to be feeling funny about his first wedding?

[ButterpieBride]

We get married in three weeks. DP has been married before (about five years ago).

He says he knew at the wedding that things were not going to work, six months later they were living separately, a year later he was living with me.

I'm dying to know about the first wedding, but I also don't want to know. I don't want people at our wedding to be thinking of the first wedding. I know it was a lot grander (string quartet apparently) and the bridesmaids wore green.

Meh. My ex fiance will be there, we are all really good friends, but his ex wife is still a massive deal- he has met her a couple of times for practical reasons and she won't even mention the kids (as in, mine and DPs), he still gets drunk and rambles on about how he feels guilty that it didn't work out.

So, even though I have only met her once, before we got together, she is somehow a much bigger deal than my ex.

I just worry that people will compare us. I don't want to hide away though- just because my DP made a mistake doesn't make me some kind of scarlet woman.

Has anyone been in this situation?

I am going to be honest.

I think you sound a bit insecure within your relationshop and massively jealous of his ex.

Knowledge is power - meet the woman for a coffee and exorcise your demons?

Sweetheart it is totally normal to feel nervous and insecure in the weeks before your wedding. Totally, 100% normal. And felling a bit 'funny' about the ex is a good sign, because it shows that you're taking this seriously.

Now is the time to ask the BIG Questions of your partner. Tell him that you are taking your marriage vows seriously, and that you want to talk with him about his feelings about his last marriage. Ask him about how he felt before his last wedding, if he has anything to ask you about, if he feels nervous about your impending wedding day, how he defines a successful marriage, whether he thinks the wedding will change your relationship, etc, etc. TELL him you feel nervous about comparisons between this wedding and his last one.

It can be hard to get (some) men to talk seriously about relationship stuff without rolling their eyes... but insist that he engages with you. Because this conversation is now or never.

I am a 'second' wife, however, I forget that fact sometimes because DH was well over XW by the time we met. He'd had plenty of time to 'get over' it.

I was a little insecure/nervous when we got engaged, about the same sort of stuff you are. But, I'm a different person, so no comparison can be made, and DH was great about our wedding: we created what we wanted for US as a couple, so didn't feel ours was 'less' than theirs.

We're 5 years married now, and I really do forget he was married before. He still has his first wedding album...which I actually encouraged him to keep; it's not only an important record of who he was, but also has photos of his dad and grandparents all dressed smartly, and they're dead now.

As long as HE is over it, OP, then you have nothing to feel insecure about. As I said, I have never been made to feel second by DH or my in laws...they all love ME for who I am.

I'm getting married in october, to soomeone who has been married twice before.

We have lived together for nearly 6 years first and spent a LONG time talking about what marriage means to me, to him and to US, the fact that I would be extremely unhappy if he did not see marriage in the same way I do IF WE EVER GOT MArried (I believe that you should not marry someone for ANY reason other than love and a genuine desire to promise to share your life with that ONE person forever - his other marriages were for MUCH more practical reasons)

We ahve chosen to get married in a way, and a place that is totally new to both of us, so that it will not feel like something he has done before, and so that it will be special to US.

I did have issues around insecurity - if you knew they were not "the real thing" why go through with it? What if you change your mind this time?" etc, luckily, my partner was happy to explore these concerns and alo to tell me all about how his other weddings were etc.

Maybe you too could sit down and talk about all of these things. Being married is a HUGE deal, and you are saying that this is the person you want to share your whole life with, so, you should definitely be able to address these types of things with them