Did you marry/settle down with the love of your life?

[EdinburghFirstTimer]

Or did you end up with someone else?

Do you have any regrets?

Are you still in touch with any ‘The One’ exes?

Do you miss sex with an amazing ex?

I met my present dh at 15. My dad insisted I stopped seeing him. Married someone else at 22. .28 years later 1st love messaged me. 10 weeks later we were together, married 17 years, no regrets except dc no longer in touch.
My dad was a cheating twat with another family on the side!

No, never even got close and feel angry, resentful and bitter, at times, to have been denied that experience, along with the experience of having children and all that brings in terms of how you fit in to society. Fed up of being on the fringes and of being emotionally and physically unfulfilled. (Sorry if that's a bit dark, but two months of barely seeing, touching or speaking to another human being can do that to a a person.)

I did. And very happy nearly 40 years later.

There aren't any exes to keep in touch with: I hadn't had a boyfriend until I met him. There would have been opportunities but I wasn't interested. Don't have any beliefs about waiting for Mr Right or anything like that, just wasn't interested.

We did split up for a year and a half at the beginning of the relationship, but I wasn't really interested in getting with anyone else, so I just focused on other aspects of my life. Maybe if we hadn't got together again after that, I might eventually have hooked up with someone else, but it might have taken a long time; I just didn't feel the urge.

We then had a long distance relationship for many years, but again I was ok with that. I wasn't interested if it wasn't him anyway, so happier just living on my own than being with someone I didn't actually fancy.

Oh yes indeed!

Definitely married the one. Been together since 13/14, had DD1 at 17! Got married and had 2DS and currently expecting DD2.

Never a doubt in my mind he was who I wanted to be with

I married when I was 21 to the love of my life. He has ADHD. He had a temper and social issues and I wasn't old enough to help him deal with them. I have recently reconnected with him after 10 years of not speaking.

He is a lovely, considerate man now and has learned how to deal with his issues. He has a partner and a step son. I'm happy that he's happy.

I re married 4 years after heaving him to someone I fell in love with but more than anything thought he would be the "safe" option. Financially and physically he has been but emotionally I could not have made a bigger mistake. He never saw me as "The One" He saw me as potential wife and mother material. I used to be able to see past it and think "Well I have my kids" but now I just feel sad and lonely.

I married my first husband 30 years ago when I was aged 19.
He was a good man, a good provider and a decent dad to our son.
We are from the same city, our families have known each other for years, we have many things in common.
I was married to him for two years when I realized that I just wasn't that into him.

When I was 16, I had a pen pal from England that I wrote every week.
I was totally fascinated by him and he was so friendly. I vacationed in England when I was 17 to meet each other but we completely missed each other. Oh well. We continued to connect every week and figured that if we met, we would in time.

Once I separated and started divorce proceedings from my first husband, I got a random phone call from the English man and said that he wanted to vacation in America for 10 days and wondered if we could finally meet.

I set eyes on him and I was completely smitten.

Once my divorce was underway, we started a long-distance relationship. All in all, we only spent equivalent of 20 days together within two years. Obviously, when you only see each other 20 days (and it was before the internet), you don't really know each other. We decided that we wanted to be together so we decided the best thing to do was for me and my son was to move to England on a fiancée visa.

We decided to marry within six weeks of our arrival in England in order to comply with the requirements of a fiancée visa.

We had to make our relationship work and we did have our work cut out for us.

We had to actually live together. He had to learn to be a step-father. I had to deal with a young son with his father far away and trying to keep their relationship alive and well. We had our share of culture shock. We had to learn how to navigate every day life such as work and childcare after the wedding. We had to have discussions about whether we would have our own family and if religion would be a part of it and what language (my mother tongue is Spanish and I'm Catholic) we would use. We had to determine how often I would take my son back to see his father. I had to quickly learn about school intakes, registering my son for school. I had to also learn how to cook food that wasn't what I was used to and my new husband didn't cook. Every day was a new challenge but we muddled through.

We have lived through so much these past 24 years.

I was infatuated at first sight. I was blindly in love when I moved over. I have been furiously irritated, annoyed, angered navigating life with him. But, I am also immensely grateful for all the good that we have created and there's been so much happiness.

He has become the love of my life.

Not me.

My kids' dad is a very competent person stable, solvent, high earner, loves DCs to bits. He followed a volatile, emotionally abusive relationship.
He also liked formula 1 and spreadsheets...

After our relationship ended I met someome much more attuned and we got on brilliantly. Very similar interests, humour, lots of important stuff. However as a punishment (!) he had significant emotional issues and precarious finances.
I'm on my own right now and that is absolutely fine. I dont want or need a bloke unless its worth getting out of bed for....

I actually dont believe in 'the one's either... planet full of people... implausible that only one person is your soulmate...

No, I didn't. I married the man I thought I could cope with loosing and I was too afraid to go for the guy I thought the world of because I couldn't stand the possibility of life without him if it didn't work out, so I kept him as a friend. I'm divorced now and "the one" is in a relationship. I bitterly regret making such a bad decision

Sending you a virtual hug UnaCorda.

Absolutely. I set eyes on him 15 years ago and knew instantly that this was The One. It was like lightning.

Trouble is I was happily engaged to someone else at the time. Wedding planned and booked. Dress bought. My prevailing thought at the time was oh shit, am I about to hurt a lot of feelings.... because even if things hadn't worked out with The One™ it meant that I was in no way capable of marrying the guy I'd been with all through uni. Knowing that I was about to hurt him by dumping him was incredibly difficult, I lost a lot of our mutual friends...but it would have been way, way worse if I had stayed just to spare the fallout.

