Did you marry the first person you slept with?

[talleyrand]

Did you end up marrying the first person you slept with? If so, how did it work out, and how did that affect your marriage?

• Did you feel the bond was stronger because you had had no previous lover?
  

• Or did it create a subtle sense that you had missed out on some of the excitement that life has to offer?
  

On MN I often read people saying things along the lines of the first alternative, but for me, in retrospect, it was more like the second. Am I the only one?

[NannyPatsSausagePlait]

Erm

Yes

Sometimes

Sometimes

...and no

[Hulababy]

Yes I did.
I am still with him - met when we were 16y, been together 20y, married 12.5y and have an 8y DD. Still very happy together.

I have no idea if bond is stronger as a result. I doubt that is the reason TBH. I guess we just clicked fom the start.

Do I feel I have missed out? No, not in the slightest.

[bnm]

yes

yes but more special than stronger is the word I'd use

only very fleeting feeling a few times years ago

no.

[PandaG]

yes, didn't have sex until wedding night. Been together soinve I was 17 (nearly 22 years), married 17.

Very happy, feels right that there was noone else, and I don't feel I've missed out as it gets better and better!

[MalificenceBloodandSand]

Yes, we've been married for 25 years.

I feel our bond is stronger and special because neither of us has been with anyone else.

I've never felt I've missed out on anything at all, neither does DH. We've had a varied and exciting life and still have.

I will never have sex with anyone else, even if he died tomorrow.

[MalificenceBloodandSand]

Urrgh, that'll teach me to look who the op is before posting.

Still looking for justification for cheating on your wife then?

[Anniegetyourgun]

Yes I did, but that didn't stop him going on and on for the next quarter-century about what I might have been getting up to before we met. As I constantly said to him, I wouldn't be ashamed of having a "past" if I'd had one, so the only reason for assuring him I didn't was because I really didn't. There's nothing wrong with shagging other people; he had had a few himself. I ended up quite wishing I had, so that I'd have something to "be honest" about. And that is seriously twisted.

After we split I felt quite desperate for a while to sleep with someone else, just so he wasn't my only experience, if that makes any sense. But I didn't get round to it, and now I don't particularly care. My body is mine now, it doesn't matter who may have had rental rights in the past.

[Frrrrightattendant]

Oh dear.

well ignoring possible motives for asking, the first person I slept with is still the only person I really want to sleep with - properly want to, I mean, not just fleetingly. In other words yes I would renounce everyone else in order to be with him, if I had to choose. Sleeping with other people is OK, for me, and doable, but with him it's really, really important.

Hope that answers your question. Some people you just never stop wanting to be with. Maybe you haven't married the right person?

[Anniegetyourgun]

Or maybe the OP's wife hasn't married the right person!

[weegiemum]

I didn't marry the first person I slept with.

I slept with the first person I married.

(One and the same).

Have no sense of missing out? Why would I want to compare him with anyone else. I love him (married 16 years) utterly and the sex is amazing (yes, still!).

I have never regretted being a "one man woman", though I think this is helped along by him nbeing a "one woman man" - we were each others first and only.

[Frrrrightattendant]

[MadAboutQuavers]

I was actually going to reply fully and frankly to this

But if it's to justify someone's shitty behaviour to their partner, no chance

There is no justification for cheating and lying. If you're not happy - leave.

[MalificenceBloodandSand]

Exactly Mad - he'll be talking about "sucking the marrow from life" next , mark my words.

Tosser.

[ShowOfBloodyStumps]

Yes. I did. But in the near future I'm going to start shagging anything that moves. Maybe some things that don't. I don't like chasing. I feel justified in this. It's right. It's normal.

Is that what you want to hear?

[MadAboutQuavers]

Oh, one of those is he, Mal?

Funny how that phrase is often used in place of "I'm an incredibly self-absorbed person who is determined to do what the hell I want, regardless of the devastating effect on others"

Tuh

[Faaamily]

Noooooo. I think DH was about the 20-somethingth (even a word?) bloke I slept with, but it all got a bit hazy in my early twenties

I wouldnt sleep with my 'first' if he was the last man on earth. Dope-smoking, floppy haired boy racers are attarctive when you are 16, but lose appeal when you are pushing 40

I have no real opinion on whether it's better to sleep with just the one you marry, or spread the lurve around a bit. It wasn't realistic for me to 'save myself for marriage', and I certainly wasn't up for getting wed in my teens and for most of my 20s.

Each to their own.

[talleyrand]

really : i am not looking for justification, nor expecting it.

neither is the post meant as some kind of trick, fooling you into accidentally engaging with a Bad Person.


No, it's simply something that I sometimes think about, and wonder about in other people - but it's hardly a conversation that I can have in RL.

[talleyrand]

@anniegetyourgun zing

[Frrrrightattendant]

It's a fair enough question. I'm sure a lot of people wonder or worry about it.

[MalificenceBloodandSand]

I doubt anyone wants to engage with you on here, do yourself a favour and piss off to the ivillage infidelity forum, plenty of like minded losers on there.

[Frrrrightattendant]

Also I think for a lot of people, there is never one person that answers all their needs well enough to promise to stay with for life.

Some people never even reach what we might term emotional maturity, either - stumbling from relationship to reltionship without ever truly gaining any insight into why, and what their needs are, often because of emotional injury early in life which means it's just too painful to examine.

These people can create a lot of casualties along the way.

[Frrrrightattendant]

I don't mind engaging with him Mal...I don't know his posting history but at least he is THINKING about what he's doing, rather than going along with it blindly...I don't think that's wrong even if the actions he chooses are not admirable or right.

Thinking about it is important. It's the only way you are going to get anywhere, and if nobody talks to him he has basically no chance.

[Sunlightdances]

Good grief no. I was in love at seventeen and got engaged - a few years later realised I actually didn't have to spend my life with a guy who watched Thomas The Tank Engine... Had a few fun times with a few nice guys, tried a few more relationships, still trying.

Not married yet, but certainly made the right decision not to marry my first. What I wanted at seventeen isn't what I want in my twenties and certainly won't be what I want for the rest of my life.

[DancingIceDragons]

You are supposing that everyone wants to get married.
In answer to your op. No not married the first person i had sex with. It felt right at the time and that was what mattered to me.
Do i think i have missed out on life because i havent had lots of sexual partners. No.
Do i think you have a right to expect lots of sexual partners no
Do i agree with lying/cheating in a relationship. no
Do i want sex for sex' sake. No, for me there has to be emotional attachment and meaning to the sex.

You are a grown man. make your own decisions but be prepared to be burned by the consequences if the choices you make end up hurting people.

[MalificenceBloodandSand]

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

"I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion"

Yep, I am having an affair.

With a woman who posts on MN, oddly enough.

So I am being an arse to my DW, I can quite see that. But also - I am sucking out the marrow of life.

And don't imagine I am the only person on MN with a secret lover.

(The quote? it's Henry David Thoreau)"

Talleyrand's first MN post back in the summer -
This is the kind of twat you are engaging with ladies, not only a common or garden twat, but a patronising one too (Gosh Thoreau - how cultured ).