I don’t want to sound like a broken record but my wife and I are having some marital problems. Mostly me I guess. I have been questioning wether or not we should stay married. We have been married for about 2 and a half years now and have a pretty good marriage other than the fact that I think I may have married the wrong person. We dated for about 7 months before we got married in the temple. While we were dating we fell into the temptation of “heavy petting.” We resolved the conflict somewhat by speaking to the bishop and so on but occasionally fell back into it. We had been good for about a month before we got married and the rest is history. After we were married I still felt it hovering over my head and spoke to the bishop about it and feel good about it now. My problem is that I got married for the wrong reasons. I wanted to get married and my wife is a great person and we got along great but during our whole courtship I felt like it was time to move on but I could never pull myself to do it. I knew it before we got married and ever since. I wanted to be married so badly, in addition with crazy hormones that I think I may have made a mistake. I recently told her the way I have been feeling and it has devastated her. I know now that I should not have said anything but it was burning up inside me. She is a very innocent and great girl and I feel like I just stuck a knife in her. Now she is depressed and I am because I have hurt her so badly. Since then we have been in a limbo not knowing what our future holds and not having direction. Every day I feel guilty for not being able to feel the same way she feels about me. She is positive that I am the one and I have been working and praying to feel the same but have had no such feeling. It would be easier for me to stay with her and save a lot of grief and despair, but I can’t help thinking that I wouldn’t be living the truth. I feel like there is something better for both of us. So with all that I guess my question is, even though all those things may be true, does it matter? Do I stay married even though we made the mistake? We have no kids by the way.
One of the issues we have in modern day romance (ever since the centuries where we’ve been allowed to choose our spouses for ourselves) is that we have some pretty high expectations of what “true love” is supposed to look like. We expect to find a “soulmate,” a “best friend,” a “lover” who rocks our world, a “hottie”, our “one and only true love”, etc. The problem is that the reality of a successful long-term marriage is that a spouse may be all of these things at times and none at others. Marriage is a process that faces change, trials, errors, hormones, babies, bills, stressors, in-laws, age, etc. And usually the success of a marriage has less to do with the person we are married to than with how we are able to manage ourselves and problem-solve. The whole “falling out of love” concept is an unfortunate one. I believe that a couple who will stay together for 50+ years, if they live long enough to do so, will probably fall in and out of love several times throughout the course of their marriage. Because a successful marriage takes work, commitment, selflessness, communication, fun, pain, play, courtship, sex, friendship, love, endurance, tolerance, compromise, etc. all rolled up into one long life story.
No matter who we marry, there are always a million other people that present the possibility of the “what if” factor. We can go insane if our “true love” model includes finding the only one person out there that we can make it with. In fact, leaders in our church have warned us of this “soul mate” mentality not being one based in reality.
Some interesting research is showing, that many arranged marriages (a completely different model than what we are accustomed to) often work out well for both partners (even when they did not know each other before they wed) because their expectations lay solely in that their parents would choose well for them. Then as life moves forward, these couples seem to forge a friendship and then a deeper love that brings them both joy and contentment in their older years. Expectations (both realistic and unrealistic) can have a lot to do with how we perceive the happiness in our relationships.
I hear you say the following about your wife: she is your friend, you get along well, she is “great,” and you’ve shared physical chemistry at least in the past. These are all positive strengths to your relationship. I’m not sure what it is exactly that you feel is lacking. I’m also not sure if I agree that the reasons you listed for getting married were “wrong” per se.
So I’m left questioning if it’s not so much that you married the wrong girl, but that instead you are facing personal issues regarding commitment, facing the new responsibilities of marriage and having to “grow up”, and possibly longing for the freedoms the life of a bachelor can seem to offer.
You start your story with the fact that you and your wife struggled with remaining chaste before your marriage. I am wondering if you mention this because you feel that since you were unchaste that somehow you are being punished by having married the wrong girl? Or that your inability to stay chaste affected your ability to make wise decisions? Although I’m sure both you and your wife probably regret having made these mistakes prior to your wedding, I would hope you can both be confident of the healing power behind the atonement. Unfortunately, I see many young LDS couples who never fully recover from these types of mistakes because the overwhelming guilt, blame, and shame end up coming between them intimately, emotionally and spiritually. This is unnecessary for couples to put themselves through.
Although I agree that the information you shared with your wife was devastating for her to hear (no one wants to know that they are not wanted or being doubted about), you were at least honest with her. And one of the pros of honesty (even when it hurts) is that it can begin an open and frank communication between the two of you. Unfortunately, this information will more than likely impact her self-esteem and/or worth in your relationship: and this is unhealthy for the both of you. The important thing for you to do now as a couple is to get this figured out. And it is imperative that you do so before you decide to have children: having a child will not solve this problem and it will complicate your relationship further. Only you and your wife can make the decision of whether or not to stay married, but I encourage you to see a marital therapist asap. If your marriage is to survive in a healthy and functional way, you will need to do some very clear self-assessment as to what it is you truly want and how you plan to fix this. You will need to work on your own self-issues until you no longer feel this way about your wife and can begin to develop a deeper, more intimate love for her. If you don’t do this and still stay married, then every time you run into a bump in the road and face a struggle together, these fears and doubts will resurface making you both miserable in the process. You will also need to do what it takes to regain trust within your relationship. It will more than likely take a while for your wife to trust that you feel differently than you currently do, even if you are sincere.
Do not stay married because you think she is too innocent and fragile or that this is the easy way to go. With these feelings left unchecked, there will be nothing easy about staying married. Marriage can be the most difficult and yet most rewarding relationship in your life.
I would hate for the issue at hand to not really be the girl you married and you find this out only after you have already lost your wife through divorce and a lot of unnecessary pain and heartache.
Here are some writings you may find also find useful:
And I’m a sucker for movies so I’ll have to share these quotes from Good Will Hunting where a therapist (Robin Williams) tries to teach a troubled, genius kid (Matt Damon) about life and relationships:
“Sean: Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself.”
“Sean: My wife used to fart when she was nervous. She had all sorts of wonderful little idiosyncrasies. She used to fart in her sleep. I thought I’d share that with you. One night it was so loud it woke the dog up. She woke up and went ‘ah was that you?’ And I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Oh!
Will: She woke herself up?
Sean: Ah…! But Will, she’s been dead for 2 years, and that’s the shit I remember: wonderful stuff you know? Little things like that. Those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about: that’s what made her my wife. Oh she had the goods on me too, she knew all my little peccadilloes. People call these things imperfections, but they’re not. Ah, that’s the good stuff.
The Mormon Therapist
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