Reply to Husband has a "one that got away!". Not sure how I feel

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]
But then last night, he started telling me how he never knows how much he is allowed to tell me. That raised a lot of curiosity so of course I asked. And then he shared, kind of quietly, about how he had been planning to marry the girlfriend before me but she broke his heart.

If my husband did this, I would ask why he was bringing it up and what he hoped for the conversation to accomplish. It seems like a really pointless thing to talk about at this juncture.

I think it's pretty obvious from the conversation what he was hoping to accomplish. He feels like his inability to tell her things, to be open and share himself with her, is limited by her insecurity and overreaction to things. She pressed for an example, and he gave her one. After so many years, it shouldn't be a secret that he had a serious girlfriend before her that he considered marrying, and the fact that he had this serious girlfriend before OP doesn't inherently have implications for OP or their marriage.

I don't know. I can only look at it from the perspective of my own marriage. If DH said that, and then brought up some old girlfriend, I'd be curious and somewhat annoyed as to what he hoped to accomplish by dredging this up after years of marriage and kids. If he hadn't told me about some prior girlfriend and their issues already by this juncture, what could possibly be the benefit of doing so now?

This is exactly what I'm saying. It shouldn't have been something OP's DH had to keep a secret for so many years, but for some reason he felt he did need to keep it a secret. OP wanted an example of how he felt he couldn't talk to her, so this is one he mentioned. What he was hoping to accomplish was probably less about the girlfriend, and more about trying to improve his relationship with his wife so that there aren't secrets. The old girlfriend should be a pretty low-stakes thing to share at this point, far lower stakes than other things he might be feeling more vulnerable about today (not things that have implications for the OP or their marriage, but things about him and his inner emotional life). This might have been a test balloon for whether he can trust OP enough to more open and vulnerable with her about things more significant to him, and thus have a closer marriage; if so, she's failing spectacularly.

I mean, the fact that OP's post is all about the ex-girlfriend and the fact that he husband said he feels like he can't tell her things says everything. To me, the latter would be a much bigger issue in my marriage than the former. [/quote]

I mean, maybe, but that seems to be some pretty poor thinking on her husband's part - "I have trouble discussing my emotional life with my wife, so I'll start by bringing up some other woman that I almost married.  I'm sure that'll be a noncontroversial place to start."[/quote]

Sure, if your only focus as the spouse hearing this is on yourself and not on what your spouse is trying to tell you. If his other options for talking to her are about the depression he's been struggling with, or his anxiety about professional prospects that he feels are drying up, or fears about getting older and dying, he's not going to start there with someone he doesn't trust it's too sensitive if she reacts badly. Anything he would bring up as an example in this context is going to be loaded in some way, because otherwise he either would have said it already or it would be so trivial that it wouldn't matter whether he said it or not. To him, it was probably a great example because this woman was so far in the past and utterly meaningless to their current relationship, and yet he still feels like it needs to be a secret.[/quote]

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