Marriage and Kids with the love of your life/soul mate OR NOT?

[MsJellybean]

How many of you out there know you have settled down with the love of your life or was there someone else before that was probably the one? Have you settled for second or even third best? Do you wish life had turned out differently?

solidgold. I love my dh and we're very good together but you're right - he was the one I was with when the urge to breed struck. I'm really glad it was him but think it could have been someone else and I would have been happy too. It's a bit like the New York taxi theory (can't remember which book it's from - some chick lit I think) which says blokes are like New York taxi drivers - they may have all sorts of exotic beauties in the cab all day but at the end of the shift they take whoever is in the cab (to their) home. I don't think I've remembered the theory particularly well either but essentially it's about timing. So perhaps all the women have found their soulmates but their DH/DPs have just finished their shift

Yup, one and only- and I was as passionate about it as you can only be when you're 19, 'if I can't have this one I'll never want to enjoy anything ever again!!!' I often look at him with a sense of mild surprise that a relationship that started on that emotional basis can actually have matured into something that is still going strong 25 years later...

I'd love to hear what all the male partners in these relationships would say. If they were being absolutely honest.

In fact scrub that...I don't want to know

Yup, he's the love of my life!! He drives me mad a times but I won't want to be with anyone else!

Got together when I was 18 and he was 24 - 11 years (and a good few rocky ones at that) later and we're at a good place and happily married with one DS and another DC on the way!

We've survived an infidelity (very early on), a break up (about 4 years in but for over a year) and a very recent stillbirth and I can honestly say it has made us a much stronger couple!

I knew soon as i saw my Dh thats he was the one. I love him to bits but i dont think he feels the same way as i do. Im overwhelmed with love for him but i think he is just happy and content with me.

I'd also say I was the one my partner was with when his urge to breed struck. Ten years before, he'd broken up with a girlfriend because she wanted babies and he didn't - and despite all my manifold charms, I'm aware that it was he who'd changed by the time I met him, not I who changed him.

Ormirian, DP would say "but we are soulmates". And to me the fact he thinks we are is more evidence that we aren't.

for example, he was sent a £20 Amazon voucher by a friend for his birthday and complained that this was a useless present as all the "interesting" things to buy on the Amazon website - tools, electrical equipment - weren't covered by the voucher, which only included books and music.

Only books! As not being worth buying as a present! and he thinks he's my soulmate??

Fennel, I feel your pain. I did once ask DP if I were his 'best friend' - expecting the shudders that my true soulmate would produce - and he said 'well, not my best but my closest'. WTF?

And Issy's

I suspect my soulmate is Hari Kunzru, or possibly Jonathan Coe. Although I quite like the look of that Nice Indian Boy who's just won the Booker too. Sadly, they just haven't met the right girl yet

Presumably - Issy - then a better life-timing recipe would be to meet your future partner as, oh, I don't know, an infant or something, and be mates through primary school; & then lose touch until rediscovery right at the very effete [using technical meaning thereof] end of your twenties? ()

But of course, other people's grass is always greener (or more pungent, or whatever). I may have got about somewhat, but some of those gettings about do make me cringe (and give me moments of anxiety about ever being tracked down again).

if there is only one soulmate for everyone then I very much fear that mine is currently a mongolian goat herder and we are destined to never meet.

But actually & more interestingly: do you think everyone thinks they should have got about more? I sort of think I should - but more sensibly. If that makes any sense.

Well, we didn't begin with fireworks. Met in a pub at 17, confessed we fancied each other's best friend, went out to try and pull each other's best friend and ended up pulling each other!
However nearly 25 years on, the Boy I met has turned into the Man I fantasised about. We've supported each other through thick and thin (and small children). There is still NO-ONE I would rather discuss my problems with. No-one I'd rather get drunk with or do karaoke with. Or arrange a parent's funeral with. Or have change my dressing after another C-section.
When the kids do/say something funny, the look we exchange over their heads is Crazy, like the past/present/future all whizzing around.
I'm happy when he's in the house, and happy when he or I are off doing things.
I put perfume on at 18.05 when he's due home.
And I'm sad that he has Man Flu tonight so is unavailable for sex.
I suspect this man may be my Soulmate. And I'm amazed that it started off so not soulmatey.

No such thing as soulmates. IMO

Lovely post MrsMorticia.

Also loved the one about Amazon. This thread re-assures me about how sensible and down to earth most MNetters are. Can I end a sentance with are? Is it sentance or sentence.... need to get to Pedants Corner

"do you think everyone thinks they should have got about more" well not being maried I amstill planning on getting about somemore

When I've caught up on my sleep in a couple of years....

I should have got about more when younger. I got about quite madly in my early 30s.

I should probably have got about less . Definitely, definitely not more.

Have been with DH since we were 16, some 18 years ago. Been married for 10 years and have a 6yo DD. Never been anyone else for either of us, and still have a very happy stable relatinship.

Yes I should have. Had no self-confidence when I was younger. Didn't really get that until my late 20s - sadly after I was wed. Then I might have avoided a potentially messy and distressing little 'liaison' in my last job, by telling myself it was just lust rather than 'the one' that I had met at the wrong time. All water under the bridge now but I could have done without it.

What really upset me when the besotted-with ex got married about four years ago was that the woman he married was someone he'd been out with before me. In other words, they were each others' soulmates...and I, and indeed quite a few other people, were just Casualties of their decades-long separation. Felt like all that pain - which was heartbreaking - was utterly pointless and to be discounted.

(They lasted about a year, I think. I confess to being deeply cheered up when they divorced.)

bink, what is the technical meaning of effete? I only know the one that means poncey.

Mumsnet is like the OU.