If you married someone incompatible, why? Sharing stories

[Tenthnamechange]

I’m working through lots of issues in my marriage.

I spend a lot (too much??) time thinking about how and why I ended up marrying and having DC with my husband - I’m not sure I’ve ever been happy with him, so I try to go back over my thoughts and feelings at the time to work out how I ended up here. I’m waiting for individual counselling to begin, but in the meantime I’d be keen to hear the reflections of others who have been in a similar situation.

I think for me it was a toxic combination of v low self esteem issues from childhood plus a temporary difficult period which made me seek stability wherever I could find it (I was struggling to move on from my previous relationship where he had broken my heart, I was facing redundancy at work, lots of friends moving away, my mum was seriously ill etc)

DH popped up in my life, he’s a dominant character and he made it very clear very early on he wanted a serious girlfriend, marriage and babies and that I fit the bill. so I just sort of went with it, ignored all the red flags including my own ambivalent feelings, and hey presto. Married with kids to someone I don’t even like very much. What a total car crash.

I guess it would be helpful to feel like I’m not the only person in this position!

You won't be the first and you won't be the last . I got married at 21 , way too young IMO , become clear within a couple of years we really weren't that well suited . But we limped along for 7 years . Have you not considered splitting up ? Life is too short to be unhappy .

My partner talks sometimes about his previous marriage and how he cannot understand how he ended up marrying someone that he just was so incompatible with. It really transpires, like you, to what was going on in his life at the time. He was in his mid 40s so not young at all. He decided there and then he wanted a family. He met a woman and like your husband, she fit the bill. Within one year he met her, married her, had a baby, moved house and moved in with her other young boy from her previous relationship then spent years and years trying to keep together a marriage to someone he hardly knew before they got hitched. He did his best to hold on to the union but his mental health was getting worse and worse holding it together. He then chose to finish the marriage over 2 years ago. It wasn't easy for him and the family at all but knew that staying in it was toxic and unhealthy for his daughter to live in. Thankfully both parties now are a lot happier and healthier apart and getting on with better lives. You dont have to stay OP. Your situation is more common than you think.

Yes, I am considering my options including ending the marriage, it’s just a lot to think through.

I’m probably focusing too much looking back with regrets and not enough looking forward to dealing with current reality. hopefully the counselling will help with that.

I married my exdh for all the wrong reasons. I’d been in a series of bad relationships and then he came along and was just nice. He was honest and generous and in love with me. I felt so happy that I was finally in a stable relationship with someone who really cared for me that I completely ignored the little voice in my head telling me that I wasn’t in love with him and that he would bore me to tears.

I think as others have said , life circumstances at the time. We'd split up after he accused me of cheating (I hadn't). We had a tearful reunion and he proposed, we got married quickly. I knew it wasn't right.
I was young and immature.
I often wonder when I read threads on here why certain couples who seem so unsuited end up married.

My ex married me for all the wrong reasons - I was a woman to start with 😂 but on paper I fitted the bill, looked nice, well educated, good job, similar backgrounds, could hold a conversation…the usual stuff. I was deeply in love but I knew something was wrong - the marriage wasn’t fulfilling in any way. Eventually he couldn’t hide who he was any longer and ran off with a man. I’d say to anyone if, for any reason, you don’t want to be with your partner, let them go, because there’s a good chance you and they will go on to meet someone with whom they can be happy. I’ve been with someone else for 7 years now and I am so much happier. It truly is like night and day.

The circumstances of my first marriage sound very similar to yours, OP. I didn't even like my H much, let alone love him. But I needed to escape from home, I was very young and I craved security.

Goodness knows what was going through my mind, I think I just thought 'oh it'll be ok'. Of course it wasn't but I got my lovely children and I managed to get out of the marriage in the end.

I don't really have any feelings of regret any more. I was very unhappy at the time, but frankly it's always a gamble who you marry (in my view). Don't be too hard on yourself about it all - we all do what seems to be the right thing at the time.

