How soon after your marriage did you realise 'this was a mistake'?

[faithfulbird20]

What made you think it and did you stay or leave?

I kinda realised a week after I said yes to marrying him. Had this awful feeling in my stomach and didn't want to let him down or hurt his feelings.

I think I had a bit of a feeling on the day that it might be a bad idea, but I was only 20 and put it down to nerves. My Dad even asked me if I was sure on the way to the church, and like a fool I said I was. The day after the wedding, I cried because I knew I'd made a mistake, but I thought it was too late to do anything about it... after 11 months, I'd finally had enough of being controlled and belittled and I left.

That was 25 years ago, hard to believe I'm the same person, to be honest.

Waiting for the car to pick me up to go to the church. I went through with it but was very unhappy & we separated 8months later.
Was made more complicated as we'd been together 10years and had a wee one.
We've both moved on & are much happier.

Oh god, these stories :( Mine was about 20 minutes after we got married, in the car on the way to the reception. He had insisted that our 5 month old son stay with him at the hotel over the road so I could get a good night's sleep before the wedding, which I didn't really want as I wasn't confident he would do a decent job of looking after him, frankly. When I went over to the hotel with him and all the baby gear, he tried to make up a bottle with the boiling water the bar staff had brought over to warm the bottle. Cue a sleepless night back at home. Then when we got in the wedding car I asked how our son had been in the night, and he said "oh, me and my brother went to the bar. I had five points, or was it six." And it turns out he left our son with my MIL who he had never had any time with prior to this, so was basically a stranger to him. I was furious. I could have cried. But I thought Christ this is our wedding day, just forget about it. I still think about it today. We didn't have sex that night either. Actually, I don't think we even kissed all day! Certainly not at the ceremony as the vicar forgot to do that bit. 13 years later I'm still trying to find a way out, ridiculously.

*pints, not points. He gets no points.

The day after the wedding, I tried over the next 14 months to make the best out of a bad job and did all sorts to try and "please" him. At the end of the day I don't know why he wanted to marry me (I had to be persuaded) as it became evident that he really didn't like me much, and he refused to have sex with me once we were married.
I stopped cooking his meals, doing his laundry and dirty and hungry he returned to his parents after a week.
I have been married very happily to second DH for 44 years!

I knew he was difficult, but I didn't really let myself accept that it was a mistake until about 4 years after we were married - thanks to Mumsnet giving my head a wobble when I posted about some of our arguments. He was so unkind to me!

just a matter of weeks really and i left about six months later .he was controlling and could be violent .i thought it would get better naively. it didnt .

About 4 months before we got married.
It was a rebound relationship, for both of us, and it moved very quickly - too quickly. We bought a flat, moved in and the night we moved in I thought what have I done.
By then the wedding was booked and my mum was in full mother of the bride organising mode. She was, and still is, a terrifying force and I wasn't brave enough tell her that I didn't want to get married . Nor could I tell my fiancé that I didn't love him; I had promised to marry him so felt I should keep my promise.
On my wedding day, my mum had gone to the church and it was just my lovely dad and me; he told me that he knew I didn't want to go through with it, that I could still pull out and he would have my back and deal with the fall out i.e. handle my mum. But I couldn't so he filled me with sherry instead.
I cried all day and night. I hadn't been able to bring myself to do the deed in the months leading up to the wedding, I told exH I wanted to wait until we were married, even though we had had sex in the early days. The truth was that I couldn't bear him touching me. Our wedding night was hell, he wanted sex and I just cried. In fact you could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we had sex in our entire marriage and each time I was very drunk. ExH made me go for counselling because I was frigid, but the councillor twigged very rapidly that the only thing wrong with me was that I didn't love my husband and couldn't be intimate with someone I didn't love.
Looking back, it was very cruel of me to have married him, I could have saved us both so much pain and unhappiness, if I had just been honest up front. Inevitably we split but have both happily remarried.

6 weeks before. I called the wedding off. Lost a lot less money than the divorce would have cost.

The day of the wedding - I felt so sick and wouldn’t let go of my dads hand. I just kept repeating in my head, I guess we can just get divorced.
He was violent, controlling and manipulative - took me 6 months to leave after he threatened to kill me if I ever left him.

When I married my now DH I was relaxed, calm and happy without a doubt in my mind that it was the right thing to do.

If you know, you know.

@SisforSoppy

6 weeks before. I called the wedding off. Lost a lot less money than the divorce would have cost.

Good for you. Wish I’d been that brave 👏

[quote noirchatsdeux]@catsareme14 Also the day I got married, when he left me standing alone outside the registry office after the ceremony and walked off to the reception hotel (about 500 yards down the opposite side of the road) with his friends. I stood there like an idiot for about 10 minutes (all the other guests had also walked off) thinking he would realise and come back for me. He didn't, and as I walked down the road on my own I remember thinking 'this was a mistake'.

