AIBU to think some marriages fail because people want more from life?

[AmItheoddone]

So, I've name changed for this. Going through some big issues in my marriage at the moment. Love my husband very much but we met when we were 18 and we're now both in our 40s. Have kids and should have a great life if you read the paper but we are not happy. Both bored and feeling like we've missed out on some part of our life. Mentioned my problems to some people and its always assumed he has someone else. I know he doesn't but is struggling. So my question is AIBU to think that some times marriages don't fail because people fall out of love or have affairs but people just want more from life?

Of course a marriage requires work

It shouldn’t be exhausting or difficult but it does require effort - you need to make the effort to spend time with each other, to prioritise each other sometimes, to make time for each other.

You can’t have all the good things on your list without putting work in to make it happen!

I think this happens a lot when you marry young. When you get to your 40s and you start reflecting on your life in general, not just on the marriage,you start thinking about what you have missed out on and whether a different career, or husband or hobbies or whatever might have been better.
A relative if mine went through this - had been with her husband since she was 17 and became dissatisfied in her 40s. She left her husband and took up with someone else who was the opposite. She did a lot of different things with the new partner, including a lot of travel and he had several interests that my relative was also interested in but had never got round to exploring herself. In the end she found that she didn't actually gel as well long term with the new partner as her husband and she went back to him.
I think that before you decide to leave each other you both think about what you really want. What is it that you feel you have missed out on? What interests do you want to explore? Can these be done individually within the context of the marriage so you both develop as individuals while staying together or is it deeper than that?
Perhaps you should look into couples therapy.

Will life be better if you separated?
Less money
Smaller home
Unhappy children
On your own half the week.

Do you love your husband? Or do you just care about him because he's a decent human being you happen to live with but have outgrown? I've been with my DH 25 years and I'm still excited to see him if if I've been away and love talking to him/how his mind works. If you don't feel this perhaps you do need to separate amicably but I would try couples therapy first. If you cohabit well it would be a shame to destroy that casually. You might rediscover the stimulus you crave if you look a little deeper. Also, big chunks of life can be boring and filled with responsibilities - the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

Just because there’s nothing you and/or your husband want to do that you can’t do together, that doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone. In plenty of relationships, one person needs ‘more’ and the other person doesn’t. That’s when it becomes an issue.

It’s not ‘a cop out excuse’. Everyone’s different and not everyone is the same as you and your husband. Presumably you and your husband need the same things from life, and you’re lucky enough that neither of you has changed much in your ambitions or needs since you met in your teens. Congratulations on that, but that’s only a matter of luck. It’s not like that for everyone. Sometimes one person’s horizons just grow a lot more than the other one’s do and compromise doesn’t work for either of them.

I think people get bored basically. Pretty sure that is really what happened in my first marriage, 20 years is a long time

Surely this is the danger of settling down too early? I was a completely different person when I was 18 vs who I was in my 30s. Like night and day.

But whenever you mention this on MN you get shouted at by people huffing that they married their partner after knowing them for 30 mins at age 15 and they're perfectly happy 70 years on thank you very much. Ive seen this weird cliche trotted out every single time anyone suggests it might not be a great idea to marry the first person you date

Only source of emotional support, intellectual stimulation and company, so that you're cut off from other opportunities and have narrow horizons sounds very like an abusive relationship. I've seen my friend disappear into such a relationship. Years later she killed herself. If this is your impression of marriage then it isn't marriages you've seen but torture.

@beaglescurleduplikebagels

Of course a marriage requires work
It shouldn’t be exhausting or difficult but it does require effort - you need to make the effort to spend time with each other, to prioritise each other sometimes, to make time for each other.
You can’t have all the good things on your list without putting work in to make it happen!

A lot depends on what you mean by "work". A marriage or LTR undoubtedly requires thought, effort and consideration. You do need to make the effort to spend time together, consider one another's needs, not take one another for granted and compromise sometimes. But I wouldn't call that "work", I'd call it basic day to day maintenance.

