Newly married and newly miserable

[frogman80]

Wifey screwed up. She lied to you, she hurt you. Does she recognize this yet? Does she plan on doing it again? How did you find out? If wifey was the one who told you, then you can suspect that she at least feels guilty about it (and rightly so.) She probably hid that info from you, because she really wants to be married to you… and yeah, that still doesn’t make it right what she did.

You need to talk to her… you need to let her know how hurt you are and make sure she doesn’t want to do it again. If it stopped there, recognize that she is weak, and needs you to help her to be strong. You can start by example… you do need to be a man and forgive her… it wont make the hurt go away, but at least you will be doing your part. Jealousy can kill you inside, but getting over it makes you stronger.

Put things in perspective… the very thing you despise… your wife being with another man (past present or future)… is what this will lead to if you do not fight to put things back together. If you get divorced, she will not be with YOU anymore. If you want to be with her for the rest of your life, you are going to have to fight daily for it… sometimes you will have to fight her… sometimes other people… but mostly you will probably have to fight yourself.

Be patient… things like this will take a long time to get over. Don’t let the devil mess with you this early in your marriage.

 

[Loboto-Me]

Another rule of marriage… NEVER leave when angry (unless you feel violence or there is violence). Also, talk, talk, and talk some more. Oh and another rule… NEVER call names or speak in a blameful manner “You did this”, instead " I feel this, or I’m hurt". When we went to our weekend “Engaged Encounter” we were told that when we are arguing, the best thing to do is sit next to each other and touch each other. This showed that the love was still there even if you were at odds with each other.

Now get back home and start living your marriage vows, as much as it hurts right now.

Boy this sure brings back memories of my first 2 yrs of marriage…I was so easily hurt and there were so many things to iron out.

 

[iamrefreshed]

Hello Justin,

I’m sorry you are facing such a crisis so quickly into your marriage. Not to condone your fiance’s behavior but something you stated earlier makes me wonder if you are or were holding something against her.

You mentioned having to forgive her again for something you already forgave her for. What was that? That she dated before meeting you?

I may not have all the information so please forgive me if I am wrong.

It sounds like you have an issue with her relationship prior to meeting you. If that is the case I can understand why her contact with him again upset you so but your harboring a grudge against her life before you needs some working out on your part.

God Bless.

 

[wcknight]

So sorry you have to go through this when it should beginning of the happiest time of your life. First off my prayers are with you both.

You need to find out for certain that your wife is really completely over this former relationship. IF she is not, then you should not be married.

But if she is, she needs to renew her promise to you that you are the one person in her life and she will never contact or meet with this other person again under any circumstances.
She can not have any kind of relationship with anyone else. Even an “emotional” attachment is as damaging to a marriage as adultery.

In the meantime, remain positive, pray and talk to your spouse with love and understanding. She has to prove her love for you all over again, and trust will return in time. The only way a marriage will survive the test of time, is to be determined never to give up. IF you convince yourself that divorce is never an option, you will make it work.

Jealousy can destroy a marriage, and it can only be controlled if each of you trusts each other. What your wife did was clearly wrong, BUT it was before you got married.

Maybe she did need to answer the question of whether marriage to you was the right decision. Far better that she did so before the marriage than after the vows. Neither timing makes it less hurtful.

She chose YOU AGAIN over the other fellow, and that is not a bad thing. Now it is time for you to prove to each other that you made the right choice.

Christ’s Peace.

 

[Celeste88]

What do you mean when you said your wife contacted this man prior to your wedding? Do you know what the content of the conversation was about? Did she meet him for coffee or did she sleep with him? Maybe she thinks she can be friends with him, but not in a sexual way. What does your wife say about this? Does she still love him? Does she think that the marriage was a mistake? If she’s still in love with him, why didn’t she marry this other guy?

If she wants to make the marriage work then you have to forgive her and give the marriage a chance.

 

[vern_humphrey]

mlchance:

Two rules for a successful marriage:

Forgiveness is mandatory.

Divorce is not an option.

– Mark L. Chance.

Amen.

Another one would be, “There is no I in We.”

Once you take the vows, you must start thinking as a couple, and remember that your highest priority must be your husband’s or wife’s happiness.

 

[Forest-Pine]

wcknight:

But if she is, she needs to renew her promise to you that you are the one person in her life and she will never contact or meet with this other person again under any circumstances.
She can not have any kind of relationship with anyone else. Even an “emotional” attachment is as damaging to a marriage as adultery.

