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?

It's actually a weird statistical phenomenon, I heard it on the radio a few years ago and remember thinking that I had just passed the "danger period" of 12 months married. My brother hadn't, though, and it was a massive shock when his wife ended things after just 5 months married (after 7 years with him, cohabiting for years too) and took up with someone else. She had a baby with the new person straight away as well after having told my brother she "wasn't ready" a few months previously. Personally I think she just wanted a wedding and then freaked after all the fuss had died down. As well as making obviously poor moral choices and just generally being a cow.

I actually know 3 couples who had long term relationships then a divorce soon after marriage. In all cases the women had a new partner and pregnancy within a year after the separation as well, before the divorces were even finalised.

I find it totally baffling! But there must be something psychological about it to know of 3 examples, perhaps the babies are to show how much they have moved on? After all, having managed to not get pregnant in the years and years with their previous partners, they managed pretty quickly to get knocked up with their new blokes.

I was with DH for 11 years, 11 months and 1 day when we married and we will have been married for 10 years this year. We had our own home and children before the wedding, but we weren’t doing it as a band aid or last ditch attempt to make things work.
We always wanted to get married but life just got in the way for a while and we always had other things to spend the money on.
Although I do have a secret running away fund that everyone, including the children, knows about

@Canneverthinkofagoodusername

I have friends who have doubted their upcoming wedding but have gone through with due to the shame or embarrassment of calling it off which is so sad. My own mother went through this when she married someone years ago. She even had doubts on her actual wedding day and there wasn’t any excitement. She knew it wasn’t working but she went through with it anyway. Split a few months down the line!

Yes, this is what my friends have admitted to me and say they wish they had had the strength to call off their engagement like I did but it is expected to just go through with it. (They are currently still married and I get along fine with their husbands so it makes things kind of awkward, in my mind, for me to know that my friend doesn't really want to be with him and wishes she hadn't married him.)

These same friends tell me they don't really believe in marriage, that it is just a societal convenience and something people do because it's expected or that it's easier to stay married when they have kids to raise together, etc. But then they sometimes tell me they know there is something better out there for them and they wish they could pursue it and sometimes they tell me they're planning to but they stay married, so, to me, it's confusing!

I think it's very important to be true to ourselves and honest with ourselves. But some people learn to do that once it's too late (or never). I spent a long time trying to follow conventions and do what was expected of me and it made me so miserable and anxious. I just couldn't do it anymore. The way I ended my engagements were not ideal and at the time I put both my fiancees and myself through a lot of unnecessary suffering compared to if I had just been honest and upfront with them from the get go (not that they were perfect either). But I have no regrets because it is much better (for both of us) than being stuck in an unfulfilling marriage and I know it was the right thing to do but I just wish I had done it sooner or in a different way.

However, I didn't know for sure what I wanted/didn't want. I was all over the place. It took staring at a set marriage date and started the preparations for me to realize I didn't want it but then I questioned my own gut feeling and logic told me that on paper it was good, etc. (The second time. The first time was just a mess all around but I was very young and dumb.)

I think this probably doesn't happen to some people until AFTER they are married. Like others have said, they are caught up in planning the big day and being obsessed with the wedding or think everything will be a great fantasy and then reality hits and they realize they made a big mistake. For anyone here saying that you realized you needed to end the marriage and got out, I think that is admirable. It is not good to be stuck in misery just because you made a bad choice to get married.

I know that people say relationships take work and commitment/vows should mean something but sometimes if the personalities don't mesh (or there is abuse or toxic dysfunction!) it just will never work out or shouldn't. Sometimes I think it is also something within one or both partners- they will never be ready to know what a good, fulfilling relationship even is unless/until they work on themselves first, so it's likely the one they're in is not fulfilling but nothing would be until they looked inward first, and it's likely the one they are in would not be the one that their "more evolved" self would have chosen anyway, if that makes sense.

I am a big believer in marriage now but only because I feel I am with the right person, and I agree it takes work and is hard. But I could only do it once I was in the right place with myself and had found the right partner for me. And a lot of it involved giving up on societal ideals, my own ideals, conventions, etc., and just being true to myself because otherwise I was a huge mess. Engagement or marriage is a huge decision that so many of us (myself included in the past) take lightly or don't properly examine until it's nearly too late or until we feel it's too late but IMO it is never too late to live the best kind of life for ourselves.

