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NNadir

(33,368 posts)
Sat Jun 11, 2022, 03:02 PM Jun 2022

She truly believes everyone marries the wrong person.

I came across this article today in my inbox:

I Married the Wrong Person, and I’m So Glad I Did


By Tish Harrison Warren (NY Times Opinion 06/05/22)

An excerpt:

I truly believe that everyone marries the wrong person. But even by that standard, my husband’s and my match was particularly fraught. We got married young with no idea what we were getting into or how to decide who — or if — to marry. We both brought plenty of baggage into our relationship. We argued a lot, and didn’t handle conflict well. We had a vague sense that marriage was good and a mistaken idea that it was a necessary passage into adulthood. But even as I walked down the aisle, I harbored doubts about whether we should marry.

My husband is now also an Anglican priest and over the last two decades we’ve both presided over weddings and offered premarital counseling. We both admit that if a couple came to us with the doubts and issues we had when we got engaged we’d probably say, “maybe don’t do this,” which is what our premarital counselor told us at the time. He sensed that our life paths were pulling in different directions, that neither of us had a clear idea of who we were or what we wanted, and that I was romantically hung up on another guy. We didn’t listen to his advice.

Nearly two decades later, I’m glad we didn’t. But I can also say that he was right to warn us of trouble ahead.

The last 17 years have held long stretches when one or both of us were deeply unhappy. There have been times when contempt settled on our relationship, caked and hard as dried mud. We’ve both been unkind. We’ve both yelled curse words and stormed out the door. We both have felt we needed things that the other person simply could not give us. We have been to marriage counseling for long enough now that our favorite counselor feels like part of the family. We should probably include her photo in our annual Christmas card. At times, we stayed married sheerly as a matter of religious obedience and for the sake of our children.

There was a time, not long ago, when getting a divorce in America was prohibitively difficult. That left individuals — usually women — stuck with philandering husbands and in abusive and dangerous marriages. Divorce is at times a tragic necessity...


I'm quite sure I didn't marry the wrong person; perhaps my wife would not agree speaking for herself.

My wife, however, is the product of two people who married the wrong person, each other.

My in laws, I think, married one another because when they were young they were both extremely good looking, and my mother-in-law, a nurse, was thrilled at the idea of marrying a doctor.

It was tough on my wife growing up, the arguments, the insults, the acting out, the undisguised hostility that sometimes fell on her. When I married my wife, we did so at a continent's distance. I liked it that my wife was beautiful and sexy, but what I loved, besides the sense of humor, was the resilience, and the strength to forgive me my faults. That had never passed my way before.

We certainly had our moments with my in laws, my wife's anger welling out here and there in her dealings with them; once she cut them entirely out of our life for more than a year.

I was more inclined to forgive - easier because "it wasn't me" - but also because they brought so much magnificence into my life in the form of their daughter.

Often we wondered why they stayed together, her parents; why they just didn't get a divorce. But you know, in the last ten years of their lives, they did find peace together, whether it ever morphed into real love is difficult to say, but they had one another.

They found after long lives, tolerance.

In this way, the article struck home.
5 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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She truly believes everyone marries the wrong person. (Original Post) NNadir Jun 2022 OP
I think it's true that there are no perfect matches. Imperfect people imperfect marriages Coventina Jun 2022 #1
I have no doubt that I married the right person Chainfire Jun 2022 #2
My parents both married the wrong person no_hypocrisy Jun 2022 #3
I fully credit what you say. It never goes away. NNadir Jun 2022 #4
Thank you for this. no_hypocrisy Jun 2022 #5

Coventina

(26,874 posts)
1. I think it's true that there are no perfect matches. Imperfect people imperfect marriages
Sat Jun 11, 2022, 03:09 PM
Jun 2022

Relationships are hard, because people are difficult and complicated.

I think marriage is an outdated form of human relationship.

My husband and I only got married for economic reasons (healthcare).

Somehow, we're still together, although COVID pandemic lockdown was definitely the biggest strain we've ever had.

Chainfire

(17,308 posts)
2. I have no doubt that I married the right person
Sat Jun 11, 2022, 03:18 PM
Jun 2022

51 years ago. We are still best friends. We started dating at 15 and 17 and were married on my 19th birthday. We fight once a year whether we need to or not, just to keep in practice we get over it quickly and don't hold a grudge. We each compliment the other's strengths and weaknesses. I do believe however that I got a much better deal than my wife. She deserved better.

People ask me what goes into maintaining a long and happy marriage and my standard reply is "Respect."

no_hypocrisy

(45,774 posts)
3. My parents both married the wrong person
Sat Jun 11, 2022, 03:22 PM
Jun 2022

and we children suffered for it. We're still healing and we're in our 50s and 60s.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
4. I fully credit what you say. It never goes away.
Sat Jun 11, 2022, 03:31 PM
Jun 2022

My wife made peace with her parents; she learned to love them for what they were and was compassionate and attentive to them as they struggled to die.

But it's all still there, that pain; I see it from time to time and we talk about it fairly regularly.

My wife effectively left home at 17. She was thinking about it long before that.

I married her when she had just turned 22 and she way way more mature than I was, then in my early 30s.

I sometimes ask my wife, when one of her sisters gets crazy, how it is that she came out of her family.

The answer is, I guess, she left. She learned she could live without them.

But yes, I know, it takes a lot of healing and the healing is never entirely complete. There are scars. That's for sure.

no_hypocrisy

(45,774 posts)
5. Thank you for this.
Sat Jun 11, 2022, 04:29 PM
Jun 2022

The only solace I received was from the ex-husband of my mother's sister who totally revealed the back story of my parents' abbreviated "courtship" and marriage. In short, they were both narcissists and opportunists. My uncle-in-law made it clear that it wasn't me; it was them. I'll be forever grateful to him for telling me.

While one can make an argument that they deserved each other, my siblings and I grew up in a very dysfunctional household and family. My brother, sister, and I were raised to be adversaries to each other. All those wasted years . . . . . .

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