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Question for Some Discussion
I thought this might be an interesting question...
Was the issue/behavior/problem that contributed to your separation/divorce something you knew about or were concerned about before getting married? Did you ever think it would lead to a divorce?
At first, I felt like my DH's behavior was a complete surprise and that he was so unpredictable during our marriage. But now looking back and reading my old journal entries, I realize the issues that led to our problems existed from the very beginning....just on a much smaller scale and on a scale I thought I could live with and manage just fine.
He always buckled under pressure and stress but at first that just meant maybe not doing some of the chores or taking care of small responsibilities but then it led to him failing school, being wishy washy with his feelings for me and on and on. My dad said from day one my DH had problems with committing himself to anything...I did recognize that he had trouble sticking to things but I never thought he would have trouble sticking with me 
.
What about you guys???
Re: Question for Some Discussion
There were several issues before the wedding, haha! Some I knew about but I thought would be okay (he was bad with money). Somethings turned into issues (he was a big party guy--fine when I was 23 but not so much when I was 27). Some things I didn't realize until after (low self esteem) which I think caused some of the issues.
All in all, I think I was way too young to get married (I was 25) and I didn't really look at the important stuff. I really thought being in love was enough. ha!
3/12 5 mi -- 49:22 Pace: 9:52
5/1 Half Marathon -- 2:11:22 Pace: 10:01
5/22 10k -- 56:29 Pace: 9:00
5/24 3.6 -- 29:03 Pace: 8:18
7/10 15k -- 1:44:46 injured Pace: 11:14
10/29 5k -- 28:24 Pace: 9:04
There wasn't a huge character flaw that my XH had or anything but prior to the wedding we talked a few times about possibly calling it off and I had a few moments where I didn't think it was the right move for me and I let people talk me out of it. I actually approached a few people for advice and they told me I was just having cold feet. 1) I was too young at 20 and 2) I should have listened to my gut.
Honestly I had no idea how deep his depression was, and I doubt he did either. That didn't come out in full force until we had been married for about 2 years, together for 6 at that point. Everyone was surprised.
Yes and no. When we dated he was a wanna-be player, dated around a lot, broke up with me twice (once for another woman at our office who had just been dumped by her husband* and once because he just "wasn't the relationship type"), and was generally unfeeling and unemotional. By the time we got back together and got engaged, he claimed to have been changed by God, and literally cried at my feet and begged me to marry him. I was crazy in love with him, so I fell for it. He eventually turned back into the emotionless wanna-be player. At the beginning I never thought we'd divorce because he claimed he didn't believe in divorce...he apparently only believed in adultery. Go figure.
*The issue with the woman we worked with should have been a red flag, but I thought it was an isolated incident. I know now that he LOVES to swoop in and be the knight in shining armor. This woman had just been dumped by her husband, and from the minute he found that out, he was WAY into her. Now that I think back on it, I was coming off a bad engagement when we got together, and I know of a few other women he dated before me who were getting out of bad marriages, or who were actually still IN bad marriages. The woman he cheated on me with earlier this year had recently been left by her husband. He has a pattern, that's for sure. Narcissism is rooted in low self esteem, and these women helped to pad his ego - me included.
Yes.
Yes.
I pretty much got married knowing that we would end up getting divorced eventually. Yeaaaaaah.
I attribute it to:
being "too" young
not really having a good idea of what marriage meant
being too much of a wussy to call it off
guilt (not wanting to disappoint my parents / waste their money)
peer pressure & the wedding industry (for good measure)
I really thought XH and I would be married forever, but in retrospect, I'm not sure why I didn't see the glaring warning signs telling me we were going to have big problems. I own the fact that I wasn't perfect in our relationship either, and there are things I wish I hadn't done or said, but yes there were definitely some huge red flags coming from XH's side too.
First of all, our relationship was set up all wrong from the beginning. When we first started dating XH was in college and living at home and I had already dropped out of school and had a "grown up" job (the job I still have, in fact). We had a blast together, but I took on the role of taking care of everything. Hell, he even lived in my apartment rent free for years. In the beginning I gladly took on the role of taking care of XH, but later on that would become a huge point of contention in our relationship.
I also overlooked the fact that XH was a terrible communicator and an angerball. And frankly we just communicated differently -- I'm a talker, and need to chat my way thru things, while XH very often just would completely shut down. This reared it's ugly head from time to time when we dated, but nothing like it would after we were married and dealing with major life issues.
We had dated for about 5 years when I started to really put the pressure on for us to get married - I wanted to settle down with the man I loved, and I really wanted to have kids before I was 30. XH proposed on Christmas in 2005, we got married 9 mos later - I was 26, he was 24. At the time I felt like this was a perfectly suitable age to be married, now I think it's insane we got married so young. I think both of us still had a lot of growing up/figuring things out to do.
Yeah, I knew some of the things would be an issue but acquiesced to them anyway (why, I don't know). I guess I thought he would change or that I could change him. I'm a fixer and this is what I was trying to do.
I always had a premonition I would get divorced--self fulfilling prophecy or knowing that I was making a big mistake?
I ignored so many red flags.