I am so glad I didn't stay with either of my exes. So when my friends tell me I'm strong or brave for calling off the engagement, I just feel that I had no other choice, that the pain of staying was worse than the pain of leaving or letting it all fall apart (I didn't do it in the most pro-active or healthy way because I didn't know how, and that was the painful part.) Sometimes I think if their relationships were really that bad they would HAVE to get out or else be miserable. Other times I think that some people just feel miserable and stay anyway- I know my parents did/do this and it's depressing and confusing but some people do it. So kudos to anyone who has left rather than face misery forever.

Well lots of celebs split up after a very short time. I often wonder why celebs bother getting married in the first place (or second, third).

One of DH's cousins went out with her boyfriend for 18 years before marrying. They split up less than a year later.

A friend of ours was with his girlfriend for 12 years (lived together for 8 of those) and split after 3 months of marriage.

A girl I worked with was with her boyfriend for 11 years before marriage and split up 6 months later.

Me and DH married 5 months after meeting. We didn't live together before and our wedding was arranged, obviously, quickly and very cheaply (no I wasn't pregnant!).

We have been married 40 years and are very happy. We loved the first lockdown because it meant we were together 24/7 for a few months. He is back working now but trying to cut his hours down so to be home more. I don't work.

If I was to venture a guess if it's after a long time together then a short marriage I'd say marriage was a last ditch attempt to save the relationship or one of them became abusive shortly after.

Sorry, I'm new here and don't know how to edit my post. But I wanted to clarify that the reason I'm a big believer in marriage is that my husband is my best friend, my rock, my support... my life would not be the same without him in it; I feel that he is truly my other half.

Yes, in many ways it is convenient to be married and raise kids together but I am also madly in love with him and know he is madly in love with me. When my friends tell me they don't think this sort of love or marriage exists, I think they just haven't found it (yet?) and are not with the right person. Or maybe I am just incredibly lucky and for some people it never happens.

I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, sorry about that, I just think that if someone is in a relationship (married or otherwise) they don't feel is right for them, there is nothing wrong with leaving and seeing if they can find happiness on their own and then hopefully with someone else. For as many people as I know who admit to being unhappily married, I know just as many who say they are, and truly seem to be, happily married, so I really do think that it can exist and that we shouldn't settle for less, although I know that societal expectations of marriage by a certain age etc. (not to mention biological limitations if we want children, which, I didn't at the time I met my husband in my early 30's but now we have had 4 babies together, 3 with us physically, 1 in spirit who was stillborn at full term, and another on the way, plus an early miscarriage of our very first pregnancy) don't always make it easy or even possible to wait to meet the right person.

@Annelovesgilbert we did it after 10 years for very boring reasons. We're getting older and there will be tax breaks and it needed less thougjt/was faster than doing a will. Ours was prompted by the death of a parent. We didn't tell anyone apart from our 2 witnesses because we didn't want to celebrate a legal procedure.

As to why some people very quickly get remarried and pregnant soon after...I think it's often because of the stark contrast from their old to their new relationship and feeling a level of contentment that they never did before.

There is also the new post innocence perspective where you learn that relationships fail after 1, 5 15 25 years and sometimes therefore there is little benefit in waiting....as someone can walk out on you or die or change personality at any point.

I think the first year of any marriage is tough. No matter how long you've been together, marriage changes things. We nearly split in the first year of our marriage and I remember thinking God this is so embarrassing. We've been married 34 years now. I told my own DC when they married that, just like a degree, the first year doesn't count towards your result 😄

Bigbird I got married for the exact same reasons. But it saddens me as I actually wanted to be married earlier in our relationship and he never did.

@SuperHighway

I think the first year of any marriage is tough. No matter how long you've been together, marriage changes things. We nearly split in the first year of our marriage and I remember thinking God this is so embarrassing. We've been married 34 years now. I told my own DC when they married that, just like a degree, the first year doesn't count towards your result 😄

I love the degree comparison! 😆

@SuperHighway

I think the first year of any marriage is tough. No matter how long you've been together, marriage changes things. We nearly split in the first year of our marriage and I remember thinking God this is so embarrassing. We've been married 34 years now. I told my own DC when they married that, just like a degree, the first year doesn't count towards your result 😄

I don't agree at all. Maybe because we didn't live together first and married very quickly, our first year was exciting and lovely.

I have never ever found my marriage hard work or difficult.

Me and DH are best friends as well as husband and wife and I feel that is very important.

