Divorce after less than a year of marriage.

[Canneverthinkofagoodusername]

I don’t want this to sound like I’m being judgmental, I am not at all. I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t stay in a strained marriage if you aren’t happy and you shouldn’t stay just because..

I’ve noticed recently there seems to be a lot of marriages that have failed after less than a year. This probably has always happened, my own mother’s marriage only lasted a few months many years ago but seems worse lately. I’m genuinely curious to why this is? Was it the strain of marriage? Was the marriage rushed into? was the marriage a way to try and fix issues within the relationship? More recently is it lockdown strain? Do relationships change after a marriage? Of course they do a certain extent but when you’ve lived with someone for several years for getting married first not so much.

Recently I’ve noticed couples who have been together for several years who have got married and divorced within a year of marriage. Surely after years of living together they’d know whether they would want to be together forever. I know things change. Stress, kids, money etc etc. Some cheat etc.

I’m asking because I’ve been with my partner for 9 years and we have discussed getting married and we will when the time is right but for now we are unmarried. What will marriage change for our relationship? We already have dc, a house we own etc. Marriage will of course offer more security and stability etc. But I don’t feel it would change our relationship at all. I cannot imagine my life without him and want to grow old with him (cliche I know). Can marriage really change a relationship that has always been stable and happy?

A couple I know were together 13 years, then got married, but divorced 15 months later. They're still friends but said they only married as they felt they'd fallen out of love/friendzoned each other and it was something fun to plan and do to try to inject some love and romance back in, but it didn't fix the issues they had and so they split up.

It was a great wedding though!!

Yes, he changed for the worse and we applied for divorce exactly 1 year after marriage. He had controlling tendencies before and was a bit needy, but he really changed almost overnight. He started trying to get me to quit my job because I wasn't home for dinner and didn't like that I made more money than him. He started getting more shouty and rude and aggressive. He really disliked me seeing a friend on my own insisting it was weird for a married woman to go out without her husband. Yes there were some signs when I look back but honestly he was almost unrecognizable after we got married.

When I left him, he said he genuinely believed I wouldn't leave him now that we were married. He apologized, he cried, he went to therapy. I genuinely believe he has changed for the better because the divorce shook him to the core. But i lost all love and respect for him and the contempt I felt was just not something I could get over. So I couldn't go back.

Conversely, my DH and I were together 11 years with 2 children before we got married. Since had another child and it's our 10th anniversary this year. Sometimes it works...

I should have never married my first DH as we’d been together and living together for 7 years. Our relationship literally changed overnight and was terrible from that point on. I was adamant that my second marriage I wouldn’t be be waiting around so we did it quick.

This happened to me. Together 8 years, got married and he told me how unhappy he was 1 year in. I’m still not 100% sure what happened but I think there was either an affair or emotional affair. I think he had allowed our relationship to continue through convenience but in hindsight there were some clear signs he was unhappy, which I put down to a difficult personality (also true). Still I went into the marriage thinking it would last. I’m glad it all ended when it did, it’s given me a chance of happiness with someone else. I don’t think getting married was the problem, but when I mentioned buying a house that was what began the divorce conversation.

I haven’t married again but I have bought a house and had a baby and I had none of that bullshit from my DP. So much happier now.

I know two couples this happened to, one of them had been married less than a year when they separated. Both had problems in their relationships before they got married though.

This happened to a friend of mine who, by her own admission, should never have gotten married in the first place.

The only people I know whose marriages had broken down within a year of the ceremony were a couple who got married solely because she was pregnant and her mother was insistent, and a couple who had a terrible argument at the reception and spent the wedding night in separate rooms of the hotel.

The couple I know, who got divorced after 18 months after being engaged 10 years, it was a last ditch attempt to save the relationship.

It wasn't the act of getting married that split them up, it was them realising that marriage wasn't what was missing from their relaionship

A couple I know lasted less than a year.

Apparently she was telling her friends she didn't want to marry him on her hen do.

Not a divorce as you can’t for 2 years at least, but essentially separated just after a year. Been with ex-H for many years, and finally got married, all very happy but he then had an affair with a woman at work. Shame really.

I only know two couples who have done this.

In both cases, the man cheated and was cheating all along.

Have seen band aid weddings where, like having a child, the wedding was supposed to solve fundamental problems. Have seen big weddings that discouraged one unhappy person with reservations from calling it off. Have also seen where one was in a long standing affair with their boss and this emerged after the wedding and the boss was picked over their partner. All sad in their own way.