I always knew that H had a drinking problem. When we first met, I thought he was just a lot of fun and ignored it. After about a year into dating, he lost his job and his drinking escalated, but like what Mint said, I'm a fixer and I thought I could "fix" this. It wasn't until we moved in together and he had got pulled over by boarder patrol trying to cross into Canada for drunk driving that I realized that his problem was more than what I can deal with. But I felt that this is what I needed to do - help him. He wasn't a bad person, just had a bad problem. I can do this.
After the dui debacle, he came home and stopped drinking for 4 years. Life was wonderful during those 4 years. Then his dad at 52 died of cancer and everything went down the sh!tter!! The drinking really esclated but I thought that since we were engaged and I loved him and I could change him that this is just something that shall pass and he'll be sober again. I was never so wrong in my life. The drinking progressed and among other things that developed throughout our marriage, he's very controlling, physically and mentally abusive, and extremely selfish. I still thought I could "fix" him.
There were so many red flags the 7 years prior to getting married that I ignored. I couldn't tell you how many times my BFF told me to walk away that I actually stopped talking to her for almost 1 year because I was sick of hearing it. I really thought that my love could make him stop drinking but it didn't. After our wedding and during our honeymoon, I knew that what I did (by marrying him) was wrong and I should've listened to my friends and my gut telling me to walk away. But in hind sight, my power of love was so strong for him that I really thought it would conquor all and that his drinking would stop. It didn't and now tomorrow I'm moving out and I couldn't be more happier with that decision. I'm following my gut this time.
I knew who I my husband was, I knew his faults. He never misrepresented himself. But sign me up for the I can be everything he wants and change him.
I should also mention. I wanted to be married and have a family at pretty much any cost. I choose a man who wanted those things also. But was not at all compatible for me as a woman. Without a connection to my husband I put all my love and attention into my children.
But lets face it when you are young 19 and 23 you do expect them to grow up. I did, he did not. Still has not.
Definitely. He had cheated with his ex wife on mulitple occasions. He swore that she drove him to by controling him and being a biatch. I believed him but always had this nagging feeling that he was cheating on me. No matter how much I tried I couldn't find the evidence. I was also so wrapped up in wanting to be a wife and wanting a baby that I didn't care to really reflect on the red flags.
Then after he dropped the divorce bomb on me it wasn't until 4 months later that I found the picture of him and the pvt in his unit he was having an affair with. Once I turned the picture in to his unit, everyone came pouring in with information. Turns out it really had gone back to the day I met him, the night I went in to labor and after our son was born. I knew a few of the girls personally that he had slept with.
Was the issue/behavior/problem that contributed to your separation/divorce something you knew about or were concerned about before getting married? Did you ever think it would lead to a divorce?
Yes to the first, no to the second. I was young and in complete denial. Everything that was sexy and cool and edgy about him when I was in college ended up being unsexy and uncool and douchey when I matured. I overlooked some major (and I mean MAJOR) red flags. I did it for self-serving reasons. I enjoyed being with someone who was known on campus, who was a leader, who was completely different from anyone else I had dated. His ego, his greed, his violent streak - I viewed these through the lens that he would one day be a good provider. I'm not proud of it. In fact, I'm quite embarrassed at my beebee self. I think if we hadn't been such good friends and we hadn't clung to each other once we went out into the real world, we would have never gotten married. Our selfish, greedy personalities wound up being good partners for quite a while.
And then...I grew up. My motivations changed and I thought his would change too. I was still happy with the decision to push for a ring and house - we were still good partners if he'd only pull his head out of his ass. He didn't feel the same way though. I went from being a partner-in-crime to a wife and he didn't like that too much. He didn't want to have kids and live in suburbia and do chores on the weekends. He wanted to broker big deals and get drunk at fancy restaurants because that's what powerful, successful people do. He wasn't emotionally invested in me. When I stopped being a means to his end, he moved on.
So, while I was surprised that we ended up divorced, I wasn't surprised that he turned out to be a drunk and a cheater who was only out for himself. I know those two things don't seem to go together, but I honestly thought we'd both grow up and in the exact same way. I was wrong.
There were a few things that I can now see were red flags, but at the time, they seemed relatively minor so I didn't pay too much attention to them, and I certainly never thought they would lead to divorce. Before we got married my X had terrible sleep apnea. He snored so loud that you could hear it through the house, he stopped breathing all the time in his sleep and he was always tired throughout the day. I begged him to do something about it and he never would. He said he could fix it by losing weight, but then he'd never tried to lose weight. He refused to wear the cpap machine until I gave him an ultimatum -- I would break up with him if he did not address his health concerns.
Later in the marriage, he started suffering from ED, but again, he refused to do anything about it. He blamed it on me, but never told me what he wanted sexually. He blamed it on his weight, but he wouldn't try to lose weight. He said it was just a mental problem, but he wouldn't go to a therapist. This all went on for about 2.5 years, getting worse and worse, until again, I gave him an ultimatum. He finally got checked and found it was low testosterone (which was causing his excessive belly fat, and large breast too, as well as high cholesterol) But, even after that, he kept waffling on whether he wanted to treat it, and wouldn't try to lose weight like the docs recommended. He also wouldn't take the Cialis consistently, so we still weren't having sex.
Eventually, I got tired of him not being willing to take care of himself, and I realized, he showed me exactly how he'd handle his health before we got married, and I ignored it. I will never again date someone who I have to badger or threaten to get them to take care of themselves.