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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to not get why saying you wish you'd met earlier is a bad thing?

28 replies

littlesongbird · 06/11/2014 21:46

Have seen posters on here & elsewhere saying it's a red flag if this is said. But I don't understand why really, if you meet someone and you're not in the first flush of youth shall we say, isn't it normal to be a little wistful about hoe it would be to have met when you were younger and less world-weary cynical ?

OP posts:
slightlyworriednc · 06/11/2014 21:47

Never heard that! Me and DH always say it.

MrsTerrorPratchett · 06/11/2014 21:49

As a throw away line... meh. As a pattern of obsessive 'love' to the exclusion of all else, including your individual pasts, bad.

Thrholidaysarecoming · 06/11/2014 21:50

Me and Dp say it too, although I wsnt in the right head space then for a 'healthy' relationship so I would have screwed it up!

CromerSutra · 06/11/2014 22:08

I don't actually feel like that myself but I know DW does. I like the fact that I had all sorts of different experiences before we met and that by the time we met we were completely on the same page. I'm not really a "looking back regretfully" sort of person anyway though and she is, doesn't bother me, just one of those things.

Original poster
littlesongbird · 06/11/2014 22:09

DP says it to me a lot, I don't see anything bad in it. He's been through quite a difficult divorce, he says had he met me first, we'd have stayed happily married, and neither of us would have had to go through all that awful stuff (I also had quite a difficult breakup at the end of an abusive relationship).

OP posts:
WooWooOwl · 06/11/2014 22:12

I've never heard it said that this is seen as a red flag or a bad thing.

I suppose there must be relationships that went badly wrong after it has been said, but there will be plenty more that didn't. In plenty of circumstances, I think it can be a normal thing to feel.

DoJo · 06/11/2014 22:20

I suppose if someone means that they feel a person has been 'sullied' by their past and they wish they had been 'pure' when they met, then it could be seen as a worrying thing to say, but for anyone who just wishes they had been able to spend more time with a partner that they love then I can't see the harm!

AMumInScotland · 06/11/2014 22:20

I think the 'red flag' thing is more when it comes across as a possessive thing - like "I wish you had never had a relationship with anyone else, so that you could be completely and utterly mine because you were untouched before I came into your life and made it complete" or "I wish there wasn't any tiny little aspect of your life that didn't have ME in it" which can go along with a controlling attitude to your current life.

TheWhispersOfTheGods · 06/11/2014 22:30

I dont think it's an unhealthy thing to say, unless in an unhealthy relationship. I wish I'd met DH before my ex - it's taken years of a healthy relationship to fix things I didn't even know were broken by xp. And if we were older i imagine I'd wish it more to have spent more time together. As it was, we met at 18 so not sure how much earlier i could have met the bloke tbh!

Mainly wish I'd never dated the ex - i imagine that is behind a lot of it for people, I wasted what should have been a really fucking good 18 months terrified and quashed by a dickhead, and if it had been longer I'd be angrier still.

Original poster
littlesongbird · 06/11/2014 22:31

Yes that makes sense.

For us there was a window about 16 years ago when we were both single and living in the same city, just before we met our Exs. DP says he'd love to have met me then, before I met my XH. This was in our mid 20s though, we'd both had other relationships before then.

OP posts:
ApocalypseThen · 07/11/2014 06:18

I sometimes say it to my husband. we'd have loved a gang of kids, but we met later in life and probably won't have more than the one.

lauranorder50 · 07/11/2014 06:50

We've remarked that we met at the right time. If it was six months earlier the time would not have been right. Six months later and we would have missed each other as he was leaving to travel overseas. He did this anyway but I was his reason for returning. If we had met earlier I would have let him go. I was coming out of my post LTR love 'em and leave 'em phase. Six months earlier and he'd have been another notch on the bedpost.

bigbluestars · 07/11/2014 07:04

God no- it would not have worked.

Our lives were in totally different directions, my values were not the same as my OHs in my 20s.
We met when I was 37 and OH, getting together 10 years before that would not had led to our beautiful children and happy stable home life.

Of that I am certain- we both needed to grow a bit before we were ready for each other.
We met at just the right time- it wouldn't have worked otherwise.