I think all my relationships bar one have been looking for what I never got from my father, which was validation and attention. I’d never make the first move assuming I’d be rejected and I am rubbish at reading the signs either way. Ended up in long-term relationships with people who I loved (and still do in the case of DH) but who are so radically ‘not me’ it’s astonishing. Except it isn’t. The early conditioning normalised being ignored, sometimes belittled, and never being given the sense I was worthwhile. As I say, I do love DH and he’s a good soul but we have to work to find things in common these days.

People mainly do this if they’ve had a rough childhood and women are often socially told bu society it’s not all about looks etc it’s more about the Personality etc
Work get told this alot more than men do have you noticed ?
Good luck op
People live so long these days it’s never too late to start again

@HollowedOut and @barbrahunter

I can relate to what you’ve both written -ignoring the little voice in your head, and thinking it’ll be ok. though unfortunately my DH is not a ‘nice guy’ but a rather unpleasant bully

Whatever other people experiences you are living with a bully that you don't love. There's only one action to take- leave.

When I met my exh he seemed so nice, soft, honest...I’d been dumped by someone who cheated on me. We shared some common ground in terms of music taste, values etc, but it was obvious that there was a chemistry blip - sexually, we just weren’t well suited. I thought that would improve.

There was also something deeply irritating about him - I’ve never had a relationship before him (or after), where I’ve been quite so wound up by them. Maybe that was the lack of sex. And his astounding lack of self-awareness and ability to accept responsibility (exH is one of those types where it’s always someone else’s fault 🙄).

Ironically, he cheated on me - so I chose a man to marry thinking he’d ever cheat on me, ignored my gut instinct that the sex thing was not right, and went with it as I just thought we’d be ok.

I’m much happier 10 years on. I’ve learnt some valuable lessons - I’m pretty sure I’ve fathomed out what I will and won’t tolerate in a relationship and I’ve gone on to meet someone who I’m much more suited to.

A blokes perspective.
MY first marriage followed UNi and I was too young but wanted what was then, stability. I was amazed when I found after that marriage that other women were keen to change my 'status' and quite a number of really attractive, characterful women. I suspect that those who I almost had affairs with turned my head and made me believe I could have more. A gorgeous woman came into my life - trailed by a number of other men who obviously thought the same. We married and she continued an affair with one of them - unbeknownst to me. I very obviously found out - she lied and nothing has ever been the same again.
I would advise you that if you know happiness has escaped you to seek it out NOW.
I am older but obviously not wiser and a LOT of my life has been lived in the shadow of this past infidelity. Also, dont bother with counselling you will KNOW what you need to do - so do it NOW. I stayed and have regretted it often but mostly the potentially lost life of happiness/contentment/vibrancy. I have a good reason also to be proud and happy in this relationship - my children. There is nothing which says they would have changed their love for me if I had left.

I am also mulling this over too. Neither of us had been in a long term relationship before so I don't think I knew how it should be. I wasn't initially attracted to him but we had fun together and a laugh so that came more through that.

I know he loved me and I do love him and I think I thought that was all that counted. I had low self esteem and didn't think I would get anyone else he was kind of the first offer.

I think I got swept up in the initial start of the relationship, glad to be in relationship and I did love him. But I didn't think enough about if we really were compatible and what life would look like if we got married and had dcs. Our relationship was always fiery and we argued loads, particularly when we moved in together. I think I just thought we were working out each other's flaws and how we could compromise on that. I think I just thought it would be fine. Even 10 years plus later we are struggling, we just don't have the same views.

@decentchap

Thank you. It all boils down to my children, If I didn’t have children, I’d be off without a backwards glance. Can I ask what has kept you in your marriage?

I honestly want to jump in a time machine, and go back and give my younger self a shake!

