren't going to be able to really love anyone else either.

I'm a woman, and I feel this way about my husband. "Love" is a very western construct. The word doesn't even exist in some other languages. I have affection, respect and loyalty for my husband (and other times, frustration and scorn!). It's perfectly fine to question whether or not you "love" someone when the very word is so fraught, so loaded by American standards.

However this person really has to express some sort of positive feeling about their ex, otherwise it is a red flag. He stayed for years. I suppose he did feel some loyalty and sense of duty. Also apathy, probably, perhaps financial insecurity until he could feel secure enough to leave? Lots of different reasons and feelings. It's normal for such situations to be complex. Simplifying them would be silly.

This is an interesting point. I think people have varied ideas of what love is or is supposed to be, and many use it as an excuse to break their commitments. Often people think of it as something that forces them to act and over which they have no control. It's odd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My ex and I never loved each other. It happens. We married due to expectations and in his words: I “looked good on paper.” I had a lot of family pressure to marry.

This far more common than people want to acknowledge.

I am the PP…I agree and wish people understood this still happens quite a lot

For both people? Save everyone the money and time. It’s all in your head that this is what they wanted. It’s what you wanted.

I would take this excuse if you had an arranged marriage in your teens but 25+ adults signing a long term legal document are responsible for their actions, blaming it in others doesn't absolve you from owing your dishonesty and failure.

Look--we both had age pressure to marry. You don't get it. My mom literally said "you should just get married anyway" when I wanted to end it. He had pressure on his side too. We were in our 30s and it "looked right." We had geographic pressure to make a decision. Long distance. We made the wrong one. It was a miserable decade. Once you are married, then there is pressure to stay no matter the cost. It was hell. He wanted me to get married anyway despite my reluctance and my family was really pressuring me. It was not acceptable not to be married. I was 32. If you are raised super tradtionally, with strong non-American culture in your family, you have no idea what the pressure is like.

YOU made the compromise, instead of blaming others, own your weakness. Unless it was a shotgun wedding, it was a choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Age isn't what matters, maturity does. You can be 20 and mature and 50 and immature.

This. Just because you are above 25 with a fully developed pre-frontal cortex, doesn't mean you have a fully developed backbone. You may never take responsibility for your actions. You are always the victim forced by others into bad decisions.

[Anonymous]

You want something new and exciting. Own it, don't put a spin on it. Everybody does and deals with it, quitting is an easy way out, putting responsibility on others makes it palatable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My ex and I never loved each other. It happens. We married due to expectations and in his words: I “looked good on paper.” I had a lot of family pressure to marry.

This far more common than people want to acknowledge.

I am the PP…I agree and wish people understood this still happens quite a lot

For both people? Save everyone the money and time. It’s all in your head that this is what they wanted. It’s what you wanted.

I would take this excuse if you had an arranged marriage in your teens but 25+ adults signing a long term legal document are responsible for their actions, blaming it in others doesn't absolve you from owing your dishonesty and failure.

Look--we both had age pressure to marry. You don't get it. My mom literally said "you should just get married anyway" when I wanted to end it. He had pressure on his side too. We were in our 30s and it "looked right." We had geographic pressure to make a decision. Long distance. We made the wrong one. It was a miserable decade. Once you are married, then there is pressure to stay no matter the cost. It was hell. He wanted me to get married anyway despite my reluctance and my family was really pressuring me. It was not acceptable not to be married. I was 32. If you are raised super tradtionally, with strong non-American culture in your family, you have no idea what the pressure is like.

YOU made the compromise, instead of blaming others, own your weakness. Unless it was a shotgun wedding, it was a choice.

Yeah, I said it was the wrong one. I am not complaining. I should have listened to my gut. I did not. Anyway, I was responding some people understand that sometimes "I never loved him/her" is accurate. People marry for a lot of reasons. Could be love, could be expectations/social family pressure, could be desire to procreate, could be money. I married due to social expectations and family pressure--it was the same for my ex. That does not involve love. So, yes, it is possible to marry without love to answer people's questions.

[Anonymous]

Odd that people think this is a red flag. Not everyone chooses to marry for love. I'd be more interested in why he married her if he didn't love her. Maybe she got pregnant first, and he was trying to "do the right thing." Who knows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don't see how this is a red flag. We all know about people who get married too young and don't know what they're getting into. We probably all have boyfriends/girlfriends from high school/college that we thought we were super in love with but it turns out we really weren't. All kinds of people stay in unhappy marriages for decades, especially if they're confused about why they're unhappy.

Someone said above this indicates OP's boyfriend is not "taking responsibility" for his part in the end of his marriage. I don't see that at all. It looks like he did some self reflection and realized his feelings weren't what he thought they were.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don't see how this is a red flag. We all know about people who get married too young and don't know what they're getting into. We probably all have boyfriends/girlfriends from high school/college that we thought we were super in love with but it turns out we really weren't. All kinds of people stay in unhappy marriages for decades, especially if they're confused about why they're unhappy.

Someone said above this indicates OP's boyfriend is not "taking responsibility" for his part in the end of his marriage. I don't see that at all. It looks like he did some self reflection and realized his feelings weren't what he thought they were.

This. This is why people give such terrible advice on this forum. They read everything through their own distorted lens, they diagnose personality disorders from 3 sentences of an anonymous post, they assume all sorts of facts that aren’t true. It’s so ridiculous. OP, you know a lot more than anyone responding here. If you don’t know what it means, just keep talking and get to know him better. DCUM is good for what color should I paint the hallway, not things that really matter.

I disagree.

I think you get lots of perspectives on DCUM which is a good thing. You may not get THE answer, but then when you are talking about love there is no THE answer.

Better for the OP to view this topic from different perspectives and from men and women of different ages and experiences than to sit and ruminate about it in her own mind with limited perspective. The more info you have the better you are able to figure out what's going on.

Info?? More like opinions from 5 pages of varying life experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many selfish jerks say this after they bail on their family. It's a line.

Staying for nearly 30 years and raising three disabled kids to adulthood is not bailing on your family.

Well, so was other person and unless kids were from her previous marriage, you weren't doing her a personal favor.

Who said it was a favor. It was a responsibility, and a commitment and he did it. That’s not “bailing,” divorcing 3 decades later when all your kids are in their 20s.

Is this Op?

I don't know why you are here continuing to argue. You've already decided he's a great guy and you're going to continue seeing him.
You are only here looking for responses to tell you it's not a red flag.
As you can see people have a variety of opinions on that.
Here's one more disabled kids don't stop needing support once they hit 18 in fact they often need more support , sois he still helping the ex with that?

Good luck to you and your bf op and I sincerely mean that whatever you decide I hope it works out well for you

[Anonymous]

Face it, many divorced people have “hidden” baggage and if they remarry, very high second divorce rates.

Words are cheap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many selfish jerks say this after they bail on their family. It's a line.

Staying for nearly 30 years and raising three disabled kids to adulthood is not bailing on your family.

Well, so was other person and unless kids were from her previous marriage, you weren't doing her a personal favor.

Who said it was a favor. It was a responsibility, and a commitment and he did it. That’s not “bailing,” divorcing 3 decades later when all your kids are in their 20s.

Is this Op?

I don't know why you are here continuing to argue. You've already decided he's a great guy and you're going to continue seeing him.
You are only here looking for responses to tell you it's not a red flag.
As you can see people have a variety of opinions on that.
Here's one more disabled kids don't stop needing support once they hit 18 in fact they often need more support , sois he still helping the ex with that?

Good luck to you and your bf op and I sincerely mean that whatever you decide I hope it works out well for you

I don’t know yet we haven’t discussed his finances though obviously how he handled it.