While this is true, you can’t force her to do this. She has to WANT to do it. She has to be able to trust you completely. She didn’t feel she could trust you with her feelings and thoughts and actions. You two have a serious communication breakdown (as a previous poster said) and a lack of trust that is going both ways.

I again REALLY recommend His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley. His discussion of a love bank (your bank accounts are pretty low right now and you have to find ways to put deposits in both accounts at the same time), radical honesty (you don’t hide a thing from each other so you can honestly discuss and trust each other), and enthusiastic support (you don’t do anything unless both are enthusiastic with it) ensures that you will both have the correct perspective: each other. You will identify with the book quite a bit as his focus is how to recover from or avoid affairs. You currently feel betrayed and compare her actions to an emotional affair. While his focus is avoiding affairs, it stands to reason that by avoiding affairs, you will be strengthening your marriage.

Harley would also say she cannot have any further contact with this man. You must realize, though, that a marriage goes both ways. If you want to say that something bothers you and ask her to NEVER do something again, that means she has the same power over you. The only way it will work is if you can both trust each other completely. That’s where radical honesty and enthusuiastic agreement come in. Then she WANTS to do this for your marriage and it isn’t you placing an ultimatum on her.

If she came to you and said she had been thinking about him and felt like she wanted some finality on that chapter of her life before embarking on the next one with you, so that she could give herself entirely to you in your marriage, how would you have responded? Blown up? Jealously fumed? Disappeared? Told her she shouldn’t feel the way she does? If you make her unable to talk with you and you tell her that her feelings are “wrong” (which is impossible as they are feelings), then you guarantee that she will not come to you with these concerns and she will decide how to deal with them on her own. If she can come to you and discuss this, and trusts and loves and respects you, then you can figure out what to do together to improve your marriage. Your guarantee is that she won’t do anything without your enthusiastic support. Her guarantee is the same.

It will take a while to get her love bank account back to a healthy level. You need to realize that even if you don’t feel love for her, it doesn’t mean that you can say, “I don’t feel like being married.” What will make you feel like being married is communicating, doing recreational activities together, being radically honest, and agreeing together on your course of action.

Oh, and if she isn’t pulling her share of the load, it means you have to do MORE to make up for it in the marriage. Sometimes it will be 100%–100%. Other times you’ll have to give all 200%. The more you show her respect and love, the more she will love you and want to put you first.

Please pick up the book and read it together.

 

[Ham1]

Dude, that is unimaginably bad. Did she admit that she did this or did you find out?

I would talk to a priest and explore the annulment option. She has shattered trust and wasn’t honest with you before marriage.

God bless.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Ham1:

Dude, that is unimaginably bad. Did she admit that she did this or did you find out?

I would talk to a priest and explore the annulment option. She has shattered trust and wasn’t honest with you before marriage.

God bless.

I don’t mean to direct this at anyone personally, but why do so many Catholics offer divorce and annulment as the preferred solution to problems like this?

Don’t marriage vows mean anything to anyone anymore?

When we marry, we take a vow to love. That vow has no escape clauses in it – it’s until death do us part.

Now, if you take a solemn vow to love someone, then LOVE them! Put aside your personal feelings and do what you swore to do. And pray.

Love and prayer will accomplish a lot if you give it a chance.

 

[Forest-Pine]

vern humphrey:

I don’t mean to direct this at anyone personally, but why do so many Catholics offer divorce and annulment as the preferred solution to problems like this?

Don’t marriage vows mean anything to anyone anymore?

When we marry, we take a vow to love. That vow has no escape clauses in it – it’s until death do us part.

Now, if you take a solemn vow to love someone, then LOVE them! Put aside your personal feelings and do what you swore to do. And pray.

Love and prayer will accomplish a lot if you give it a chance.

I agree with you and MLChance:

MLChance:

Two rules for a successful marriage:

Forgiveness is mandatory.

Divorce is not an option.

– Mark L. Chance.

After 4 days of marriage, looking for the escape hatch is not the wisest approach. Thankfully, this came up so quickly. You will be able to set your marriage right in its first months instead of finding out ten years down the road that you’ve had major issues all along.