There should be a fundamental bedrock that you are comfortable and happy with one another. If you're constantly arguing, you're having to struggle really hard to make conversation or to grit your teeth to tolerate being in the same space as the person you're married to, then it's not improving your life. If your marriage feels like "work", it's not really enhancing your life.

I've just become a bit allergic to this phrase "work at the marriage" which is used a lot on here an IRL: very often I think this is code for "put up with a lot of shit to keep the peace" and is usually an invocation to a person (usually a woman) to paper over the cracks and ignore poor behaviour.

Again, it's very dependent on the period of your life. Couples in young families raising children often don't have the luxury of making time for one another and that's very understandable. But once you're into late middle age, the kids have flown the nest and you're still basically avoiding one another in your home in my view that's a pretty strong signal that it's not worth the candle.

A long time? I've been married 39 yrs and together for 5 yrs before that. Seems like no time. Had jobs where a day seemed like a week and jobs where a day seemed like 10 mins. I think the trouble is that it can be hard to know if a person is right for you, and there's a lot of luck involved.

Exactly. If I'd married my first proper boyfriend who I met at 19 I'd now be an extremely bored rural housewife without qualification, a career or life experience of any kind. There but for the grace of God etc.

People always trot out the story about their parents/friends who met and married at 17 and are still "madly in love" at 65, and maybe some of them really are, but I can't help wondering how they can really know, given that there's no counterfactual. If you settle for the first person you ever loved you have no way of knowing what the alternatives are (and I'm not talking about sex here, I mean alternatives in the sense of people with different competences, interests and capacities).

It's the sunk cost fallacy. People don't want to consider the possibility that they may not have chosen their best life.

A lot depends on what you mean by “work.”

This just semantics, surely? I don’t think people literally mean they’re doing hard physical labour every day just to be able to tolerate the sight of their husband, breathe in his general vicinity and resist strangling him with his own tie 😂

What they mean is that living with one person for a long period of time inevitably involves moments where you have to compromise, support each other, forgive each other’s flaws and annoyances (because we all have them!), make sacrifices, communicate rather than descend into pointless arguments, and generally not live your life as though everything is about me, me, me.

That can absolutely feel like “work” at times, because our natural human tendency is to want things to go our way.

The idea that you can just float through a marriage without ever having a cross word, while bluebirds permanently circle around both of your heads, is just a load of Disney bollocks!

All relationships require some degree of investment, effort and willingness to compromise. Whether you call that “work” or “compromise” is largely irrelevant -you’re describing essentially the same thing.

No it's not my impression of marriage, clearly good marriages aren't like that, even most marriages aren't like that.

But people keep pointing out that you can spend time with people other than your spouse: of course you can (and should). But your spouse is someone you are legally and financially tied to.

Leaving aside the considerations around finances and children I just don't understand what the upside is of being legally tied to a person who isn't among your favourite people. It just seems like a waste.

I don't really understand your position, OP.

Yes, getting married young has limited your options in life. But there is no undoing that. Getting divorced in middle age doesn't give you that back. If anything it limits you further, with financial and childcare considerations.

What exactly is it that you want to do with your potential freedom? Be honest - it is hooking up with someone new and exciting, isn't it? That's fine, but be honest with yourself.

What do you feel you’ve missed out on? You could both take on new challenges and stay married

Of course, that's a given and I don't think anyone can "float through a marriage". But on a lot of these threads someone will pop up and say their marriage is in difficulty. The invocation is often to "work at it", as if it's something which can be project managed.

By the time people get to the point of posting that their marriages are in trouble they have invariably tried the talking, the compromise, the forgiveness, the support and it's run out of road. The suggestion often is that counselling, or talking to one another, will fix this. Sometimes it will, and it's certainly worth trying.

