Leegh Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 I've been out with quite a number of divorced men over the years, and quite a few of them have said that they were never in love with their wife when they married her, and other men have said, just the opposite, that they were in love with their wife when they married her. I can't imagine someone marrying someone they weren't in love with, but I guess it happens. I never pursued the conversation about marrying not for love, but could this be correct? Possibly a lot of folks marry for companionship, or because the timing is right. Thanks for any input on this subject, as I'm just curious!
FitChick Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 The divorced men I date say their marriage went to hell when they had kids.
soccerrprp Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 The divorced men I date say their marriage went to hell when they had kids. Any additional information as to why? I just cannot imagine marrying someone I did not love. Crazy.
Author Leegh Posted July 4, 2013 Author Posted July 4, 2013 Any additional information as to why? I just cannot imagine marrying someone I did not love. Crazy. The divorced men I date say their marriage went to hell when they had kids. I think the marriage may go downhill after having kids, because of less sex, while taking care of a newborn.
soccerrprp Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 I think the marriage may go downhill after having kids, because of less sex, while taking care of a newborn. That is easily remedied and hardly a cause for discontent long term, right. Men find themselves trapped in gender-role expectations that proves a detriment. When you have a baby or kids, they are BOTH your kids. All of the responsibility falls on BOTH partners. I can see why women become resentful and men feel neglected especially when they make little or no effort to put in his equal share of changing the diapers, feeding the baby, waking up in the wee-hours of the night. I have two beautiful kids. I can tell you that I changed more diapers, spent more wee-hours (I'm a night owl AND early riser.ugh) of the night than my wife with either. I loved it! And so did my wife. 4
Mrlonelyone Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 I have heard similar things from my share of men and women. The irony is those people seem to be the biggest romantics of all. They think real love will be perfect and effortless and pure. So, they reason, that they did not really truly love their wive/husband when they married them. Since it didn't work out, or wasn't easy, that means they were never in love. Perhaps they are right and they were just in a state of long term mutual limerence, the chemical high of having someone new, not really maturely choosen love. Is It Love? Or Limerence? | Happen Magazine That's nonsense and I'm sure Soccerp is right that it just takes work. 1
soccerrprp Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 I can tell you that our sex life did not suffer during the time that our children were very young. Once fed, changed and asleep, we found the time to ROMP!
tbf Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 People tend to rewrite their relationship when it ends badly. 7
TheGuard13 Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 With the exception of cases where people literally just settled and were never that into their significant other, I always find this kind of thing kind of stupid and more than a little bit immature. As if declaring that you will never in love will erase the emotional investment you made, and any pain from the relationship ending. It's along the sames lines of "It was all a lie" nonsense (with exceptions for situations that actually were). 2
Philosopher Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 It could be that a lot of them were under pressure from their family, friends or society in general to marry. Therefore they end up marrying one of the first women they date just to shut them up. 1
soccerrprp Posted July 4, 2013 Posted July 4, 2013 I think there are more men in love with their wives than there are wives in love with their husbands. Could it be that men are more likely to emotionally neglect their wives and are essentially clueless to the neglect? That they continue to live in la-la land and don't see that they are not fulfilling their part of the partnership? I don't know, could it be? So, when the crap hits the fan, the men are like deer in headlights and shocked! When along, there were clear signs, changes...to the demise of the relationship. As a guy, I tend to think it's more often the men who fail in the relationship. 2
Phantom888 Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 Any man who claims to never loved his wife is giving you BS. This is a free country where marriages are not arranged. Of course they were in love. The men eventually fall out of love. To say they never loved the wife is ridiculous. Men say that to new girlfriend to make her feel special. It's a lie. 1
iris219 Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 I've dated and known a few guys who got married when they were very young because their now ex wife got pregnant, not because they loved her. My current bf was 21 when this happened to him. He begged her to have an abortion. She refused so he eventually married her and he tried to love her. He says the next 10 years of his life were hell.