This is not all your wife’s “fault.” You must accept responsibility for what you’ve done wrong. You can’t change her; you can change yourself. You must be more open, more honest, more loving. You must make an atmosphere where she feels she can discuss with you and trust you. (Now, I’d have equally harsh words for your wife if she were here, so don’t think I’m putting the blame on you, either.) Marriage requires two. You each need to come together and pave a new path. Best to get to it NOW.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Forest-Pine:

After 4 days of marriage, looking for the escape hatch is not the wisest approach. Thankfully, this came up so quickly. You will be able to set your marriage right in its first months instead of finding out ten years down the road that you’ve had major issues all along.

This is not all your wife’s “fault.” You must accept responsibility for what you’ve done wrong. You can’t change her; you can change yourself. You must be more open, more honest, more loving. You must make an atmosphere where she feels she can discuss with you and trust you. (Now, I’d have equally harsh words for your wife if she were here, so don’t think I’m putting the blame on you, either.) Marriage requires two. You each need to come together and pave a new path. Best to get to it NOW.

Absolutely!!

Marriage takes a lot of work – and no better time than the present to start working on it.

 

[Loboto-Me]

I so agree Vern, love is a CHOICE that has to be made each and every day. I’ll be the first to admit that in my newly married life, I was very immature, I felt like I’d made a mistake once a week, but my husband who was so much more emotionally mature than I was (still is ) reminded me that we needed to talk, and to make the choice to love each other at that very moment, even if we didn’t like each other much. The first years can be so tough.

That vow isn’t about emotions, it’s about responsibility, to God, to your new spouse and to yourself. Remember you need to Choose to love her right now so that you can move on to the next step toward respectful communication then perhaps you can BOTH forgive each other… You can forgive her for contacting her old “flame”, and she can forgive you for leaving.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Loboto-Me:

I so agree Vern, love is a CHOICE that has to be made each and every day. I’ll be the first to admit that in my newly married life, I was very immature, I felt like I’d made a mistake once a week, but my husband who was so much more emotionally mature than I was (still is ) reminded me that we needed to talk, and to make the choice to love each other at that very moment, even if we didn’t like each other much. The first years can be so tough.

Of course it’s tough. You show me someone who claims he or she didn’t think marriage was a horrible mistake, and I’ll show you a bald-faced liar.

The solution is love and prayer. Love your husband or wife more than you love yourself, and pray for your marriage.

Loboto-Me:

That vow isn’t about emotions, it’s about responsibility, to God, to your new spouse and to yourself. Remember you need to Choose to love her right now so that you can move on to the next step toward respectful communication then perhaps you can BOTH forgive each other… You can forgive her for contacting her old “flame”, and she can forgive you for leaving.

It’s also about giving yourself to someone else. I recommend the OP stop thinking about what she did to him, and start thinking about his responsibility to her.

 

[Baby_Sister]

When you are hurt so deeply in marriage, there is the tendency to want to make your spouse feel the same pain that you feel. I think this is partly what is behind your camping out at the studio and talking about an annulment. You married her three days ago, and you’re now willing to throw it all away? It sounds to me like you are focused more on your own feelings rather than on your marriage. Why did you marry her? Do you love her?

Has she asked you to forgive her? If so, you should do that–not for her sake, but for yours. You will only begin to heal when you can forgive her. I’m not saying it will be easy, but you can either forgive her or be eaten up with bitterness.

 

[Ham1]

vern humphrey:

I don’t mean to direct this at anyone personally, but why do so many Catholics offer divorce and annulment as the preferred solution to problems like this?

Don’t marriage vows mean anything to anyone anymore?

When we marry, we take a vow to love. That vow has no escape clauses in it – it’s until death do us part.

Now, if you take a solemn vow to love someone, then LOVE them! Put aside your personal feelings and do what you swore to do. And pray.

Love and prayer will accomplish a lot if you give it a chance.

I would agree with you but we are talking about THREE DAYS and some pretty heinous deceit. The fact that it has only been THREE DAYS casts significant doubt on her sincerity on the wedding day. If this was a year later, it would be a little different. The gentleman in this position needs to find out EXACTLY what went on days before his marriage. If he can accept her explanation and trusts that she is being 100% truthful, he can decide to try and work this out. If he doesn’t get the truth, I think he really ought to consider annulment given the circumstances and the fact that it has only been THREE DAYS.

Sorry, but I feel this guy’s pain and I would say the validity of the marriage is in serious doubt given her actions. I mean, what kind of woman looks up an old boyfriend hours before a marriage and withholds the fact from her husband…a woman intending to be devoted to her husband? I don’t think so.

 

[Al_Masetti]

vern humphrey:

Absolutely!!

Marriage takes a lot of work – and no better time than the present to start working on it.