I’ve only ever known one couple who split after less than a year of marriage. The bride was a friend from school of my now DH, but she married less than a year into mine and DHs relationship so I didn’t know her or her fiancé well.

However, what I saw of them as a couple was an absolute car crash. They had been together since she was a fresher at uni and he was in his third year and met through a uni sport. She was very posh (my husband isn’t, he got a scholarship to a well-regarded independent school which is where they met) and very, very beautiful, the kind of beautiful where men trip over their own tongues when she walked into a room. The fiancé was just usual working class, normal person, not bad looking, but no show stopper and he was clearly in absolute awe of her. However you didn’t need to be in their company for terribly long to realise that she was an utter, utter bitch and she spoke to him like he was a piece of shit. They could not go longer than half an hour without arguing, it’s no exaggeration to say that they would row over which mugs to use to make a cup of tea. And once you got a drink into either of them- yeesh! They would physically fight one another. They were young but not insanely so- 26 and 28- so you couldn’t even blame it on their age.

They were married in the June and by the following February had called it quits. They both ended up sleeping with other people over the Christmas holidays at their respective Christmas parties. I’m fairly sure they both did it to stick a bomb underneath things, although she behaved as though he had cheated but she hadn’t, she took it very badly.... I think because, as I say he had always been so in awe of her. Because you can’t divorce before a year has passed, she served him with divorce papers on their first wedding anniversary 😬

In the end she did mellow a bit after this and told us that they’d actually been in couples counselling before the wedding and that they shouldn’t really ever have married- which did make us all laugh a bit because she said it like it was a revelation and we were like “you don’t say?!” About a year later we were all out in the city for another friends birthday when the ex-husband came into the restaurant with his new girlfriend. She was very cordial with him and their decree nisi was due within a couple of weeks. They joked that they’d had an engagement party, a housewarming party, and a wedding and that they should have a divorce party.... and I think there was some truth in that- they really enjoyed the momentum of getting married and all the fuss.

So really, the TLDR of this is that with the one couple I know who’ve been in this position, they divorced so quickly because they should never have been married in the first place.

I know of two

1. the bride was having it off with the best man and is now married to him with kids

2. groom was from abroad and realised he wanted to go home....without his new wife 😬😬

I got divorced within 2 years of being married. I hated being married, even though we had been together for many years before and owned a house etc.
For me it did change everything, the feeling of being 'owned' that came with being called 'wife' both by him and friends and family. Losing my surname. People saying stuff like, " but you're a wife now". It felt like a job role.

In hindsight it was the type of marriage we had and us not discussing incompatible values around marriage. If I got married again, well I wouldn't, I'd opt for a civil partnership. I don't ever want to be someone's wife. Legal partner for life yes, wife no.

AnotherBoredOne so did I, i was promised a proposal in rome and a nice wedding...ended up being rushed and only two witnesses. I have told him I am still waiting for my trip to rome...sadly he is too unwell atm but perhaps we may have a window

I did, many years ago. Each of us was the other's 1st relationship and we were both committed Christians at the time.

It ended shortly after I realised that, whilst working away from home m-f, he was going to his sister's for dinner every night, including Fridays when I got home. On top of that, all the dishes he had used during the week were waiting for me in the sink.

The icing on the wedding cake was when he forgot our 1st anniversary.

I got rid pronto. I'm still a Christian, but not a very 'good' one.

I worked with someone who married a guy she had been dating for 11 months. They got engaged after 3 months and then spent 8 months obsessing over the perfect wedding and honeymoon. It was only after that excitement died down that the realised they didn’t actually know or like each other and the marriage was done and dusted within 8 months as she found out he was an alcoholic with a coke habit who wanted her pregnant ASAP so he could quit his job and be a stay at home dad. And wanted her to pay for a nanny and cleaner so he wasn’t saddled ‘with the boring stuff’.
Within a month of packing him off back to his batchelor pad she was in a relationship with another work colleague - who was at the wedding - and they’ve been together very happily for 5 years with a baby, and marriage is not something either are fussed about.
The credit card bills for the wedding lasted longer than the actual marriage!

She was mortified by it as it not only cost her and her elderly parents a fortune but she talked it up as the romance of the century and the perfect true love happy ending when it was all a performance.

She’s usually a very level headed sensible sort but in her late 30s with everyone else happily coupled up and having babies I guess she went a bit mad with the first person to offer her the ‘dream’.