k1rsty Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 They probably loved the woman they married in their own way but were not necessarily 'in love' or the woman they married wasn't 'the one'. I know a lot of people, both men and women, who settled for their current spouses simply because time was running out and they wanted to fit in, get married and have kids. So they just married the next nice person that came their way, or they were already with someone nice who wasn't necessarily 'the one' but the timing (to get married and start a family) happened to be right. 1
shexy Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 I think some people do get married if they aren't in love for whatever reason - to me being IN love and love are two different things. I for one loved my ex husband at the time I married him, but I wasn't in love. I married him because I had no self esteem and no confidence in myself and thought I could never do any better. I made a HUGE mistake. And I learned a very valuable lesson. And I was young and dumb then.
ChessPieceFace Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 Most of it is just bitterness talking. This. People downplay their past feelings to avoid embarrassment. Women do it more often than men. Almost no one in a western society would have gotten married if they weren't in love at the time.
Eggplant Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 I've dated and known a few guys who got married when they were very young because their now ex wife got pregnant, not because they loved her. This outcome would be my fear if I got pregnant. I would rather be a single mother than have a man marry me out of obligation. And if you're going to marry, then do it all the way. It sucks to marry a person and then gripe about how it wasn't really real years later. 1
Ninjainpajamas Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 Yeah I'm not sure why it's a surprise to people that men don't marry or even commit out of "love", men do these things for a variety of reasons, sometimes obligation/cultural influence, pressure from family/Gf, kids, etc.. I think when men marry young especially, they haven't gotten their bearings yet and kind of got caught up in the whole new experience of being with a woman and having to negotiate those emotions for the first time...which obviously is confusing, many people have a hard time defining what "love" is or feels like, after all what do you know if you haven't really gained the experienced? what if you have nothing to compare it to? I think it's harder for people to establish what "in love" feels like when they've only just loved or cared for someone and thought they were in love, but after the fact realized they were not so much...maybe just young, maybe just caught up at the time, but it wasn't something "ever-lasting". With that being said, men are almost always going to spin a story and past in a light you will consider more favorable.. "Oh...I wasn't really in love with my wife" Your reaction/reception should be to him "Oh he never really loved her, so he's never been really in love...of course he could fall in love with me the next time around" A man want's you to believe you are "special" because a woman wants to believe she can be...so they're going to obviously downplay the emotions of their last relationship, make it look like such an inconsequential relationship easily explained by this or that so you won't focus on it or ask any deeper questions about the subject...and most women are easily obliged to believe that, thinking that woman is in the past and forgotten. I think women assume that men do the things they do out of being "in love" but unfortunately not always the truth, often times it is not, it's really a combination of things that may not have much to do with it at all as men are logical and often feel pressured into it...especially after X amount of time/years with a woman.
Ryan R. Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 For some people, marriage is nothing more than a business arrangement or one out of convenience. Both parties marry for money or they marry so that they cannot be alone. Either way, they were both the right person at the right time and the fulfill each other's needs at that current time. Or as the person above me said: pressure from families. That can really do a couple in. 2
iris219 Posted July 5, 2013 Posted July 5, 2013 This outcome would be my fear if I got pregnant. I would rather be a single mother than have a man marry me out of obligation. And if you're going to marry, then do it all the way. It sucks to marry a person and then gripe about how it wasn't really real years later. Marriage legitimatizes accidental pregnancy for many people, especially if you grew up in a conservative family like my bf did. My bf has said repeatedly he wishes he never got married, that it is the biggest regret of his life. People get married for all sorts of reasons, love being only one of many possible reasons so I believe it when people say they never loved their ex. My best friend married her ex husband because she had just ended an abusive relationship and her ex was very nice to her. Two years after they married she realized loving him in a brotherly sort of way wasn't going to cut it, so they ended up divorcing. She will tell you that she loved him as a person, but wasn't in love with him in a romantic way.
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