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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To have chosen a different life

557 replies

halfwaythroughaugust · 15/08/2019 07:34

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.

OP posts:
MarshaBradyo · 15/08/2019 11:13

‘A happy marriage can be made on mutual respect, trust, friendship and wanting the same things from life’. - sure but where’s the trust when it’s based on deceit

Fine if the op had been upfront

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:14

Having a family was very important to me.

Have yet to RTFT but, what about what was important to him? You seem very cruel and selfish. Unless you've answered it in following posts, people have asked you if he knew you didn't love him when you got married, and you haven't answered. Because, what you've done is marry him under false pretences. That is grounds for annulment, because one of you was deceived into marriage.

It is one thing if your husband married you with his eyes open and hence knew you didn't love him, it is entirely another altogether if he married you believing you loved him. What you've done, if he didn't know before he entered marriage with you, is deceive him. And that is beyond cruel, it is morally bankrupt and repugnant.

MarshaBradyo · 15/08/2019 11:15

And I still reckon if people heard to love and to cherish on their wedding day and then read the op - I don’t love her I just wanted children - they’d be rightly upset

Flamingo84 · 15/08/2019 11:16

Yes you definitely “chose a different life”, but by the sounds of it your husband didn’t get to make that choice. If you’d been open with him about what you wanted at the beginning (before getting married/kids) he could have decided if he wanted to take a gamble on you or keep looking for someone else. But you didn’t. Presumably because you knew he’d be off like a shot.

Instead you got what you wanted, marriage, children and a kind friend for a husband. Now that you’ve got it, suddenly you’re opening up to a bunch of strangers online. You also mentioned feeling an attraction (can’t remember the wording you used) for someone else. This just seems like you’ve got everything you told yourself you wanted and it’s starting to dawn on you that you went about it the wrong way. You’re coolly rebuffing any responses that question your methods, why even bother posting?

I can’t imagine many women who wouldn’t be heartbroken to realise their husband has never felt romantic love for them and only married them for children.

There are many different kinds of love, marriages and relationships and if you’d both gone into it on the same page, fair enough. But he didn’t.

Hopefullyendsmeet · 15/08/2019 11:18

I don’t think the OP is necessarily cruel and/or selfish but I think she does sound very detached and quite robotic. I suspect some sort of emotional trauma in early life affected her attachment style. She speaks about her husband as though he is beneath her rather than an equal which is telling.

Ihatemyseleffordoingthis · 15/08/2019 11:20

I don't think everyone really lays their cards on the table in the way you imagine.

He will know the score, even if it's unstated. You can't be in a relationship for any length of time without knowing. It's not deceit, it's mutual agreement.

If it works, and they are content, even happy, it isn't a problem

bluegirlgreen · 15/08/2019 11:22

@TheFaerieQueene

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.

Agree with this. ^ And a few other posts that are similar...

Romantic, 'happy-ever-after' love like you see in Disney movies, or in Hollywood movies is pure fiction, and is not the reality. It would be great if it was, but it isn't!

The reality (for many) is that people (especially women,) DO feel pressured by society/family to settle down with someone, get a place to rent together, get engaged, buy a house, get married, have a couple of kids.

And even though many will deny it, many people DO feel this (as I said, especially women.) So quite often, they will just 'settle...' AND, as a few posters have said, MEN also 'settle' and stay with women they don't really love. People can deny it, but it's true.

Then the first flushes of the early relationship excitement, going on holiday together, getting a place to live together, shagging 5 to 10 times a week, having mates around to watch TV and play video games and so on wears off...

Then the drudgery and resentment sets in..... Arguments about paying bills/mortgage/rent, doing the food shop, him earning more than her, (and thinking that entitles him to SPEND more,) what they can and cannot spend, fighting about looking after the kids, who is running them about this weekend, who is doing the school run, and fighting over some issue regarding each others in-laws.

Also him spending weekends away from home on his hobbies, her being left with all the wifework, trying to keep the kids happy, her own parents happy, and deal with the in-laws (as dealing with the in-laws is often left to the woman.)

SO it's hardly surprising that resentment sets in, and the love fades.

For some couples, they plough through all the trials and tribulations, and come through it, and something different emerges... A companionship, and love on another level. Maybe not shagging every day, or even shagging at all anymore, but a close companionship and respect for each other; caring and sharing and enjoying their Autumn years together...

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:24

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

bluegirlgreen · 15/08/2019 11:30

@SaraNade

And stuff anyone else, right? Just deceive and lie? It is women like yourself who should never become parents because look at the role model you are presenting to your children? That it's ok to lie and deceive and manipulate to get what you want, that as long as they get what they want, stuff their partner. Right? Why is it that the real vile and morally bankrupt people have children easily and screw them up for life, but some good, decent people are infertile? So bloody wrong.

