Do men turn into pricks after marriage?

[DollyMixture99]

I'm set to marry my lovely DP in a few months, but after being an avid mumsnet reader for years I'm starting to worry.

My DP is bloody wonderful, absolutely no red flags whatsoever (I have been hyper alert for these ), we have talked at great length about sharing finances/children and we agree how we plan to do it, plus room for any changes.

I've also lived with him for a year (been together three) so I feel like I've "tested the goods". We really are blissfully happy and I genuinely don't think I'd find someone better.

But I read so many threads on here about women with awful DHs and I'm assuming most of them weren't like that before marriage or the DW wouldn't have married them! I'm worried (for no particular reason as there's definitely no signs of this) that my DP will randomly turn into a monster after marriage :(.

I really do want to marry though as kids are hopefully going to be on the cards soon and I want to be married beforehand.

[Catzeyess]

Mine didn't :) but it's only been two years and no kids yet!

Although he still drives me crazy occasionally but that's to be expected

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

No. But what can happen is that, with a ring on the finger, everyone can get a bit complacent and start taking each other for granted. Also, that period where you're just dating or you're a couple with no real responsibilities and no dependents, can be a little unrealistic. It's challenges and stresses that show people up in their true colours.

All you can do is keep your eyes open, don't take anything for granted and keep talking to each other. Good luck :)

[BeforeAndAfter]

Dolly it's not marriage that does it. It's years of being together that turn into the hum-drum, taking each other for granted, forgetting to be your spouse's play mate, losing the 'rip-your-clothes-off' passion that does it.

Don't waste these wonderful years fretting about the snapshot of doom and gloom that you see on here. Put down MN and seduce him, play cards/ scrabble, go for a walk or watch your favourite box set with him and remember to do that in 20 years time!

[Egghead68]

Stay off the relationships board!

Don't be silly. Just keep talking, be clear in your head as to what you will and won't tolerate and keep having fun together.

Good luck!

[Hakluyt]

Only if they were pricks before marriage.....

[DontstepontheMomeRaths]

Well, all I can say as a divorced mum was that before marriage we needed to do a marriage course at the Church we'd be married at, he didn't engage in it properly nor read the book that went with it. Even after marriage when I felt we needed to work on things he didn't really participate earnestly, when I suggested counselling he ummm and ahhhhhed and it didn't happen, when his friendship with a family friend became inappropriate I asked him to set boundaries and he became dishonest about when he saw her and eventually it became an affair. Sometimes you have to work at a marriage of course but looking back I had red flags even before the big day. I think I settled believing I couldn't get anyone better

I used to believe the affair and breakdown of our marriage was all his fault but I had undiagnosed pnd and towards the end I was very bitter and resentful at his laziness and poor budgeting etc. I wouldn't have been easy to live with. It takes 2 to make it work. I don't have a crystal ball, I can't say what will happen for you but if you're both prepared to work at it if needed and are kind to each other, that's a good start imo.

Just my experience.

[whatisforteamum]

Mine was saint for 11 yrs then had odd bouts of rudeness when 2 dcs were small (tiredness doesnt help).If i were you i wouldnt look for trouble.My DH has become increasingly aggressive but he was working 60hrs a week(no excuse) and his pills for his heart attack have changed his personality.We have been together 28 yrs and my parents 48 with no domestic abuse or violence x

[MrsBungle]

No they don't. 10 years later my dh is as wonderful as he ever was and our relationship is stronger that it ever was after hard-times, deaths, house moves, 2 children. Don't look for problems that aren't there is my advice. Get on with being happy.

[EhricLovesTheBhrothers]

No of course not. Pricks are pricks full stop but sometimes I guess they can hide it for a while until they have someone hooked in. A decent guy won't turn into a prick just because he got married

[PPaka]

Ime it's when they don't have your full attention that it starts to go wrong. I.e kids

[PPaka]

Oh, but that's just my selfish prick of a husband
Most good men will delight in the joy of becoming a father

[Chloe01mum]

No mine never (so far) and we married after only a few months while I was just 18. 14 years and four kids later life is stressful but very good!

I don't work at the moment (would Cost more in childcare) but have 100% access to "our" money and dh always takes over and does the bath/bed routine once in from work. Yes it is great getting 1/2 an hour to myself but he does it because he enjoys it and it gives him time with the kids.

We are very much still at the ripping clothes of stage, I fancy the pants of him and after a day of wiping bums and being covered in all sorts it's great to have a shower and jump dh and feel like me again rather than just the mum.

We make time for each other which is not easy with no family or babysitters but even our oldest knows she has to go to bed at a resonable time to give us a chance to talk to each other etc

If you read these boards you will notice quite often red flags were popping up left right and centre from the start,

I'm not saying dh will never become a knob or cheat but I'd much rather take the risk than not have given us a chance

[WorkingBling]

Of course not. You get a skewed view on boards like this because people don't come on to post bout their perfectly normal happy lives. So of course what you read here is the worst bits.

Every now and again someone starts a thread about wonderful things dh does. Go read those - you will be reminded how lovely most men are.

[Nomama]

Well, it can seem like they do, but as has already been said, that is just the complacency that sets in. That's inevitable. For most what you do about it dictates whether either one of you becomes a twat.