In my case, as in yours it was the children. In my case I would have lost contact with a daughter I loved from the moment I saw her and my son did nothing to deserve being treated differently - it wasn,t his fault.
What kept me was this, simply, a bit selfish a bit not and the inability to hurt those who would have been hurt.
Also my wife looks after the finance and it would be a fight.
I therefore live a life apart, together, as many do, but it isn't what I wanted or naively believed was possible.
I should have had more guts (selfishness ?) and less 'acceptance'. I am too old to leave now unless my life changes dramatically.
In the event it did I would be elsewhere and allow a little self indulgence but actually without any need or wish for a further relationship.

I very nearly got married to my ex, luckily I saw the light in time - but I was going to, because I didn't think I deserved better. Also because my parents didn't have a good marriage (and ended up splitting up when I was 24) so I didn't have any idea of what was normal, or what a good relationship was really like.

In the end, I ended it with him just after my parents split up, as my mum spoke to me and opened up about her marriage, and said that she doesn't want to see the same for me, and she could see I was just settling and not happy.

Leaving him was the best thing I ever did. Living with new DP (I say new - almost 5 years) now and very, very happy :).

@LindaEllen

Yes, I didn’t think I deserved better. I remember very consciously thinking when planning my wedding “I’m unhappy”, I was maybe even depressed, but then I plodded on regardless, looking at photos of radiant happy brides in magazines and thinking “obviously I don’t get to feel that ecstatic happiness but that’s ok, it’s not for me, he is happy and we’ll have a good life”.

Ironically I was a very beautiful woman then (not so much now!) but that was combined with zero self confidence so it often ended in lots of male attention of the sleazy kind. And whatever DH’s faults he isn’t sleazy, so my marriage with him was like a welcome shield from all of that. I was secure and comfortable, so I blotted out the boredom, bullying, and lack of sexual compatibility.

It sounds so so bad when I write it down.

I did this too.

I was in a terrible place at the time. Ongoing familial emotional abuse and a lifetime of being told both that a) no one would ever want or love me because I was fundamentally unlovable and b) that, as a woman, most of life would be unavailable to me if I didn't have a husband.

I married my best friend from school. There were red flags all over the place - wouldn't let me drink beer amd certainly not in pints; had expectations of how I should present/what was 'proper' for a woman; controlled the music I listened to (all my old punk and goth records/cds 'disappeared') and I was only permitted to listen to music he deemed appropriate for a woman/mother; my clothes were criticised and I was steered towards a more 'conventional' style of dress - he bought all my clothes for me because I wasn't 'allowed' into the city centre on my own; I gave up my hobbies (I played bass guitar in bands) and diverted my musical interests to more befitting things- eg I joined a classical orchestra and a choir...

But I was homeless when we got together (not of my own doing) and my mum strongly pushed to stay with him saying she'd cut me off if I didn't live a conventional and respectable life.

The reality is that I have a first class degree and and a masters degree. I'm a teacher. I'm an honest, hardworking respectable member of society and would have been without an abusive man to validate my existence. I wish I'd never arrived because I'd have been far more secure financially if I'd followed my own plans rather than letting them be dictated by a man because that's what he and my parents thought was best for me.

I'd got to 30 and believed that no one else would want me so it seemed a way ofgetting my parents off my back and achieving some of life goals. I was told to ignore the niggling feelings and the voice in the back of my head.

I kicked him out 10 years ago. Had therapy, struggled to refind myself and I'm now, at 47, in the happiest relationship I could have ever imagined with a kind, loving, loyal, considerate and compassionate man 12 years my senior with a mohican. Oh and I play bass guitar in a punk band again...

Ironically I was a very beautiful woman then (not so much now!) but that was combined with zero self confidence so it often ended in lots of male attention of the sleazy kind. And whatever DH’s faults he isn’t sleazy, so my marriage with him was like a welcome shield from all of that. I was secure and comfortable, so I blotted out the boredom, bullying, and lack of sexual compatibility.

Gosh, that sounds familiar...

@BathroomScalesOhWhyDoYouHateMe

Ah, I’m sorry to hear it’s familiar to you, but there is solidarity in knowing I’m not alone.

I just feel like my soul has been crushed (how dramatic! 😁) and I did it to myself