To have chosen a different life

[halfwaythroughaugust]

I chose to marry a man who to be honest I don’t love. He’s a good man but quite dull and his family irritate me to the point where I dislike them.

I did this because to be honest I wanted children.

AIBU? I don’t think I’d have been any happier if I’d stayed single without my kids.

*Asking IYWBU

“The lifestyle”

We holiday in the UK, have an ancient banger of a car and a nice but ordinary 3 bed.

@halfwaythroughaugust At no point did I say I thought you had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I did however say you were coming across as (the adjective) narcissistic in your attitude on here. You say you feel no guilt, you feel you’ve done him a favour, he wasn’t going to get a supermodel anyway, he couldn’t have had such clever, funny children with anyone but you, it makes more sense to be married to him for taxation purposes then to go it alone; you wanted children, you found a man that you didn’t love and made it happen because what you wanted was the most important thing. An adjective I’d use to describe all of that put together is narcissistic. I didn’t say, or mean to imply, that you have some sort of psychiatric disorder.

Placemarking

Yep. What @weaningwoes said. Enjoy your life. I’m out.

I think you should have been honest with him before you got married and given him the opportunity to decide if he was happy to be in a marriage with someone who has settled, and by their own admission, finds him boring.

He deserved to know the truth before you both committed and I do feel you denied him that. You say you would never tell him how you feel now as you don't want to hurt him and I can see why you feel nothing good would come of that now all these years have passed but I do think you were selfish.

Very selective reading name

I think that whilst being in love might be a great thing, it isn't absolutely essential for a good and long-lasting marriage. I would say that respect, kindness, tolerance, understanding, compromise and mutually shared values and goals count for a lot more.

From one Margot to another, I agree 😊
I also think some disagreement here may just be a case of semantics.
Hearts and flowers, lust/love
Versus
Respect, kindness, consideration, caring, companionship.
Different words for love in different stages. Maybe op just skipped the first stage and went straight for the second.

I agree with you @MargoLovebutter. I think the whole Cupid’s arrow, hearts and flowers, suffocating lovey dovey stuff is cute when you’re 18 but what’s left when it burns out is more important.

Friendship, actually liking each other, no drama, mutual respect, being able to spend time together and apart, seeing a future that literally lasts till death us do part; that’s what matters.

I did actually miss the bit where the OP said she’s got her eye on someone else, which actually negates the point of the whole thread, but the general discussion of love within marriage or long term relationships is still an interesting one.

Interesting thread.

Personally I feel most sorry for the children of this relationship. And being blunt (since I am, and this is AIBU) if the OP wasn't too bothered about feelings for the father of her children, I'd be questioning how much she loves them too.

Seems the OP has swapped the notion of a romantic relationship in order to satisfy the notion of having children.

I mean it's your own fault isn't it

I have no doubt good marriages can last with not in lust passionate love

But the op was selfish enough to hide the lack of love to have children - it’s starker than all this caring and mutual respect than people are talking about

That’s bollocks serendipity

I think that’s quite common OP. I think a lot of women marry/stay with a man because they’re worried they won’t have children if they leave. Of course it’s easy enough for other women to judge and say YABU but I actually feel sorry for you as well as your husband. Hope you find happiness

You USED and lied to a man for your own end game. How could that possibly NOT be unreasonable? If you'd both agreed together 'we are friends, we have mutual respect, we both want a family and companionship', then fine, totally different story. And yes, relationships do change together over time. They're not always passionate, romantic-love centered, but normal people at least start at somewhat on the same page.

You are a liar. A manipulative, self centered, selfish, using, liar. Yes, you are an unreasonable scumbag. I pity your poor family.

I’m ambivalent on this tbh.

Romantic love is not something that lasts unless you believe Disney. It develops into something more fundamental or fades to nothing. In that respect choosing someone with similar values/beliefs can be seen as pragmatic. I am also unsure if we can qualify love as each person experiences it differently. Therefore, what the OP states in her original post about her attitudes to her DH, might, to some, be what they consider love.