If you can talk and compromise you carry on being loved up. If you can't, if one of you hangs on to 'being right' over 'being happy' then one of you becomes a controlling monster and you both become unhappy.

You also have to expect to have to revisit the complacent bit a few times. As I said, it is normal. Also you change, your job changes, kids, friends, family all add to the rub.

Talking, even accepting that a row is inevitable, is the key to preventing gobshiteness.

[irrationalme]

my H was a prick BEFORE I married him. I was STUPID.

The signs are usually there, I've read threads about the signs

[EarthWindFire]

What you also have to remember is that places like MN are full of people asking for advise when things go wrong. Therefore it looks like things go bad for everyone.

You don't see threads (or at lesst very very few) with OPs saying how great their life is and can see themselves married until death do us part do you?

[Trills]

Marriage doesn't make people more prickish than they were previously.

But don't assume that you would KNOW if your DP were a prick.

Make sure to have a good think about how he responds to boredom or difficulties or unexpected circumstances or having to do things that he doesn't like.

Because in the next few decades there will be plenty of that.

If you've only experienced each other in easy times, you can't yet know if your ways of dealing with hard times are compatible.

[Meerka]

Nah, marriage itself doesn't turn into a prick. If he was a prick before then he'll be a prick after .. .though people can change either way, for the better or for the worse.

You only see the worst on Relationships as a rule, cause happy people don't need to post. But if you watch for a while, you see that some of the people who comment on threads have been in bad relationships themselves, got out and are now happily settled (won't name names).

[m0therofdragons]

Just always communicate about everything, even the small stuff. That means talking and listening, not just one way.
We celebrate 10 years of marriage this week and my dh is amazing, but he does irritate me occasionally - I'm only human

[Cerisier]

My DH is still fab and my best friend thirty years on.

If you are both good communicators and have a fairly calm nature I think it helps. I continued to work and only went part time when the DC were teenagers, that helped keep things equal between us and money was less of a problem.

However illness, redundancy and other awful things can and do happen and put enormous pressures on couples so there is a lot of luck involved too.

[Thurlow]

Hakluyt took the words right out of my mouth

It's really not just about men changing, though.

There are things that can turn any relationship - not just marriage - sour. Anything that changes that initial dynamic when you are first together, so moving to a different area, changing jobs, one partner becoming the breadwinner, and most of all children.

If you are a strong couple you will work through these changes and difficulties. Either or both of you might easily exhibit prick-like tendencies. I know of a few men who have had moments of being monumental arseholes when babies, maternity leave and financial inequality raises its head. I also know a few women who became quite possessive and demanding of their OH once they became a SAHM.

IME, from friends and reading online, it is the massive change when kids come along and one parent is at home more than the other, and possibly relying on their partner for finances etc, that big changes can occur. Don't by any means mean that they will or do occur, but that's when they can.

[Anniegetyourgun]

My theory is that some men who appeared not to be pricks before marriage start to become one once the knot is tied because some idiot (usually their father!) filled their heads with images of What A Wife Is, which somehow overwrites their view of the woman they were hitherto sharing their lives with as an equal. She is now no longer his girlfriend/best friend/lover, she is The Wife, which comes with certain roles and responsibilities including doing all the domestic work, all the childcare bar the occasional trip to the park, any of the paperwork that doesn't directly relate to money in the bank, and all the social arrangements, preferably whilst also continuing to contribute half of the household income. She mysteriously morphs into a strange, irrational, tearful creature which holds no views of its own and has (or should have) no thoughts other than children and cleaning. And she must never, never say no to sex. Meanwhile the real woman they have married didn't get that memo, so she carries on behaving like a normal human being (no!) whilst wondering why her lovely bloke has suddenly reverted to a caveman. Lundy Bancroft describes the syndrome very well in Why Does He Do That?

Even quite sensible men may sometimes have absorbed some of this teaching and need to be politely pulled up on it. Others, of course, will never unlearn it; but if your DP hasn't shown any signs of being that kind of man after three years you're probably ok. Basically there's only one way to find out for certain - go for it.

[newnamesamegame]

Anniegetyourgun this.... with bells on. Also known as the Madonna/Whore complex.

I don't think marriage automatically turns men into pricks by a long chalk. Good men are enhanced by marriage and their relationships with their other halves with strengthen and deepen. I can think of plenty of examples of couples where the relationship has deepened and improved exponentially after marriage.

But I think there is a subset of men for whom marriage (and having children) is a time to drop the act and revert to the neanderthal within, "safe" in the knowledge that 'er indoors basically can't do anything about it.

And another subset who are not quite as crude as that but who subconsciously revert to the patterns that was set in their parents' marriage whereby the unspoken expectation is that the woman does most of the domestic stuff, the man does most of the financial stuff and beyond that very little is expected of him.

In my case it wasn't marriage which did this to my STBX, it was having kids. The first four years of our life post marriage (without children) were bliss. When DD came along he morphed, literally overnight, into this central casting sexist husband.

But whether its childbearing, marriage, moving in, for men like this there is a tipping point when they perceive you to be "captive" and beyond the point where you can meaningfully challenge bad behaviour and thus they stop making the effort to cover it up.