Marriage postmortem

Everything else
1

Sorry, I have never been married so I can’t contribute to this topic, for those of you who have, do you mind writing up some postmortems?

Just include the three sections:

What went right:
What went wrong:
Conclusion:

(Edit)
Id like to add some specific questions to help put these stories in context.

How long did you date before you were married?
How long were you married?
How long did it take for you to realize things were not working out?
How much longer did it take you to commit to a divorce?
How many prior marriages did you and your partner each have?
How old were you and your partner when you got married?
If you were previously married, what lessons did you take into this marriage and how did they help or not help?
Do you plan on getting married again? Why or Why not?
If you do plan on getting married again, what are some lessons you will take with you?

2

What went right: She wasn’t shy about letting me know what she thought, she had the cutest little giggle, and was a demon in the sack.

What went wrong: Beyond that, she wasn’t much of a conversationalist though, and her apparent inability to bear children caused a lot of tension.

Conclusion: A relationship like that needs a stronger foundation than a big heart appearing over her head when you flex your muscles near her.

3

What went right: She was hot, had a great ass, and I loved her.

What went wrong: Everything else. She was post-anorexic, so she had serious self esteem issues. Every time I went to play a video game, she felt I was making a conscious decision, “I’d rather play video games than be with you. Video games are more important to me.” She also bordered on bi-polar. At one point I got her to see a shrink, who prescribed some low-level medication, which the ex then decided to not take. Also, she wanted kids, lots of kids, ASAP. She also believed having children would change me.

Conclusion: avoid chics with self-esteem issues like the plague. They will always be miserable, and make anyone close to them miserable. Also – before considering marriage, get the kid issue FULLY resolved. How many, when, what to do and what’s going to change when they arrive, what to do if there’s an “accident”, etc.

4

I haven’t figured out the answers to those questions just yet. Give me a year or so.

5

I was a career man, my work came before my family.

My wife Joanna couldn’t take that anymore, so she decides to leave me.

I was then faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of myself and our young son Billy. Just when I got it down, my wife resurfaced and wanted Billy back. I refused to give him up, so we had a drawn out custody battle.

Chet

6

Holy shit! Chet is secretly Dustin Hoffman!

OK, my replies:


What went right:
Hot, hot, hot sex. Really, mindblowing actually - I met her when she was 18, and she had a nice figure (yay, D cups!). I developed a great relationship with her daughter from a previous marriage (she was an infant when I first started dating her mom), and ended up adopting her.

What went wrong:
She was my first really serious relationship, so I really had no context to figure out how fucked up our relationship was.

She had no friends (literally none - her only friend was her Aunt), and I didn’t pick up on that as a warning sign. Eventually, she ended up quitting her job, we moved from CA to Seattle, and she became more and more reclusive, and stopped pretty much leaving the house. She ultimately wanted me to rig up some sort of device to suspend a PC monitor over her bed so she could play EQ without getting out of bed. She started collecting star trek action figures and beanie babies, and then tried to turn them into some kind of half-hearted ebay business which never went anywhere, but gave her an excuse to stay at home and not engage with the world.

Conclusion:
In the end, we really didn’t have anything in common other than the sex (which disappeared at the end anyhow) and our mutual love for her daughter. I had a degree from a prestigious university, and she had a GED (dropped out to have her baby), so we really had almost nothing to talk about. She hated my friends and had no friends of her own. She got more and more miserable, blamed me (if only I were more supportive, she’d be happier!) and I had my own issues that let me buy into that whole blame game. She kept threatening to leave me, I’d beg her to stay for our family’s sake, then one day I just gave up and told her we were getting a divorce.

She got remarried shortly thereafter (marriage #3 for her) and has since divorced that guy too. I dated my current wife for 4 years before remarrying, and we’re happily (and sleepily) raising our son together.

How long did you date before you were married?
2 years. The problem was that she had this baby daughter, and after two years of dating I was pretty much the father figure for her girl - we had formed a de facto family, and even though I had misgivings about getting married, I didn’t have the guts to break it off and break up our little family. It was kind of like that Billy Maguire movie (which came out too late to save me :)

How long were you married?
8 years


How long did it take for you to realize things were not working out?
I had misgivings right off the bat, actually. Once we moved to Seattle and left our “support network” behind in CA, it was pretty bleak, but I wouldn’t admit to myself how bad things were. I really thought we could work things out all the way up until I reached a breaking point - two weeks later I asked her for a divorce.

How much longer did it take you to commit to a divorce?
Basically, one day I finally admitted to myself how miserable I had become and that I was going to go through my entire life without ever truly being in love, and that was it for me. It was hard, because I love my daughter and I knew it would be really difficult for her.

How many prior marriages did you and your partner each have?
1 for her, 0 for me

How old were you and your partner when you got married?
Her: 20, me: 25

Do you plan on getting married again? Why or Why not?
I am married again :)

If you do plan on getting married again, what are some lessons you will take with you?
Make sure you are head-over-heels in love, and respect this person who will become your life partner. Make sure you are getting married for yourself, not for other reasons.

7

Who won?

Do you still have a relationship with the daughter?

(I’m sorry, but custody battles are the thing I find scariest about divorces. Even in my little progressive part of the world the whole system is heavily skewed in favour of the mother)

8

Dustin Hoffman, for best actor
Meryl Streep, for best supporting actress
Robert Benton, for best director
Stanley Jaffe, for best picture
and Robert Benton again, for best adapted screenplay

9

Brilliant.
(would have worked better if bigdruid hadn’t spoiled your punchline)

10

Make sure you are getting married for yourself, not for other reasons.

This is a great point. If you’re getting married for any other reason beyond, “I love this person completely and want to be with them forever”, don’t do it.

11

And this fact could be altered for numerous reasons through no fault of the two parties involved at any given time. Maturing at different rates or developing different interests or losing interest in the things that you had in common initially, for example.

12

That’s just projecting. You have no way of knowing how you will feel in a few years. You want to have genuine affection, I will give you that, but there are probably other things that are just as important. Do you fight? How do you resolve fights? How do you resolve decisions where you are in disagreement? Do you agree about children? Does she want to stay at home with kids and will you be ok with that? What kind of financial goals do you have? Is she or are you tied to the city you now live in? Do you enjoy or dislike her relatives? There are so many other issues that will affect the quality of your life that have little to do with how much or little you love this other person.

13

I agree but I guess I didn’t express myself fully. To love completely, to me, means to agree on all major issues, no fights, compatibility, etc. If anything is in doubt, marriage seems like a bad idea.

14

Agree on all major issues? What a boring marriage.

15

If that was a prerequisite, no one would ever marry.

16

Nope, that describes my wife and I. Perfectly matched on all counts and all issues. No fights. Ever.

And our marriage is far from boring.

17

If that is the case, you are one lucky bastard and I envy you. :) Grats!!!

How long have you been married, might I ask?

18

But what do you talk about if you already agree on everything?

19

How long have you been married, might I ask?

About 2 1/2 years now.

And I’m not saying we never disagree but we never have what I would qualify as “fights”. We never reach the point of yelling at each other or even raising voices.

We, from the very beginning, made communication a huge issue. We always talk about what is bothering us. Things are never allowed to sit and fester and eventually explode. It’s really helped us out tremendously. I’ve had girlfriends in the past who would hold onto issues for weeks until they finally boiled over in a huge fit. Ugh.

20

But what do you talk about if you already agree on everything?

What, seriously? Life, what’s going on today, what we’re doing this weekend, what books we’re reading, what we’ve watched on TV lately, the neighbors, work, etc.

You can have many conversations that don’t revolve around arguing.