Active discussions

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

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think ‘I could have married you?’

165 replies

User2638394 · 20/06/2019 20:28

I am incredibly happy with my husband, who is a gorgeous, clever, funny, kind, decent man. I truly love and adore him and would / could never be unfaithful. I choose him every day.

But sometimes I meet men (usually through work) and get on with them in a way that makes me think ‘if things had been different, I could have happily married you.’ I’m not in love with them and don’t want anything from them, but I have this feeling that in another life, I could have been happy with them. It’s happened perhaps 2 or 3 times in my life.

Does anyone else feel this way? That you sometimes just have a piercing awareness of how different your life might have been and how under different circumstances you could have loved someone else?

OP posts:
onemouseplace · 30/11/2019 09:30

I do think this sometimes, actually. Interestingly, now I've been married for a while and we have DC, I tend to think less along the lines of pure physical attraction or even connection (although that is obviously important), and more along the lines of who I would make a good team with.

DH and I make a very good team and I think that's been the making of our marriage to be honest - I look at some of my friend's relationships and just think that I couldn't live like that for whatever reason.

We do have shared but also some very separate interests, and I do spend a fair while people watching at one (I love ballet and opera but tend to go on my own so have time on my hands) pondering what life would be like if I had married someone who shared my interest.

bumblingbovine49 · 30/11/2019 09:31

no this never really happens to me. I have been married twice and have had two long term living together relationships and a number of other longish (6months plus) relationships.

Looking back, absolutely none of them were as suited to me for living with as my current DH. That is however because I am pretty much a nightmare to live with and only DH seems to to be able to put up with me [grin
]
I think the opposite, that if I had never ,met DH, I would have never married or lived with a man again. I certainly would never have has a child. I genuinely don't think I am very suited to living with someone but something about DH and I together works. I don't believe in fate or anything though and I think in general terms, there is definitely more than one person you can spend your life with and be happy, it's just that for me that pool of people is pretty small I think

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 30/11/2019 09:44

Yes. I met the man I would have married in a heartbeat. I couldn't have married him though without a time machine as I was 5 when he married...

I'm happily married but that was the one who would have been perfect.

CripsSandwiches · 30/11/2019 09:55

Logically whether you realise it or not there are lots of other men all of us could have married. There's nothing wrong with feeling or acknowledging that (although you're hardly going to know whether they'd actually be marriage material through a casual acquaintance). As long as you're not getting preoccupied by it or pursuing inapporpriate friendships I don't see the big deal.

Cherrysoup · 30/11/2019 09:58

Nope, I know where I’m well off!

beautifulstranger101 · 30/11/2019 10:00

YES! Its like that film, sliding doors with Gwyneth Paltrow, I think about that often- how a simple choice we make changes our entire lives.

cantfindname · 30/11/2019 10:10

More the reverse for me. I think back to one or two boyfriends I was mad about and heartbroken when we finished ,and I realise that it would never have worked. I was crazy in love with one when in my thirties and we got on so well until he had to move away and then I was devastated; but then I realised that no matter how I loved him I could never have lived with his OCD and could never have met his standards. Lucky escape.

It's a strange old life, we always want what we can't have. I still mourn the ending of my first marriage, we were great friends and he was the father of my amazing kids but I couldn't live with his binge drinking or with his womanising. After we split up I discovered he had a child with another woman in the same village and, even worse, given the child the same name as one of ours. I felt that was the ultimate betrayal. Yet, there is a big part of me that wishes it could all have been different.

SlightlyBonkersQFA · 30/11/2019 10:14

I think clicking with somebody you hardly know is easy. Both able to be their personas easily enough.

By the time you marry them hopefully you are comfortable with how they act when they're stressed, bored, anxious, angry. You know how they compromise, if they compromise.

I have the polar opposite view to you OP, I tend to think that everybody is lovely until you get to know them, so the concept of ''i could be married to you'' seems so alien to me (seeing as I'm not married to anybody anyway, and all of my relationships have had to end when I truly get to know the other person)

Snuffkindle · 30/11/2019 10:17

No it has never happened. The longer I'm married to my husband the more I think I couldn't do it with anyone else.