Original poster
littlesongbird · 07/11/2014 08:19

For us, the fact we won't have children together is another part of it. Unlike my X he is a brilliant father. Having a baby with him would have been a very different and much better experience. But we have enough children between us, so it's not to be.

OP posts:
fluffyraggies · 07/11/2014 08:50

Wishing you had met earlier because of wanting to be of an age to have children together is probably a very common thing. And totally reasonable.

I met DH on the cusp of my fertility declining and we got in by the skin of our teeth, so to speak. We feel so blessed. (i have older children by XH)

Funny though, because if we had met a few years earlier i don't think we'd have hit it off as well. DH thinks we would - but he didn't know me back then. I mellowed a lot in my 30s.

PoirotsMoustache · 07/11/2014 08:56

DH and I say it to each other a fair amount. He was 40 and I was 33 when we met properly and got together.
We both acknowledge it probably wouldn't have worked if we had met earlier, but what we really mean is that we wish our relationship as it is now had started long ago, so we'd have had more time together.

youmakemydreams · 07/11/2014 09:02

I say it to do then follow it up with but then the things we went through before made us who we fell in love with now and I could never regret having my dc.

Dp and I have spent 17 years since we started uni knowing the same people, working close by each other, going to the same places all in random parts of the country that we both loved but have no connection to if that makes sense. It was following an online dating profile from here that made me sign up to the sight and is to meet living 20 miles apart in random circumstances that finally made us meet. I'm not woo in the slighted but the amount of near misses is scary. Maybe the universe is finally glad it can get a rest and stop trying to get us together now. Grin

StarlingMurmuration · 07/11/2014 09:03

DP and I say it to each other all the time... We met at 34 and 37. We're just about to have a baby together, and I wish we'd had a little bit more time beforehand to spend just the two of us. We both really want to have children together, and we started trying fairly soon because of my age, in case it took a long time to conceive, but in the event it happened almost immediately.

WalkingInMemphis · 07/11/2014 09:20

At the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes wish I had met dh later.

I was 18 and he was 21 when we got together. On the one hand, it is lovely that we've grown and matured together...all the 'firsts' (as in house/kids...not sex!) have been together etc.

But then, I struggle to even remember what life was like before I knew him. We don't have many experiences from before we met and if we split now i'd be completely lost. I kind of wish i'd had a few years of just 'me' as an adult before it became 'us'.

poolomoomon · 07/11/2014 10:00

It's bad if it's meant in a "I wish you were 'pure' when we met and hadn't been with other people" kind of way. It's not bad if they just mean they wish they could have spent longer with each other or known one another in their wild young days.

PourquoiTuGachesTaVie · 07/11/2014 10:06

Dh and I met when we were 16, the fact that we didn't meet before then is quite frankly odd as we lived in the same town our whole lives, were in the same year group in the same high school for 5 years and his nan lived a couple of doors away from me.

We both think it's a shame we didn't meet earlier because he's my best friend and we both had quite a tough time growing up with problems at home and at school. It would have been nice to have dh as a friend while all that was going on, considering how well we've got on since we did meet and how supportive he's always been since then. I know he feels the same way.

Preciousbane · 07/11/2014 10:13

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

SaucyJackOLantern · 07/11/2014 10:22

Me and DP say similar a lot. It's specially bittersweet for us as we were friends for a long time before getting together- I've known his brother since Sixth Form.

Who's to say it would've worked back then tho? Maybe you can't appreciate the light if you've never known true darkness.

BaffledSomeMore · 07/11/2014 10:23

We did meet earlier and the time wasn't right. We probably needed to go through the horrors before it dawned on us that what we thought we wanted wasn't actually what made us happy.
And once we'd figured that out off we went :)

VodkaJelly · 07/11/2014 11:49

I dont wish I had met DP earlier but I do understand why people feel like that. DP was 23 when i met him, I think when he was 18/19 he was abit of a scally and a womaniser so i probably wouldnt have liked him or lasted with him at all.

By the time we met he was mature, grounded and knew what he wanted.

But I can see the romance in being with your life parter since young and growing old with them.