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.

@MyKingdomForBie You've made a purely selfish and cruel decision, misleading this man and wasting his life, a life in which he could have been loved. Nasty.

This ^ I agree 100%, it is good to see people with morals who don't agree with deceit and selfishness.

No one is saying she can't marry for convenience, but both parties must...be....on....the.....same.....page.

He is whether you want to accept it or not. No one is blind to the relationship they are living in. She has never done anything cruel to him, she hasn't cheated on him, and it's a bit much to attack her like this.

Like I said love is different to different people. I know many people who were in arranged marriages who love their spouse but it was never and never will be passionate romance, they've lasted until death. And they could have divorced once moving to Western society. You may not like that that happens, but it does and a large amount of people have happiness in stable marriages.

I think it’s fine OP.
I married for love and all good so far and still in love. But I wouldn’t judge anyone for not doing the same.
Many people marry for love and fall out of love but stay together.
Many marry people they don’t love or have already fallen out of love with.
Lots of people marry for money, security, social standing, to have children etc.
Lots of people settle.
I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong here. I’m sure your partner has an idea of how you feel which suggests he is ok with it. I think it would be hard to hide.

I’m interested to ask the people who think h OP’s way of going about marriage is fine:

What do you think about wedding vows? I took mine very seriously. I married for love and the word itself is mentioned throughout the vows in all the wedding ceremonies I’ve ever been to.

Are such people actually getting married, saying these vows knowing full well that they DON’T actually love their partner? From this thread it seems there must be. It doesn’t seem morally right to me, at all, that, and makes a farce of your “contract” as the other person is signing up to something on false pretences.

Maybe you people need to have re-worded your wedding vows to say something more in line with what you ACTUALLY felt? Eg “I promise to respect him and cherish him as long as we both shall live?” Or something along those lines?

CurlyhairedAssassin

Do you believe that a deep friendship cannot be love if it is not romance? I think love is more complex.

@CurlyhairedAssassin - the wedding vows say “I promise to love” - in other words, the Bible regards “love” as a deliberate action, not a fuzzy feeling. “Love” is, as per the famous Corinthians passage, a set of behaviours (patient, kind) and a set of things not to do (envy, boast...). If “love” is a feeling, then we cannot “promise” to do it, neither would we need to. Wedding vows honour precisely the type of love the OP has with her husband - that which sustains a family - not the hormonal wishy-washy feeling that Hollywood has made us think is love.

Love comes in many guises @Curlyhaiiredassassin. As several pp have pointed out and been persistently ignored.

No one is blind to the relationship they are living in

Hang on, aren't you the same poster claiming that everyone who marries for love is kidding themselves that their relationship is stable and really it's just doe-eyed infatuation? You can't have it both ways.

Hang on, aren't you the same poster claiming that everyone who marries for love is kidding themselves that their relationship is stable and really it's just doe-eyed infatuation? You can't have it both ways.

If you marry for passion then you will probably be an insecure situation if you disregard other more important variables such as dependability.

Love comes in many guises @Curlyhaiiredassassin. As several pp have pointed out and been persistently ignored.

But OP specifically says she does not love him in her first sentence. Not "I love him in my own way" or "I love him but I'm not in love with him", she categorically states that she doesn't love him. I don't think posters are ignoring the fact that there are different kinds of love, it's the complete absence of love in OP's case they're commenting on.

But OP specifically says she does not love him in her first sentence. Not "I love him in my own way" or "I love him but I'm not in love with him", she categorically states that she doesn't love him. I don't think posters are ignoring the fact that there are different kinds of love, it's the complete absence of love in OP's case they're commenting on.

The issue is how she has defined "love". She says she does care for him on one of the other pages.

We don’t know what OP means by love - and she’s (understandably) showing no sign of coming back to enlighten us.

She meant no love not some kind of

Agree with new sensible posters

I married someone who I shouldn’t have

I am now married to someone I love. It’s far nicer

I love my husband a great deal but didnt marry for love either. Making life decisions on the basis of emotions is very very stupid.

This is what OP said on the first page of this thread.

halfwaythroughaugust

Yes, I think so. And like I say I sort of do, but not romantically

So she cares and loves him, just not in the Valentine's Day card sense. That's ok though and more people should take a logical/pragmatic approach to choosing a partner. Sometimes the heart is very illogical and can lead a person down a very painful path.

Well half of us are responding to her blunt as you like op and other not

I disagree that if love is there you’re not considering other things.

Yes, i was looking at the vows issue from the point of view of OP stating clearly that she does not love her husband. Which is incomplete contrast to what is promised in a wedding ceremony. She even finds him dull. When all there is left is a bit of “care” for someone’s welfare, then really what have you actually got left, apart from a co-parent who happens to live in the same house. Most decent people “care” about their fellow human beings, especially ones you realise have good qualities as a parent etc But you wouldn’t want to marry them.

If you simply respect someone’s personal qualities and can happily rub along with them in the same house and both want to raise children and are on the same page without regards to how, WHY GET MARRIED? Why not just live together and raise children together?

Well half of us are responding to her blunt as you like op and other not

Do you condemn everyone in the first 5 minutes you meet? I don't. I understand that sometimes people can't explain themselves properly in an opening post. That doesn't mean I disregard the rest of the situation or person.

She sounded truthful to me wtf knows though.

Other posters have backed her up and then listed qualities for their own dhs - he’s funny, kind, not exciting yada, but you can tell love is there anyway.

Very different

Alsohuman was one that made me think this

And this, @CedarTreeLeaf, If you marry for passion then you will probably be an insecure situation if you disregard other more important variables such as dependability

But you can have both. You really can. I guess there must be a Venn Diagram when it come to people’s reasons for marriage, with some seeing it simply as a contract and marrying for stability or simply to raise children or because they haven’t been found anyone else; some marrying out of pure romance/lust and fairytale froth because they want a big fancy wedding, while ignoring their suspicions that their soon to be husband may be cheating/gambling/a lazy arse. Some people are in the middle. A LOT of people are in the middle. Just because you might not have been in that middle cross over section doesn’t mean to say it’s not there and there are people in it!

Curly you can definitely have both. Some will keep saying it’s not though which is crazy.

Not possible

How very sad - why could you not of had children and brought them up alone OP?