He also sulked for about the first hour at the reception as the tables hadn't been arranged the way he would have liked - he'd left that to his mother, hadn't even seen the room before the ceremony. I was having to hiss under my breath to him 'ffs cheer up you're supposed to look happy on your wedding day!'...it was so fucking embarrassing, we were getting looks from the guests...

We'd been together 6 years and got married when we should have split. There were other problems but I'd bought in too heavily to the 'sunk costs fallacy' I finally left after wasting another decade.[/quote]
What an awful story. I'm so sorry

@Nat6999
I'm so glad you finally found the strength to leave. Did you report him to the police ?

So glad you found 5 years happiness before he sadly passed.

DuvetDayIsEveryDay yes I reported him to the police, d I'd the video interv I've & everything but the CPS decided that there wasn't enough chance of getting a convictions on & he got away with it. This was mainly due to the fact I was ordered by the family court that I had to communicate with ex or lose custody of ds, they didn't care what he had done to me or the fact I was suffering with PTSD.

A few weeks before the wedding, but we'd already bought a house etc and I'd had a very brief disastrous marriage 6 years earlier which only lasted a few months and I felt I couldn't do it to my parents again. I sat and sobbed to my mum the week before but she didn't say a word. It was a long time ago and things were different then. Ironically, a few months before the wedding he'd tried to end things with me and I'd begged him to stay, maybe I found it hard to get over that afterwards and it changed my feelings towards him. Two years after the wedding I was about to leave him when my dad became ill and it would have caused a lot of family upset. Then he also developed a serious illness and it would have looked really bad if I'd abandoned him, so I stayed. The rest of our marriage has been blighted by his ill health and I haven't been able to walk away. Then 2 years ago he developed psychosis and I've had to become his full time carer. We haven't had sex for years and we have nothing in common but I feel there is no escape and this is for the rest of my life now. I would advise anyone who has doubts to not go through with it.

@Nat6999 that's horrific ! Family courts are a joke.

Are you happy now ? How is your DS ?

I knew before I married him but couldn't see any way out of it. I threw him out 4/5 months later.

@nancybotwinbloom

With dd dad I was crying at the airport. Five months pregnant, I felt like I had to go through with it.

We got married in vegas. Two days after the wedding he stayed out gambling downstairs then he was fucking horrible to me when I went down at 3am to see where he was.

I wish I'd of had the confidence at that point to say you know what no. This isn't for me. He'd worn me down at that point.

Que a fucking awful 18 months. Was a single parent regardless of being married. He was never there. Did nothing for our DD. Left him when the bank called me asking if I'd applied for a £35k loan. I hadn't, it was his running away fund.

I should have ran fast as fuck away from him.

Thank goodness bank checked that with you. I worry that on joint accounts all a shitty gambling h would need to do would be to get some random woman to sign your name where your signature is required.

Two of my divorced siblings realised they had made a mistake at their wedding receptions. Very sad.

I can see how it happens though. My x devalued me so much during our ''relationship'' but in such a controlling and emotionally abusive way that I was programmed to need his approval. We were engaged at one point which depressed me but also gave me some approval back after all the devaluation. Wow. So glad I escaped but staying with somebody who's treating you badly erodes you so much.

In the run up to the wedding I told mine that the thing I was most looking forward to, was seeing his face when he turns round to watch me walk down the aisle towards him.

On the day he never turned around. I think I knew then.

I lasted 2.5yrs when the gaslighting became too much.

@Nosilayak

A few weeks before the wedding, but we'd already bought a house etc and I'd had a very brief disastrous marriage 6 years earlier which only lasted a few months and I felt I couldn't do it to my parents again. I sat and sobbed to my mum the week before but she didn't say a word. It was a long time ago and things were different then. Ironically, a few months before the wedding he'd tried to end things with me and I'd begged him to stay, maybe I found it hard to get over that afterwards and it changed my feelings towards him. Two years after the wedding I was about to leave him when my dad became ill and it would have caused a lot of family upset. Then he also developed a serious illness and it would have looked really bad if I'd abandoned him, so I stayed. The rest of our marriage has been blighted by his ill health and I haven't been able to walk away. Then 2 years ago he developed psychosis and I've had to become his full time carer. We haven't had sex for years and we have nothing in common but I feel there is no escape and this is for the rest of my life now. I would advise anyone who has doubts to not go through with it.

That is one of the saddest posts I’ve seen on MN and I’ve been here a long time. 💐💐💐 for you.

@BorisKilledMyHusband thanks for the flowers, I'm honestly OK. I've come to terms with my lifetime commitment to him. I've tried to find happiness and enjoyment in other areas of my life, I have friends and a great family and a gorgeous dog. Although, If I could have my time again then I definitely would not marry him x

I knew well before I got married. I thought it was nerves and my (very difficult) family were not helpful so it would have been stressful even if I’d married the right man.

As I got to the registry office and walked up the “aisle”, I kept thinking I could walk out or say something. I was too embarrassed.

The first 2 years of marriage were just about bearable, if you ignore his frequent suicide threats and refusal to go to work. The last 4 years were appalling and I was lucky to get out alive.