My friend's first marriage didn't even last 24 hours. It turned out her husband was an illegal immigrant. She didn't know this until the Police and Home Office gatecrashed the Reception and took him away. He was deported and she never saw him again.

My own first marriage was arranged by my DM. Neither of us wanted it, but neither of us could stop her. XDH had a little more courage than me and told the best man the night before that he couldn't go through with it, but the best man told him it was too late to cancel. Married in September, we spent Christmas apart and separated in February.

Only person I know who split quickly was after 6 months in 1990s. It was my late 30s boss when he married a 19 year old. Surprisingly it turns out they had nothing in common and she was very immature 🙄

@IamwhoIsayIam

I got divorced within 2 years of being married. I hated being married, even though we had been together for many years before and owned a house etc. For me it did change everything, the feeling of being 'owned' that came with being called 'wife' both by him and friends and family. Losing my surname. People saying stuff like, " but you're a wife now". It felt like a job role.

In hindsight it was the type of marriage we had and us not discussing incompatible values around marriage. If I got married again, well I wouldn't, I'd opt for a civil partnership. I don't ever want to be someone's wife. Legal partner for life yes, wife no.

I kept my maiden name. But I didn't get married until I was 32 and had a law degree and my own law practice so it would have made no sense to give up all that I had established based on my own name just because I got married.

Sometimes I go by his name socially either instead of or in addition to my mine. We have 3 kids and they each have both of our last names but not hyphenated. Mine is frequently a first name so I suppose it could look like they either had 2 middle names or 2 last names. On official documents and for school roll call purposes etc. they only go by their dad's last name and so when I talk to their teacher/school I usually go by his last name. It doesn't really bother me because I think it would be a pain to hyphenate or insist on always using both last names. Sometimes I do wish we could have made our own new last name by merging both of ours but it also would have messed up professional contacts/networking and referrals for both of us in our respective fields of work so it just wasn't practicable.

I have never felt owned by my husband; he doesn't make it seem as if he owns me and neither does anyone that we know. (I mean, my parents and his grandmother address things to me as Mrs. His Full Name or to us as Mr. and Mrs. His Full name but they are old-fashioned and I just ignore it. They also send checks to me with his last name instead of my own legal last name even though I have made it clear I kept my own name for legal/official purposes. However, the bank still cashes them and I've read that a married woman can use her husband's name even if she doesn't change it to that, and, if ever asked, to just show marriage certificate, so, I use whichever one fits the situation and have never had a problem and quite like the flexibility.

I know that everyone feels different and perhaps just the state of marriage would make you feel owned no matter what. But I can't help but wonder if perhaps there was something about your ex that made you feel that way, or society and if so then F society's standards, haha. I look at marriage as an empowering thing; we are a partnership, a couple, working together towards common goals both financially and personally, and neither of us owns the other.

I do know quite a few people this has happened to. Normally people who have been together 7+ years and then separated within a year of marriage. It actually put me off the thought of getting married this year in case things change as we are so happy. We should have got married in may after 12 years together

My ex and I had been together for five years when we got married and split about eight months later. In our case we never should have got married in the first place. I wasn't happy in the relationship but thought that I needed to just commit and deal with it (we were young and had a child together). I cried before the wedding. And after. Marriage just highlighted how unhappy I was and how much I wanted to actually be in love with the person I married.

Got married again a couple years later and thirteen years later I still haven't left him yet.

I think there’s many issues before they get married but they push on hoping things will change and of course they don’t because marriage isn’t a magic wand.

Lockdown has been particularly difficult too. People have lost their jobs or taken major pay cuts, couples are forced to spend all day every day together which just isn’t healthy, no one can see their friends or family etc. Easy to see why so many marriages have collapsed.

Happened to me first time round, over thirty years ago. We'd been dating two years (but hadn't lived together), got on well and thought it would all work out. But I discovered I was pregnant about the time of our first anniversary (contraceptive failure, I think, as I was on the pill) and he decided he wasn't ready to be a father. We were both 30, so not that young, really. Anyway, he moved back with his mother and she backed him up, said I was "trapping" him and her poor boy didn't deserve such a cow of a wife. I had really bad HG and ended up having a termination - he drove me to the hospital, left me there, and I never saw him again. We clearly should never have got married and in fact I think if we'd lived together first we'd have realised how unsuited we were, it was a horrible way of learning that lesson though.