I still stay in touch with a few of my exes (including ex-fiance) via Facebook, but they're fairly inconsequential -- the occasional "happy birthday" or hello. We still run in the same circle of friends & have some of the same hobbies, so I'm sure they hear about what I'm doing the same as I hear about them. No drama.

No regrets. I've not thought about sex with anyone else since the first time with DH and it's been 15 years. I don't even have the odd dream here and there -- I dream about DH!

I married the love of my life twice!!. We met 30 yrs ago got married 2 yrs later. We were married for 18yrs and had 4 children together we were so young when we met (16 & 19) but I just knew he was the love of my life. I think all the years of both working hard & raising children we lost each other and our relationship became combative, we just couldn't connect so after rumbling on for a while we separated . It was all very amicable, we both kind of moved on with our lives for 5yrs but it never really seemed like finished business. After one of the kids birthdays we sat & had a few beers and a snog it was lovely, we starting seeing more of each other and we both knew we wanted to be together. We've been married 5yrs. I'm a pain in the ass & he is a grumpy bastard sometimes but it works.

My husband was my first proper boyfriend, I met him when I was 17, we were together 23 years before he died suddenly nearly 2 years ago. In all that time I never met a man who could hold a candle to my husband. He was the most caring, lovely man and made me very happy. We of course had our ups and downs over the years but I was very lucky to have him and life has lost much of its appeal now he’s gone. I will never be with anyone else; the thought makes me feel physically sick!

I married the love of my life and he died in an industrial accident 5 years later. I was 27 and had two small children. That was 20 years ago now but I still think of him. I never thought I’d find happiness again, but I did. Life doesn’t stop. Kids need feeding and bed time stories. Then they grow up. My husband encourages me to talk to girls about their father and I have a picture of him in my room. Just the one. Make the most of everyday, you never know what is round the corner.

Yes, I married the right guy. I was almost 40, and had a lot of fun (and heartache) before him. I could have married richer guys (with good jobs, houses, cars). I’ve had better sex, for sure! Glad I had my heyday, though...
We don’t own a house, have top careers & I risked not having kids (pregnant now, by pure chance). DH not perfect, but we click & the love is real. I enjoy his company. Child will change things, I know that...
I would have married my first boyfriend (I was 23). I was in love with him, but he dumped me. There was the friend, where both of us wondered “what if” (he’s finally getting hitched). And “the one who got away” (everything about him was good 😇)

Don’t believe there is one person for you that’s surely mad.

Feel very lucky that met dh at 28 so old enough to both have had other relationships but still quite young. Such a relief meeting dh my other 2 long term relationships one kind but dull the other interesting but erratic and bad temper. Dh combines best of both. And is gorgeous!

The love of my life was a 9 year relationship that ended when he dumped me 2 months before our wedding and 3 months after buying our dream house together.
I then got married to somebody else 3 years later but it didn't work out

I married mine. I met DH at university, we talked all night, and within a few days I had phoned my then-boyfriend of 3 years to end it. (Too far to go home and do it in person!) I have never met anyone more similar to me.

I don't really believe in the "your one soulmate could be in Singapore" idea. I think how you meet someone and where/how you grew up has a big effect on a relationship. It's why college, university, and work relationships are common - you normally have similar interests to end up in the same place at the same time. I only know one successful couple who met on a dating app.

We have been married 10 years and been together 16. We had our son in 2018 so by then had a fair idea of what kind of parent the other might be.

I thought I loved my ex, but in reality we were mostly good friends. I believe some people are in your life for a reason or a season and my home life was quite depressing at that time so he gave me somewhere to escape to.

Married mine. Knew he was the one the moment I met him and knew I would never settle for anyone else. It was like coming home. Thankfully he felt the same. I never believed in soulmates until I met him but in grateful every day that I did.

You folks who have married your soulmates are so lucky. For every 10 people like you I bet there are 500+ who are either rubbing along, or just..... single.

Q for the people who married their soulmates:how did you grow up? Were you in intact, happy, stable family setups?

Q for the people who married their soulmates:how did you grow up? Were you in intact, happy, stable family setups?

Yes, I was. And so was dh. I often think with gratitude of his parents who taught him to be good at family life.

But I didn't feel pressured to find someone; my parents were not intrusive in any way and they would not have made me uncomfortable if I had just lived life as I had intended to, focusing on my career.

I absolutely married the love of my life.
I had one serious boyfriend before him who I always thought of as the one who got away. Part of me always thought I'd end up with him and I was always still a little bit in love with him. After I'd been with my current partner for around five years my ex told me that he loved me, wanted to be with me, said we were like Ross and Rachel and destined to be together - then he proposed. I had no difficulty in rejecting him and I realised that I was definitely already with the right guy. If he'd never proposed then I'd probably still think of him as the one who got away - but nope, I've ended up with the right one :)

I wasn’t my “the One’s”, “the One”.

He’s married now and I’m not. 36 and never heard the words “I Love You” or “Will You Marry Me?”

You people that it’s all worked out for are so, so lucky. I took it for granted it would happen for me too. Guess it can’t happen for everyone though.

Q for the people who married their soulmates:how did you grow up? Were you in intact, happy, stable family setups?

DH's upbringing was idyllic; my family had an unusual number of health and financial problems to deal with, but there was a lot of love. I think it showed me that couples can get through really tough times together.

I don't believe in "the one" idea, but I definitely married someone I was in love with, I was mad about him! Aside from the passion, though, there was tremendous respect for him and that's never subsided, even when we were knee-deep in nappies and exhausted. I admire his heart and his mind.

I don't know whether he admires mine (he's cleverer than me), but he loves something about me.

P.S. That doesn't mean I believe that only ppl from intact, happy families can create stable relationships themselves, I know plenty of happy couples whose parents divorced/separated.

I'm just saying that my parents showed me how to deal with relationship stresses, which has helped me along the way.