No truer words were ever written. With the emphasis on “WORK”.

Two people don’t become “one flesh” in the twenty minutes that the wedding ceremony takes.

 

[Loboto-Me]

Well then I guess there are thousands upon thousands of Catholics who have invalid marriages… like, I mean, what about all these men who acted so wildly the night before they were married? Can anybody say Stag? Some of these men sure behaved like wretches on their Stag Night. Could it be that these men had no intention of leaving their wild ways behind?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Ham1:

I would agree with you but we are talking about THREE DAYS and some pretty heinous deceit. The fact that it has only been THREE DAYS casts significant doubt on her sincerity on the wedding day. If this was a year later, it would be a little different. The gentleman in this position needs to find out EXACTLY what went on days before his marriage. If he can accept her explanation and trusts that she is being 100% truthful, he can decide to try and work this out. If he doesn’t get the truth, I think he really ought to consider annulment given the circumstances and the fact that it has only been THREE DAYS.

Sorry, but I feel this guy’s pain and I would say the validity of the marriage is in serious doubt given her actions. I mean, what kind of woman looks up an old boyfriend hours before a marriage and withholds the fact from her husband…a woman intending to be devoted to her husband? I don’t think so.

Pain is something a guy should learn to deal with. This guy has made vows and the last thing we as Catholics should do is advise him to cut and run.

 

[Forest-Pine]

Ham1:

Sorry, but I feel this guy’s pain and I would say the validity of the marriage is in serious doubt given her actions. I mean, what kind of woman looks up an old boyfriend hours before a marriage and withholds the fact from her husband…a woman intending to be devoted to her husband? I don’t think so.

I think it is just as likely that she had good intentions as your interpretation. She realized she had some unfinished business and she wanted to get it all in the past so that she could devote herself, completely and wholely to her husband–whom she had not made any vows to at this point in time. While her intentions might have been fine, it still obviously caused serious problems in her relationship, making her course of action not the wisest.

Nonetheless, Robojustin has made it clear that he lacks trust in his wife, that he has made a hostile climate in which she cannot come to him freely, that he holds grudges for things she didn’t even do against him (like dating before even meeting him), and that she would have gotten the big blow up scene just the same if she came to him before the wedding, while also not having any sense of closure in the matter.

I say it is clear that she loves him, that she wants to make him happy, that she got rid of all impediments before their marriage so that she could give herself freely to him… and that they both have a lack of trust in the other, an inability to communicate truthfully and fruitfully, and a lack of love right now. These are all things that happen throughout the course of a marriage, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. It does not invalidate vows. If they continue to harbor their anger and hide their inner recesses from each other, they will corrupt their own marriage. It will not invalidate it, just make them miserable for life. What they need to do is get it straight NOW before it becomes a pattern. The feeling of love will return as they work on their relationship.

When my daughter tells me she doesn’t feel like doing something, my response is, “Well, sometimes we have to do things we don’t feel like doing.”

I don’t feel like spending holidays with my in-laws. I don’t feel like wiping up the poo-poo that my little one decided to smear all over the walls. I don’t feel like doing research for a work report. But they are just things I have to do, whether I feel like it or not.

I made a commitment to motherhood. I didn’t expect to spend a great amount of my time cleaning up puke and diarrhea and visiting ERs and doctors and labs. I didn’t know I’d have to collect poo-poo in a jar in my fridge. I didn’t know I’d have to spend what probably amounts to tens of thousands on medical care and special foods. But when I commited to motherhood, this territory came with it. Now, years later, my dedication and acceptance of this has led to a wonderful little girl who does not need said medical interventions for the rest of her life.

Robojustin’s marriage is just the same. He didn’t expect to be cleaning the poo-poo off the walls so quickly, but it happened. Now he needs to figure out why, figure out what he can do to change it, what he can do to accept it, and how he can move on. It comes with the territory.
If he neglects it now, it will only continue. If he solves it now, his marriage will bloom and bring him much joy.

 

[Ham1]

I say it is clear that she loves him, that she wants to make him happy, that she got rid of all impediments before their marriage so that she could give herself freely to him… and that they both have a lack of trust in the other, an inability to communicate truthfully and fruitfully, and a lack of love right now.

I’d say the guy in this situation is the only one who can make this assessment. If he sees some ulterior motive in his wife’s actions, he ought to look into it more. If this “marriage” isn’t going to work better to find out after 3 days than 3 years and possibly children.