There is also the gender construct as well. I’m sure that if a man said this to a group of his peers, he would (in many cases) be considered sensible and logical.

If the OP is a kind and supportive spouse and mother, I’m sure that is more desirable that living in a ‘loving’ but turbulent relationship.

I was almost the barely-loved spouse in this scenario and it was supremely shit. He was 40, realised he'd have better odds of having children with a younger woman, and I happened to be 26, a half-decent human being with a vagina and uterus, and available. I think he'd have happily gone for anyone who ticked those boxes. But I truly loved him, and was heartbroken when I realised I was purely a means to an end for him. He was never overtly unkind, and like the OP he probably thought / told himself I was getting a reasonably good deal out of the relationship as he earned good money and treated me well, as far as anyone could tell. But it's humiliating and dehumanizing to reduce someone to their bodily functions, no matter how "respectful" you are in your token, everyday gestures. I don't think he ever realised how dickish he'd actually been. Maybe to him - and to the OP - it's normal to value people primarily for what they can offer you, rather than as inherently valuable humans in their own right.
Later I met and married my DH, 10 years ago, and we both adore each other. He's absolutely my favourite person in the world and I know he feels the same about me. I love him fiercely. It's horrible to think my ex would have been happy to deprive me of this sort of love, without my knowledge, just to meet his own urge to breed.
Yes, some cultures have arranged marriages, but the difference is that both parties are aware of the deal upfront. One party doesn't think it's a love marriage while the other is calculating his dowry or assessing his partner's fertility

I also missed the part about having a crush. To act on that would be disrespectful of either, so would belie any pretence of caring, consideration, shared values etc.

No intention of acting on it

YABU

OK, so you can't tell us anything about how your husband feels, his goals or what he wanted in life, and I dare so you actually couldn't care less, and so what you want and how you feel becomes so utterly irrelevant.

Saying it started off as being about sex and presumably how you gave that to him apparently gives you some sort of all mighty power to extort what you want from him. His feelings are just as much a consideration as his actions, and you cannot judge his feelings or actions if you have been years lying to him. If you do not love someone and don't tell them, its not saving their feelings its a tool for emotion abuse and manipulation.

You have been incapable to answer any question about how this effects your husband, you don't deserve to be a position to have children and help them become caring and considerate people.

What you have done, with no attempt to clarify it, is emotional abuse and you have no right whatsoever to complain you might not be happy.

I think this is quite common and quite normal. Why are people getting so het up about it.

I imagine he settled as well. Many many people settle.

I feel sad for you OP. As a PP has said, you haven’t only deprived your DH from experiencing a truly loving relationship but you have also short changed yourself too. Maybe you are scared of it - you say your parents are divorced. Was their relationship a passionate one?

I don’t mean sex or lust btw. Although that does come in to it to an extent. True intimacy comes from deeply loving another and it’s impossible to experience unless you are in mutual respect and trust for the other. Whether you mean to or not, you do come across as placing yourself somewhat above your DH in status.

I wish you all the best in your chosen path and hope that it works out for you in the end. But, I doubt you will be truly fulfilled for as long as this secret remains. You say you don’t wish to hurt your DH by telling him the truth. But, have you considered that you’re actually hurting him more by denying him the chance to make his own choices with all the facts in front of him? Do you believe he doesn’t deserve to know the truth? If you believe he doesn’t deserve the truth then he - and you - are in a very sad relationship.

I think the best one end up with Is friendship. If you’ve got that then everything else is a bonus.

I did actually miss the bit where the OP said she’s got her eye on someone else, which actually negates the point of the whole thread, but the general discussion of love within marriage or long term relationships is still an interesting one

And yet there have been several threads recently by posters who love their husbands yet have a crush on someone else. No-one is immune to that even people in love matches.