AIBU to wonder if I have left mentioning a third marriage too late?

[CosyPinkOtter]

I turned 40 in June. Life hasn't exactly gone the way I imagined it would in terms of my relationships.

I've been married three times and have two children. One child is with my first husband and the other is with my second husband. It wasn't the future I pictured for myself, and there were some difficult years, but I left those marriages for my own reasons and I'm much happier now. These days we co-parent well and everyone gets on well enough, so there's no drama and my children get to spend time with both parents and aren’t missing out on time with their fathers.

I've been seeing someone for almost a year now. He's 43, married once, divorced himself and has two children, so he completely understands the co-parenting side of life. Things have been going really well and are starting to feel quite serious.

Here's the bit I'm wondering about.
He knows my children have different fathers. He knows I've been married before. What he doesn't know is that I've actually been married three times. All I’ve said is ‘I’ve been married before and my children have different fathers’ then we both started talking about our children.

It's not that I've deliberately lied or tried to hide it. It just...never really came up. Early on it didn't seem relevant, and then as more time passed it somehow became more awkward to mention. Every time I've thought about bringing it up I've worried it'll sound as though I've been keeping a secret.

I know I need to tell him, and I will. I'm just wondering whether I've made this into a much bigger issue by leaving it so long.

Well they haven’t met my current partners children they’ve just met my partner once recently. I do care about my children and no where in my post does it suggest me putting them in any danger or any uncomfortable situation. There’s a lot of assumptions and judgments being made without much information on me, why my previous marriages ended, my relationship with my children. Maybe I’ve given the wrong impression but my children come first in everything for me and for their dads. We coparent very well, school fees are split based on our salaries, they see their children every single week, there’s no issues. Of course it’s sad that my children don’t get to experience a household where their parents are together but I’m not going to dwell on it forever I do my very best for them that’s all I can do.

No one goes out of their way to be married just to later on be divorced. My life just hasn’t necessarily gone the way I would have liked for it to go but I’ve tried my best to make the most of it. I’ve been very lucky to have quiet wealthy parents who have supported me a lot. I don’t think it’s what they expected of me or my siblings having spent lots of money in school fees when we were growing up but here we are.

Regardless of anything I’m just like any mother my children come first and I love them

She isn’t asking for advice on moving in with him. Or marrying him.

She is asking for advice on telling him about the marriage he doesn’t yet know about.

If she’s sensible then she won’t move quickly with this new relationship.

My nan married and divorced six times. 😁 She did not give af about what anyone thought.

Good for her! Thats the right attitude to have when you’re a walking disaster.

I think if a man was married 3x and children with different women, we would all consider that a massive red flag.
op you should be honest with him. And then leave it up to him to decide.

She's ashamed for having been divorced three times.

People are judging her for having been divorced three times.

She can't reasonably claim to not understand why she's being judged for something she is ashamed of.

Why on earth would you want to get married again one day? 3 marriages is enough. Just enjoy being with a partner.

You need to tell him you've been married 3 times. It would raise red flags for me - the marriages and the witholding of information.

With respect, this is not a good example.

I plan to take things slow he’s the first person I have been with outside my failed marriages. We both have children so we don’t plan on rushing into things.

Just because I’m ashamed doesn’t mean I need to be judged but alright. There’s lots of judgment here no nuance or anything. I haven’t even gone into any detail regarding my marriages. If I did it would be a very different response from people. It’s quite interesting to see the assumptions people make with little to no information.

I got that from everything you’ve written. Some people don’t seem to get it or haven’t read everything you’ve written properly.

You should have told him from the start. Tell him the truth but don’t expect him to forgive you as the other way round we’d be telling a woman to run! I don’t think you should be in a serious relationship at all when your children have had such a disruptive life with men coming and going. Just focus on your children for now.

It's not actually a big secret, and doesn't really matter - if you had presented yourself as never being married it would be different. But I can see he might be upset if he thought you were hiding it.

Could you just present it as, something has been really bothering me - I realise I never talked about my third marriage, I wasn't trying to hide it, it just never came up and now I am worried you will think I kept a secret from you - and then just tell him everything.

Make up your mind! You've only just said that you doubt you'll get married a fourth time.

I’ll have to see what he says. My first marriage was in my 20s we were both very young we did not have any children.

My eldest has only ever met their half siblings father enough for us all to go on days out together. Sometimes marriages just don’t work out and we are still great friends. My youngest has met my eldest me father. They’re siblings I think it would be odd if they hadn’t met. My ex husbands have met each other. Recently my children met my partner after almost a year, a year in august. I think that’s reasonable enough time I don’t plan for them to be seeing him everyday or interacting with him. Nor do we plan on moving in together or anything of that sort. They haven’t met his children.

I would have liked for my children to have the same father I also would have really liked to have stayed married to one person but that’s not been the case for me. Everyone’s life is different there’s reasons for things. I didn’t just end my marriages for the fun of it.

I misunderstood
My apologies to all

Maybe I will get married for the fourth time. Why does it matter anyway what I choose to do in the future. I do not know the future. It certainly won’t be till my children are pretty much adults and Co parenting will mostly be them being able to drive to their dads on their own etc when they have drivers licenses.

My advice would be don't marry again
I'm guessing marriage isn't a good option for you

I was pointing out one of your inconsistencies. In light of that, I'm not sure about the rest of what you've said.

Three divorces by 40 would concern me, I have to be honest, if it were a man with that track record.

How long was the longest of the three marriages?

Okay well I can’t know for sure what will happen in the future.

I’m not looking for marriage with my partner anytime soon but if things line up in terms of my children then I’m not opposed. We’ve discussed our thoughts that would have been a good time to tell about my first husband but I did not. Anyway I’ve never been opposed to marriage, I was married at 22 and thought we’d be together forever but that didn’t last forever.

Yeah maybe. I like to think I’m old enough to make my own choices

YABU, sorry. Not for the three marriages — nobody's business how many times you've been married — but for the year of carefully-worded half-truths.
"I've been married before and my children have different fathers" when it's actually three marriages isn't an oversight that "never came up," it's a sentence you constructed to be technically accurate while steering him away from the real number. You don't accidentally do that for a year. Every time it "almost came up" and you didn't correct it, that was a choice.
The bit that gets me is you're framing this as your dilemma — how do I mention it now without it looking bad — when the actual problem is you've let him build a picture of your life that isn't accurate, for the length of an entire relationship heading toward serious. That's not about your marriage count, that's about what he's been consenting to without knowing it. He's been falling for a version of your history you edited.
Tell him. Don't dress it up as "something I should've mentioned," call it what it is — you gave him an incomplete picture and let it stand for a year because the truth felt awkward. He deserves the correction and the honesty about why it took this long, not a softened non-apology.

Why do you think marriage to this man will be different to the other times? In what sense did the others "not work out" (that could mean anything) and what makes you think it would work out this time?

Of course you are.