Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

How can a couple get divorced after a year of marriage?

110 replies

googlenut · 31/12/2013 21:25

Ok put this here because not sure where would get a response. Close family member lived with her partner and had two children, big fancy wedding just over a year ago and have now announced their divorce. I'm genuinely trying to understand here, not be judgy. How could this happen in such a short space of time. No other people involved just said they were arguing too much.

OP posts:
kinkyfuckery · 31/12/2013 21:26

Things change. People change. Lives move on.

A lot can happen in a year.

stargirl1701 · 31/12/2013 21:28

They used the wedding as a band aid on an already broken relationship?

formerbabe · 31/12/2013 21:28

I know 3 couples who have split up after less than a year of marriage...I think some people marry because it is expected of them by family/society and then think 'bugger, this is forever now!'

LunaticFringe · 31/12/2013 21:29

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

SantanaLopez · 31/12/2013 21:29

A big fancy wedding is like a train. Bloody hard to stop when its powering ahead.

SecretNutellaFix · 31/12/2013 21:29

One set of our friends had the big family wedding, three months later they were separated as she had been doing the dirty on him for months with a work colleague and had gone ahead with it regardless.

MammaTJ · 31/12/2013 21:29

I wish I had divorced my prick of a first husband after one year, instead of suffering his abuse for a futher 4.

Noone can ever know what a relationship is like on the inside.

Gigondas · 31/12/2013 21:31

Kinky has a point.

The other thing is that lots of people marry thinking things will change or improve then they don't as a wedding isn't a magic fix. I had a friend who divorced after six months ( separated after three).

Strangely the beautiful expensive wedding she had ( and it was lovely ) didn't Make her dh a decent man rather than a cheating arse. And yes we did ask her in the nicest way before if she was totally sure.

NorthernLebkuchen · 31/12/2013 21:31

Clearly they should never have got married. How very sad.

greenbananas · 31/12/2013 21:32

I was separated from my first husband within six months. We were in our early twenties, had lived together through university. We were very good friends but should never have got married.

For me, the mistake was the wedding, not the divorce.

FightingOverImaginaryIcecream · 31/12/2013 21:32

Some people definitely use marriage to paper over the cracks, unsurprisingly this doesn't work.

The huge wedding is quite often a year or more in the planning stage and, as previously mentioned, is unstoppable once it gets going. The relationship can easily hit the rocks during that time, but the show must go on.

PenguinsDontEatStollen · 31/12/2013 21:34

If you are talking about a long term relationship with kids, etc, that ends quickly after marriage, my guess is it was going wrong before. Either they didn't feel they could stop the steam train of a wedding, or they thought marriage would 'fix' the problem.

Or there is something you don't know about. Infidelity. Violence. Who knows.

WilsonFrickett · 31/12/2013 21:36

Ad a pp said, a wedding can be like a runaway train. Otoh it can also give a green light to abusers who relish the legal hold they now have over their partners. But yes, I do get your point, I know of a few people in a LTR with DCs who have split after a wedding - I guess it's the sticking plaster effect?

skaen · 31/12/2013 21:38

My friend who divorced very quickly was so excited about proposal plus planning they failed to discuss any basic arrangements for afterwards such as money/ children / division if housework etc. it basically turned out that they could not bear real life together.

qazxc · 31/12/2013 21:39

Could be various things:

  • they were trying to "fix" things by getting married, hoping it would bring them closer.
  • one of them might have been unfaithful but they don't want people to know.
-one of them might have been violent/abusive, and they don't want people to know.
  • any other number of problems that they don't want made public (addiction to booze,drugs, gambling, etc...)
VerySmallSqueak · 31/12/2013 21:42

So much better to face up to it sooner rather than later.

If you're really not getting on at all,there's not a lot of point going any further,and life is too short to hold off just for the sake of appearances - I personally think it takes a certain amount of courage to follow your heart and make a decision based on what you know is right rather than on what others may think.

Sadoldbag · 31/12/2013 21:43

I think on things are booked people feel a huge pressure to give it ago

It's very hard to pull out after mums just sighned a check for 10k for a wedding venue

sykadelic15 · 31/12/2013 21:44

Friend of mine married a guy she was unhappy with just recently. She waited so long for him to pop the question (5+ years), and she's in her 30's now I think (and so does her family) that she wanted to see it through rather than starting over. I hope for her sake it works out though.

Some people freak out about being married and "trapped". Some were never ready for marriage but just thought it was the "next step".

LuciusMalfoyisSmokingHot · 31/12/2013 22:17

My friend knew a couple who split after 3 months, she was shagging someone else before and after the wedding, and then she walked out.

complexnumber · 31/12/2013 22:21

There's a cheap cliché isn't there...

He hopes she will not change, but her body does
She hopes he will change, but his attitude doesn't

Very simplistic, but maybe there is some truth.

ColinButterfly · 31/12/2013 22:24

For some couples, it changes everything and that's a problem, for some people it changes nothing (when they expected it would) and that's a problem.

MrsKoala · 31/12/2013 22:49

ExH and i got divorced after a year. We decided to separate on our anniversary. It was all very messy. He decided he didn't want children and i had met someone else who did, he had also fallen in love with my best friend (head bridesmaid). We had lived together for 11 years before we got married (to start a family).

DH and i will have been married 1 year in Jan and we have already seriously discussed it twice.

The first year is hard.

Ullapull · 31/12/2013 22:53

They thought marriage would save their relationship. Or the wedding stress pushed them apart.

BabyDubsEverywhere · 31/12/2013 22:54

I was with my exH for 5 years when we actually tied the knot... 4 weeks later we were getting divorced!

I loved him, married him, then realised what a prick he was... it was like a veil had been lifted (scuse the pun!) and I saw us for what we were... very odd experience Confused

IneedAsockamnesty · 31/12/2013 22:58

Well if your in England.

When it all goes tits up you go see a legal person, they tell you to piss off until you have been married a year (as you can't start the paperwork before) so you go back pay money and its done