Woollycardi · 30/11/2019 10:18

That sounds totally normal to me, if a slightly mind-blowing realisation. Of course things could have been radically different, with anyone else, but we ended up together in spite of all these variables, that blows my mind even more sometimes. Life is a funny old game.

ScreamingValenta · 30/11/2019 10:24

No, I don't ever think this. I'm very unattractive so few men would be likely to want to marry me. The only men I could have married apart from my husband would be a couple of my exes.

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 30/11/2019 10:40

ScreamingValenta, we never see ourselves through other people's eyes - and our own can be a bit myopic. Your husband and your exes clearly didn't think you were unattractive...

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 30/11/2019 10:41

It's also not just how we look, it is a whole prism that is what we are, which is what other people see.

ScreamingValenta · 30/11/2019 10:44

Your husband and your exes clearly didn't think you were unattractive...

True, but in 40+ years, I've only ever been 'fancied' by three men, so my default assumption is that any given man wouldn't be interested. This means I've never had the 'we could have been married' thought about colleagues etc

vivacian · 30/11/2019 10:47

I don't really get this thread Confused

At first I interpreted you as meaning, "I could have you if I wanted", but realise that's not what you're getting at. Are you just saying that you've only just realised, "My DH is not my soulmate, there are other men I could have ended up marrying happily"?

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 30/11/2019 10:48

You've only known of three men that openly fancied you... doesn't mean that there weren't others that admired you and could easily have been navel-gazing on a thread like this, about you...

Fact is, you will never see yourself as other people do.

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 30/11/2019 10:49

My post was to ScreamingValenta

Interestedwoman · 30/11/2019 10:50

Yep, it means you have a good imagination.

Celebelly · 30/11/2019 10:51

Yes, there must be hundreds if not thousands of people we could end up happily married to. We just pick from the very limited population of the world that we have access to. It's certainly not the case that the only person you could ever be happily married to in the whole world just happens to work in the same company, or lives a couple of streets down. It is quite mind-blowing to think about it!

Xmasbaby11 · 30/11/2019 10:53

I get you op. A few men I have clicked with other the years and felt such easiness with, we got each other straight away. However circumstances weren't right - and now I'm happily married so would not pursue another man

Also I moved around overseas a lot in my twenties and could have settled elsewhere. I met dh in England but presumably I would have met someone different abroad and not remained single forever. Not better, just different.

There's more than one person for everyone.

speakout · 30/11/2019 10:54

I understand what you mean OP.
Realisticaly there are thousands of men out there whowould have made good partners.
I don't believe in the "soulmate" stuff.

But I have chosen- as has my OH and we stick at it together.
I don't waste time thinging about the "what ifs".

Somebodystired · 30/11/2019 10:57

Yes OP, I've had this one or two times. One is actually my best friend - we love in opposite ends of the country but see each other a few times a year, and I now count his wife and one of my closest friends and my husband would say the same about him. But I definitely think that if we had made different life choices before we met our spouses, we could so easily have fallen in love with each other.

Doesnt mean I wish that was the case, or that I am in love with him (or even have any romantic feelings for him...I have in the past but that was way before we met our spouses).

turfsausage · 30/11/2019 11:05

Yes! Drummer from coldplay is who I should have gone for. Hey ho. Not everyone can marry him.

Yetanotherwinter · 30/11/2019 11:06

I look at my husband and think I’ve never met a single man who matches up to him. He’s the best man I’ve ever known. He’s my best mate. I hope I never have to look for another partner and thank my lucky stars every day. I think timing is everything. We met at exactly the right time, having both come out of long term relationships in the year before.

JasminaPashmina · 30/11/2019 11:17

Haven't RTFT

But in answer to the OP, no. In fact I have the opposite feeling - most men fuck me off intensely and I couldn't physically imagine spending any more time with them than I absolutely have to.

As I've gotten older I've come recognise the vast vast vast majority of men's misogyny, sexism and self-centredness and couldn't imagine spending my life with someone like that.