But when you get to a point in your life where your kids no longer depend on the stability of a united family, you've tried the basic marriage maintenance and you're not getting enough out of it, I don't think believe you should grit your teeth and put your nose to the grindstone and "work" yourself through the declining years of your life.

Life is short enough as it is.

Ex-DH and I split up because we wanted more from life.

Our youngest child had flown the nest to university; we were both in our forties.

Fortunately we're still very good friends.

I'm really enjoying flirtations and carefree romance at my age. It feels fun and liberating.

The invocation is often to "work at it", as if it's something which can be project managed.

Yes, "work at it" is really off-putting.

It makes it sound like a DIY project 🤣

I think that society tells you very much that you're right for feeling that you can just split up because 'you're not happy'

Why not put together a plan of things that is creative and thrilling and different and bonding and exciting and share those experiences, learn again about each other.

People can obviously do what they feel they need to in terms of splitting up/divorce but I find splitting up for these 'meh' reasons is quite selfish and destabilising.

You both make a good point about young marriages. I'm scottish and in Scotland 16 and 17 yr olds can marry without parental consent. I think they have to have consent from parents in England? So many of these couples were divorced within a few years, having married between the ages of 16 to 20 yrs. But I think that's because of immaturity and rash decisions rather than not having looked around. Someone of 25 is more likely to have enough sense to make an informed decision to marry, and to wait to be sure. I think that's more important, regardless of whether it's the first or fifth partner. I have a friend who was afraid of missing out if she settled with any one man because she thought there might be a better one. She's now sad and alone and regrets not having stuck with one of her early boyfriends. FOMO was her downfall.

To me (I have been with my husband since I was 14 and we’re now late 30s) and apart from other sexual partners I’m not sure on what I would have missed out on if I wasn’t with him.
We have separate friendship groups, been on lads and lasses holidays etc we have different interests but the core values are the same.
I wouldn’t have want to have lived by myself as I would hate that thought.
We were married at 25 and due to infertility we didn’t have our child until we were 30. In that time we had lots of holidays (separate and together).
We have had our peaks and troughs and struggles but my marriage has been my safe place. When he took poorly and ended up in hospital for a while that was when my world turned upside down as he is my constant.
I feel when you’re young you either grow up together or you don’t. Some people are very much enmeshed with each other that they don’t have outside interests or friendships.

i know a few people our age who are divorced. I know a few who have been together from late teens who seem (you never know) happy.

But what if you want different things or your versions of 'more' aren't aligned any more?

The danger of settling down with someone from so young is the possibility of growing in different directions. Of course, that's always a risk in any relationship, but it's more likely if you meet, marry, have children much younger, before you are a fully formed person. Of course, this is only a danger, not a given.

To me (I have been with my husband since I was 14 and we’re now late 30s) and apart from other sexual partners I’m not sure on what I would have missed out on if I wasn’t with him.

If I had married the boy I dated at age 14 I would absolutely have felt I had missed out on life. We would have been divorced before I reached my mid 20s.

Just because settling down young worked for you, doesnt mean it is going to work for everyone. Surely you can see that?

I think you are picking up on an issue with early marriage. I did all sorts of fun stuff in my 20s, dated, lived with friends, lived and worked abroad, partied, slept in, totally focused on myself. I got married at 30. You absolutely can travel with children. My dc are early teens and I still travel, but you can’t live a totally selfish independent life with a family. Obviously, you chose to miss out on that life stage when most people are not settling down. Being divorced won’t fix that, but you will have more independence with older teens and young adults. Dh and I totally planning to go traveling again once youngest is off to uni.

I think it depends. People do change over the years and what started out to be good compatibility might not be so much in later years.

Opposites somehow end up together someone who is outgoing and social maybe likes to travel a lot do different activities and then their spouse is a homebody wants to watch television and not go places
Differences in how to handle finances also matter differences and how housework is shared or not shared

I think these things are very common when people drift apart in those cases it's not really anyone's fault