Blimey. Calm down. Confused You sound really angry, and unnecessarily harsh.

Don't act like your shit don't stink, and that MEN don't do the same!

Ihatemyseleffordoingthis · 15/08/2019 11:33

@SaraNade your post is so totally out of order, even if it comes from a place of pain

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:33

@croprotationinthe13thcentury You're missing the point. A marriage like that works if BOTH know how the land lies going in. But she never told her husband, in other words she deceived him into marrying her.

Do you understand while marrying someone under false pretenses and not cluing them in to it, is problem?

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:35

@Ihatemyseleffordoingthis What on earth? The OP is the one who deceived her husband into marrying her, and I'm the one out of order? How messed up is that? Confused

MarshaBradyo · 15/08/2019 11:36

Can people not imagine the utter outrage if a man was posting the op?

Or how they would feel if it was them described in op?

I find it strange that people are so accepting of something that would be hurtful

And that the op can’t imagine how she would feel if it was reversed

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:38

@bluegirlgreen Not angry at all, sarcastic and dismayed maybe. I haven't heard on here of a man marrying a woman when he didn't love her. Maybe you can provide evidence of this.

Regardless, it doesn't justify what the OP has done. Two wrongs don't make a right.

If you found out your significant other married you under false pretenses and lying to you to get you to sign a legal contract, are you saying you wouldn't be bothered by that? Really?

ShastaBeast · 15/08/2019 11:38

I suspect this is very common. I know of couples who made deals about having kids - the woman doing all the leg work if he agreed to having kids.

NarcolepticOuchMouse · 15/08/2019 11:40

I think you're getting quite a hard time by people who have assumed your DH to be unhappy. I don't think you should have settled, I think you should have accepted that kids weren't happening for you. But that's all said and done now so I find it a bit stupid for people to say you need to do things, like tell him you've never romantically felt the same, that will inevitably hurt your marriage. From seeing other threads you'll find many people here that would prioritise romance or what they percieve to be morally correct over a family unit, so take those on their high horses with a pinch of salt. If your home is a happy place to raise your children, I don't think you need to do anything but crack on with that. It's senseless to break up the home if everyone is happy or at the very least, wants that situation.

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:40

*Can people not imagine the utter outrage if a man was posting the op?

Or how they would feel if it was them described in op?*

Exactly. It is never right to deceive another person into marriage. I think there are a lot of kids having fun on here trolling on school holidays. Or, at least, I want to believe that. Confused

bluegirlgreen · 15/08/2019 11:41

@Ihatemyseleffordoingthis

Agree. @SaraNade's post was awful. Actually awful Sad

Wrong on so many levels..

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:42

@ShastaBeast Common when BOTH parties enter into the marriage knowing and agreeing with it. That's not the case here.

bluegirlgreen · 15/08/2019 11:43

I am genuinely shocked and disturbed that you cannot see anything wrong in your post (from 11.24) @SaraNade ...

If you cannot see how awful what you said really is... I really cannot help you. And neither can anyone else.

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:44

@bluegirlgreen How is anything I said remotely wrong? I said she lied deceived DCs' father into marrying her, that that is not a good role to model your children on, and that it's a shame that selfish and bad to have children and others don't.

How on earth is that even remotely 'awful' and the OP fine? Confused Hmm

ReanimatedSGB · 15/08/2019 11:44

I really don't see a problem with this, and I suspect that those people wailing and wringing their hands over how 'cold' the OP is are displaying misogyny. Women are supposed to be all about 'feelings' and take no interest in the practical aspects of life. Vast numbers of men approach marriage with the view that one woman is much like another, really, and as long as she's willing to provide domestic and sexual services and look after the DC and flatter his ego, she'll do. And women were socialised, in the past, to pick a man who would earn a good wage rather than the one with the nicest eyes or whatever, because women had to depend on men for money.

I've known a few couples where the decision to get married was more one of practicality, and they have been contentedly married for a long long time. As long as OP and her H are both content, nothing wrong with it at all.

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:45

@bluegirlgreen It seems you are seeing something that isn't there. Please point out the part/s you think are awful. Because I am genuinely stunned and shocked that you have reacted to my pretty mild and basic common sense posts like that.

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:47

@ReanimatedSGB
Vast numbers of men approach marriage with the view
Where is your 'evidence' of this?

Secondly, again, two wrongs don't make a right. If men stuck their head in the oven, would you do that too? Come on!

SaraNade · 15/08/2019 11:48

I've known a few couples where the decision to get married was more one of practicality
And presumably BOTH parties to the marriage knew it was based on this, not just the one, like this scenario?

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