Are you married to the love of your life?

[GoldenGirl85]

There’s been lots of discussion around whether men actually marry the women they love or whether they marry the person who‘s in the picture when they’re ready to marry/good for marriage and I wanted to see if it’s the same for women.

How many of us would actually say we’re married to the love of their lives? Or maybe you don’t believe in the love of your life but you are deeply in love with the person you’ve married.

I’ll go first. I’m happily married but my husband is not the loml. I’ve had two great loves but neither of them would have been good for marriage. The first one, cheated relentlessly but other than that major flaw our relationship was wonderful and the second, we would have had serious financial issues. This guy was always investing in some get rich quick scheme and never wanted to work a proper job. He was lots of fun but could never offer stability.

Yep, absolutely. I adore him, he's an amazing human and feel grateful every day to be married to him

Yes and I am so grateful for this as I know others are not as fortunate.
We married when I was 19 and have been married 33 years.

He was my love.
He cheated.
We are still together
It will never be the same.
Don't cheat, it beaks people.

Yes, I am - I adore him, 24 years together, I still fancy him, he does his 50% of everything and he makes me feel loved! He also makes me laugh which is really important to me!!

Yes. Even though I had a massive breakdown during covid and had a very brief affair which he discovered. Love him lots more now for not leaving me. Married 28 years together 34

No. I met someone I fell in love with while married to him so I know he isn’t. He’s a decent man, good father, never strayed, not abusive, earns well, is ambitious etc and I know he’s trustworthy and easy enough to get on with. We have children, we’re tied to one another financially, there’s no good solid reason to leave. I love him but he isn’t the ‘love of my life’. I didn’t cheat fwiw, it was closer to an EA and he found out, we went through counselling.

I just don’t think I’d have fallen for someone else if he was the ‘love of my life’. It isn’t something I kill myself over, I don’t know if love is supposed to feel this way long term really. Kind of settled and calm with no passion. I do miss passion.

I’m with DH and I love him. He’s not a great husband to the point where I’m very cynical (bitter?) about romance etc.

All you can say is that you found someone you cannot imagine anyone else being a better life partner than.

I wouldn’t wish to have spent my life with anyone other than my DP, but I also understand probability.

Yes I am

which is why I said that I don't think everybody gets their's.

Yes , 50 years together this June

If you have exactly one soulmate out of 8 billion people, then on average you would have to meet 4 billion people in order to find them.

There are only 2.8 billion seconds in a lifetime of 90 years. So you would have to meet, weigh up, and decide whether someone is your perfect match at a rate of more than 1 per second.

I would say that I am also married to the person I have loved the most in my life. I don’t know if he’s the loml - how would you ever know that tomorrow ‘he’ may walk into your life and totally sweep you off your feet?! I’m not and never have been tempted to cheat, that’s not what I’m saying.

I net DH at 30 and married at 32. He is definitely the person I have loved the most in a romantic sense and 12 years later nobody has topped that.

I understand probability, I'm very science and evidence based on most things. But there are some things that just can't be explained. Love is one of them. In reality it's a chemical reaction in your brain. But it feels different.

Sometimes we just have to believe in things. That's ok too.

Yes, he was the love of my life for many, many years, but after 30+ years I don’t feel it now.

Absolutely…married 25years to the most incredible man, the best father to our children, love beyond measure…he died suddenly and unexpectedly, I miss him with all my heart every minute of every day. Don’t take your loved ones for granted as none of us are promised tomorrow 😔

Yep. We met in 1998. He’s my lobster 🦞

Hugs to you @mummybear35 💛

I think so..

I had a wobble a few years ago, internally questioned how happy I/we really were; seemingly to be plodding along through life together, almost like best mates who occasionally sleep together .

However, I think, or know my MH wasn’t at its best at the time and over more recent years has improved, and with that has come a new, lovely, relationship with my DH of 20 years.

Oh love, this made me very sad :( x

I’m just drawing the distinction between “the one” and “a one”. Feeling deep love is perfectly compatible with the latter but mathematical reality is incompatible with the former.

You don’t have to bridge the gap between the qualial and the material to accept that unique pairs of people distributed among a population of eight billion would be vanishingly unlikely to find one another.

for me it was instantaneous, as it was for him. I get probability, I really do but probability doesn't mean it can't ever happen. If you don't believe in it that's fine but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

But if people believe they have, why not just be happy for them? How does it hurt anything to believe that you've found your "one" and be happy with that, just because mathematics say it's not likely?

Not likely isn't impossible.

🙄🙄🙄

What a lot of people seem to have a deep psychological need to believe that the person they have built a life with is the only one they could ever have built a life with.

Whereas I think that the Tim Minchin song I posted earlier is one of the greatest love songs ever written.

Takes all sorts to make a world!