I think all marriages are under some unusual strain at the moment 😂

Nobody has ever died from divorce & something’s are just not meant too be xx ❤️

My first (brief) marriage failed because my husband made a couple of attempts to kill me. Shit happens.

Canneverthinkofagoodusername I was with my OH for 20yrs before we got married. We had DC too and a home. The only difference it has made is knowing that I am NOK, I dont have to worry about access to his pension or taxes associated with us not being married. My DH is terminally ill and it put things sharply in perspective. I do work and have a good pension but reality is he is still the main bread winner and also has a flat he rents out. It could all become rather complicated without being married. We ended up being married within 24hrs of him having major surgery. It has made zero difference to day to day living...sometimes i forget I am married!

I know two people this happened to before Covid.

For one couple, the relationship wasn't brilliant before marriage but one person felt that it was not being married and therefore not feeling secure in the relationship that was the problem. Therefore marriage would actually make it all better. It turned out he was using sex workers even texting one on their wedding day.

For the other, there was always something external to the couple that kept them busy enough not to notice how their relationship wasn't very solid and they had little in common eg house renovation, illness in the wider family, relocation for his work. They had been together 8 years and were almost 38 when they married. By the time the dust had settled after their big wedding and life was quiet again they realised they had very little in common.

@notalwaysalondoner

I don't know anyone this has happened to. Not sure it is an actual trend or just coincidentally you happen to know a lot of people this has happened to.

I do remember when I got married being a bit nervous of those kinds of stories - DH and I were together 9 years before marriage.

I agree.

I dont know anyone who divorced after a year of marriage. I DO know of lots of couples now divorcing after 15+ years of marriage.

I know a lot of couples that got married fairly young (eg early 20s) who now in their late 30s are divorcing. I put that down to us generally changing as we age and not being the same people we were in our youth

Thanks all. I meant no harm or offence in my post I’m just a curious person. Life happens, I know that! I don’t believe that people should stay in a dead end marriage if it isn’t working however long it’s been - 2 months or 20 years! 🌸

I have another friend who was looking into how to divorce someone before they even got married. She felt it was too late to call it all off 😭 thankfully she has seem sense and they are now divorced.

The only person I know that divorced that quickly found out on honeymoon that ‘d’h had an affair just before the wedding. They had been together for years and I think he wanted one last hoorah....

I will say- of all the people I know who divorced every single one of them said they had doubts on their wedding day but went through with it because it was too late, everything had been paid for, it was expected etc. I dont mean huge doubts, just niggling doubts that it wasnt right....

My cousin split up with his wife within a few weeks of getting married. They got back from the honeymoon and she moved out. They’d been together for several years before getting married. I assume she’d been having doubts but couldn’t bear to cancel the wedding.

I have to say OP that DH and I had been together over 6 years before getting married and then had a "wobble" about 5-6 months after the wedding to the point I wasn't sure we'd make our first anniversary. There were some reasons for it at the time but they seemed so much worse once a marriage certificate was involved? Maybe it was the pressure to "make it work" - you can't just have an argument and say you're ending things - there feels like this added layer of expectation and responsibility to each other (and others like parents maybe?) to try harder? I guess for some that pressure is too much which is why some marriages break down very quickly?

I think sometimes with couples who have been together years there can be a whole host of things related to how long they waited to get married. Sometimes one partner has never really wanted to be married but doesn't want to say "I don't want to get married". Eventually they can't hold out any longer because it just starts to seem unreasonable. Then once married they act out to force a split or just leave. I also think, for women in particular, getting married is held up as some sort of goal. Once it's done they take more time to look at what the relationship actually is and suddenly think "Shit!".

There's also the stress (and debt) of a big wedding - I think it can highlight issues of inequality or differing values/ideals that were perhaps not so obvious when there wasn't a big project. This would be in keeping with the spike divorce lawyers see at the beginning of January too - just after Christmas and the stresses and expense of trying to host a celebration (often with extended family members adding to the stress).

And, of course, there are all the normal reasons too. Weddings often get planned over the course of a couple of years and for most people feels a bit unstoppable with a lot of money committed that no one's getting back. That's plenty of time for an otherwise good relationship to turn sour and people might think the wedding stress is the cause and once it's over things will straighten out again. When things are just as bad or worse after it's all over they realise they need to leave. Even if aware of the deteriorating state of the relationship before the wedding, they might decide to go ahead and do it so as to have the wedding day. Not a great decision in my opinion, but I can see the logic of wanting to ake the most of all the expense.