DP positivity thread, anyone?

[LastPostISwear]

Just wanted to excess my feelings somewhere! (I already tell DH constantly.)

I just love him so much. Today he came home and just chatted so much, and I was so happy to hear all about his day and his thoughts. (If I could crawl inside his mind and live there, or occupy the same physical space as him, I would; that would be perfect intimacy for me.) He is so smart and kind and thoughtful and handsome, and is always trying to be an even better partner to me (and he succeeds!) I feel incredibly lucky to be his wife.

What are some things you love about your DP?

You met your DH early on in your first year of
uni?

you moved out at 17? Where to?

Moved out at 18 to a flat in the nearest city, and lived there during the summer before I went off to uni in a different city. Met DH that year, yes. @Fingerpie

Club Tropicana by the sounds of it. 😅

And your parents funded this? Given you moved out so you could enjoy being with older men?

I know you said you don’t have a single friend op

do you have any from uni? You met dh first year… did you drop out of uni?

No; I had savings from working from the age of 16. Enough to rent and live off of (though pretty skint) for the few months before uni started. They had said “If you’re going to live under our roof, you’re going to follow our rules” so I said “👋”

so balancing school and lots of snagging you were able to earn enough to move to a city flat and live then and entirely fund yourself at 17.

then you went off to uni.

are you close with your parents now? Are they around about the same age as your husband?

I went to school and took a pretty full course load, did a sport well enough and marks high enough to get a scholarship to uni, and worked part time. It was… a lot. I was exhausted and had basically zero free time. But I did it.

And then like I said, at 18 I had savings enough for a few months to live on my own before going off to uni (where room and board and meals were covered.)

I’m on good terms with my parents now. I talk on the phone with my mum a couple times a week, and we go to visit them a few times a year around the holidays. DH is 5 years older than they are.

So at 17 you went to school, did a “pretty full course load”, undertook a sport as an extra curricular activity which you presumably committed enough time to that it afforded you a scholarship to uni, all whilst holding down a part-time job to save enough money to live alone alongside using dating apps to secure sexual partners.

Excellent time management there OP.

Why thank you ☺️

At 18 you met your now dh
first year of uni
did you stay at uni or drop out?

I did two years at that particular university, and then I realized I didn’t need a degree for the job I wanted to do, so I dropped out, and began training for my present job. That took about a year, and I came home to an acceptance letter to another university I had applied to. Did another two years there, changed my major twice, then I dropped out again after having DD because I decided I just wanted to stay home with her until she went off to school.

Yes I thought you were going to say you’d dropped out

In one way, this has got to be one of the saddest threads I’ve read on mumsnet

I’m sorry you feel that way, in the way I think you mean this.

It’s sad to me that the positive thread I wanted to start went sideways, and has now become a recap of my life.

I’m very pleased with how my life has gone so far. I have a beautiful family, a successful career, several years of education (which have been useful even without a degree, and still look good on a resume), the support to do just about anything I want in life, time to spend with my loved ones and on doing my hobbies, the ability to travel pretty often, sexual experience and a pretty liberated and very satisfying sex life… It’s quite lovely. What is there to be sad about?

Your 'beautiful family' is a sulky, much older man who started having sex with when you were still a teenager, and a daughter who is being raised to view your life (including you having no friends), as normal. It makes me feel desperately sad for you, and even more desperately sad for your daughter.

I know you'll never admit to MN strangers as and when you realise it's not this picture perfect life you claim it is, but I hope that you manage to make RL friends as your daughter grows up, and be able to talk to other women and LISTEN when they're horrified by some of the things you say.

So really you had a lot of shags but didn't date anyone for any significant length of time or have any real relationships before getting involved with your husband.

He’s not sulky all the time, and he’s been making efforts not to be that way anymore. I was an adult having mutually consensual sex with him; there is nothing wrong with that nor any reason to frame it the way you have: conflating minors with adults and making it sound like he’s doing the sex to me only, and that I was some passive victim instead of a very eager, active participant.

I’m demonstrating to my daughter what a financially secure, loving household and marriage looks like. If nobody points out our age gap to her, she probably wouldn’t grow up thinking much about it at all. I’ll make friends soon.

I have never claimed my life is perfect; I’ve posted a lot about the areas where I could improve, the ups and downs and lulls in my marriage, my emotional struggles… but everyone goes through that. That doesn’t mean my life isn’t wonderful in general, or that I’m unhappy.

I will absolutely not listen to women who have an excess of this faux concern, who gaslight me and twist everything I say, and are so inconceivably judgmental and rude to a stranger on the internet for no reason at all. Those are the people leading unhappy lives for whom you should be sad.

What constitutes a “real” relationship in your book?

Would you say the same thing about someone who marries their first partner, whom they’ve been dating since they were both 16?

I just think you've been a bit disingenuous by talking about how much "experience" you have of relationships., when it consists of a month of dating at 17 and a lot of casual sex.

If that 16 yr old got married to someone decades older , yeah, I'd think there was a huge gap of life experience and a worrying power dynamic. Especially with sub/dom thrown into the mix. Obviously you were 18, so older, but still, it doesn't seem that big a difference in terms of maturity.

I wonder how you and your dh would feel if your daughter

sleeps with 40 odd men in the year or so following losing her virginity at 17

moves out because they have a penchant for older men and want to enjoy that penchant to its fullest

meets a 43 year old man when she’s 18 and at uni. Drops out 2 years later. Then restarts a year later, then drops out again 2 years later.

and now is 28 lives 6 hours away married to a 53 Year old and doesn’t have a single friend

worried I imagine

I think the thing that has really depressed me about this thread is that, working on the basis any of this is real, OP is so deeply entrenched in a really dysfunctional relationship that she can brook no constructive criticism of it. I’d be interested to know what their childhood was like.

Also curious what job involves two or three days a month working but is so well paid and involves international travel. Spy? Diddy hooker? Underwater engineer?

I dated people non-exclusively all the way from early 17 to late 18, not just my first boyfriend. The longest relationship went for about 13 months (and then he realized we weren’t exclusive despite us having never talked about it and freaked out, and then I was like “Yeah… we’re done here.”)

I have had so much more experience than someone who marries the only age peer they’ve ever dated, who they met when still a minor, and yet people like you will give me way more flak about my relationship, and make me out to be this naive, innocent lamb who was taken advantage of, just because my DH happens to be significantly older than me— which was my genuine preference by then; ask me how I know. But when it’s an age peer couple who have been dating since they were still literal kids and don’t know any different, it’s romantic that they’re their “one and onlies” and “high school sweethearts.”

Again, the faux concern is such a fucking joke.

Op? Thoughts on how you and your dh would react if the above was the case for your daughter ?

and honestly rather than defensively

Don't worry, I wouldn't want any 16 yr old daughter of mine marrying her high school sweetheart either. You're totally putting words in my mouth and I do not hold the views you appear to think I do. 🙄

What say we meet back here in, say, 7 years and you can tell me again how all concern was unwarranted and how you'd be perfectly happy for your dd to do the same. You can start it "haha bitches" or something. I won't mind at all, I'll be glad for you.