First off, do not let the fact that everyone around you is getting married, make you feel like YOU should be getting married. There is a lot of unspoken pressure on women to get married. It's like if you are not married... there must be something wrong with you. There isn't. It's OK not to be married.
When I was in my early to mid 20's all I wanted was to find my soul mate and get married. I was engaged 1 official time and had 2 other guys ready to propose before I married "the one" in 1999.
I met "the one" (let's call him Jim), at a house party where I went to meet up with this other guy. That guy was a jerk so Jim and I started chatting. We clicked immediately. Fireworks! Sparks! BAM!
Over the course of a month we were attached to each other (as much as we could be since I was traveling on business) all the time and he moved in. After 30 days we KNEW we wanted to get married. It just felt so right, so perfect. My soul mate had be found... FINALLY!
We got married a year later. I figured a long engagement was a wise decision.
For the next year we had our fights about various things. But what couple doesn't fight. We had some issues in the bedroom and went to a therapist before getting married. It didn't do anything for us, because the person he presented to her wasn't who he was at home. He was a great manipulator.
But he was the one. I just KNEW it. I had faith in my feelings and my decision.
The night before the wedding he and I were fighting about stuff, the usual stuff... bedroom stuff... his insecurities... his jealousness... etc. A thought passed through my head, "Do not marry this man". But then I realized that I had all these people in Mexico to watch us getting married, and there was no way in hell I was losing face by calling off the wedding. I chalked it up to pre-wedding jitters and forged ahead. We got married the next day.
The fights continued. As time went on I began to realize that the man he TOLD me he was... wasn't the man he was in reality.
When we met he told me how driven he was and how he wanted to be successful in life, but as time went on it was obvious he was not motivated to do anything. He was out of work a lot, fired a lot, etc. Didn't know what he wanted to do for a job, floundered and really enjoyed not working.
I on the other hand, I'm driven. I have a professional job. I have a college degree. I'm organized and I have my life together. My life was taking care of him and the household. I didn't get any help from him. When he worked he paid his half of the bills, that was it.
At one point he was out of work, I was working a full time job and working at a club as the coat check on the weekends. He was out partying with his friends, and I was working.
Trust me, I could go on and on about all the miserable stuff he did.
But I was married. There was NO WAY I was going to leave a marriage. For better or worse. I was there to stay. I just had to tolerate his behavior and try to keep the fighting to a minimum between us.
Towards the end of our marriage he had decided he was going to work at an after hours club. Which I would have tolerated if he would have had a day job. Nope. Forget the day job. He just wanted to work at the after hours club, do drugs (I later found out about), and party.
I went on a business trip and when I came back, this was February 2004, I told him I wasn't putting up with his crap anymore. He had to treat me good. Period.
He said he wanted a divorce. I said fine. And told him to get the h@ll out. He left and never came back. It was the happiest day of my life. I certainly didn't love him anymore and I had grown to dislike him greatly. Just the sight of him the last few months of our marriage, made me sick.
I later found out he was doing meth, and cheating on me. Nice.
What I learned from this experience:
1) You can't KNOW someone after only a few months or even a year or two. People have a vision of who they are, and it's not always reality. Only over time can you really start to understand who a person is at their core, by watching their behavior over time. This is why I cringe when I see someone just jump into marriage.
2) Marriage is serious. It sounds like fun... you get sucked into the fairy tale... being swept off your feet and into love. But the fairy tale ends and you are stuck with this person day in and day out.
3) When you are married, there is no way out if that person treats you like crap, unless you are willing to get divorced. I didn't want to get divorced so I had to tolerate him treating me bad. Me asking him to be a good person didn't do it. He didn't care how he treated me and I couldn't change that.
4) Very few people who are married are happy. Some are. But MOST are not. Most are in the marriage for the kids, it's the right thing, etc.
5) Marriage is all about tolerating someone else. They will change over time. You will have tolerate it. For example, my ex got to where he refused to shower more than twice a week. I asked him to shower, he would not. There was nothing I could do. I had to tolerate it.
As you can probably guess, I will never get married again. I have been dating my boyfriend of 5 years and we don't even live together. I don't want to be trapped. Ever again. I want to be happy. And no one, not any man, is going to be charge of my life or happiness, ever again.
Last edited by KSH; 11-07-2008 at 08:40 AM.
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside thoroughly used-up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: WOW WHAT A RIDE!!!!"