What we each did wrong that hurt our marriage

[Regrets]

I honestly don't know. Maybe it's too soon. I did a few times apparently be rude when drinking but that but 18 months or so before we split. Not right, but I don't think it was the problem.

I am guilty of not speaking out when I felt I wanted something, I just used to want him to be happy. Maybe he did just fall out of love.

[badeth]

I don't blame my ex and myself for what happened to our relationship. We both had committed mistakes and refused to fix marriage which led to divorce. My ex and I were both workaholic. I worked as a local journalist and I hardly stayed home because of my job, meanwhile my husband was a manager that time and committed most of his time for his job. We barely see each other because of personal priorities. In our two-year marriage, I never enjoyed our relationship and I knew that he felt the same thing. We officially filed for online divorce last January.

[mbw]

At the beginning I had a hard time adjusting to a new marriage, a new name, a new apartment, a new lifestyle, new responsibilities, a new professional job (first out of college), a new status in the community and a new person in my life as a permanent fixture. It took me 3 months to get a grip and by that point he had withdrawn so much he didn't want to even try to see I was trying.

[musclegal]

Here's what I did...I became a parent, I think, to my husband instead of his wife. I was the financially responsible one--he was the opposite. I worked way too much because I felt like I had to. I gave into his whims. He was responsible for the yard, laundry and planning leisure time. I was responsible for everything else. He became the "fun" one. I became a workaholic--with 2 small boys that demanded what little attention I had left. He wanted romance. I wanted a partner. While we had always had a good sexual relationship, I felt more and more distant from him and didn't share my feelings about it clearly enough. Romance wasn't much on my mind. I felt like I had to work as hard as I could so he could have as much fun as he wanted, which was ridiculous. But I remember telling him that. As the boys got older, I wanted to share more of our lives together. He didn't want to share mine--so I let myself be erased. I shared his life--his family, friends, etc. But he wasn't interested in my life. Eventualy, I lost myself. I expressed my loneliness during the last few years of our marriage--he said that we'd have time to do things together when the kids went to college (that would be about 10 years away!). Eventually, he had a affair. I worked very, very hard to try to get back on track, after recognizing the crisis. We didn't ever fight. We both had a hard time identifying and expressing our feelings. I paid for counselling, Retrouvaille, the whole 9 yards. He came along, but his heart wasn't in it. It took me too long to be "done", but I do feel like I did everything I could to save my family. So, in that sense, I don't have regrets.

Its interesting that my siblings recently said they always knew he would have an affair--from the earliest days of our marriage. That he would make comments a lot about other women. My brother said that he joked during the first year of our marriage that he could trade me in after 10 years, like a car.

I'm sad that I didn't draw boundaries in my marriage. I'm sad that I was unhappy for so long and that I let myself be erased. I DID THAT PART. I couldn't seem to work less and have more fun or more of a connection. Eventually, it seemed like if I just loved him enough he would finally come around and love me back. But he doesn't/didn't. I'm not sure he ever did, actually. He loved me early on, when we were dating. I think the real me never lived up to the fantasy me. I think the OW will probably end up the same.

I've learned a lot about being a grown up in a relationship, about setting boundaries and how to express feelings earlier/better. I hope that I've learned enough that there will be a next time, and that next time I'll get it right!

[CityGirl]

What I did to hurt my marriage:

I participated in a power struggle with my H for many, many years. We both took the stance "when I get my way you will get yours". We both had *very* different ideas of what a marriage should look like and instead of combining those ideas we both decided our individual was was the only "right" way and it led to our demise.

I am a "talker" when it comes to feelings, issues or needs. My H is not. I never felt heard and I was always frustrated he would not get "deep" with what he was feeling or needing.

I think I lost respect for my H a long time ago due to his lack of communication, his fear of failure and his "black and white" outlook on life. I also lost a ton of respect for him when my father died and when his mom got sick. His behavior during those times was childish, mean and inexcusable. The more I tried to talk to him about it, the more mean he got. I wish I had gotten outside help at that time as I think things might be different now.

I had a terrible habit of holding grudges even after something was discussed and bringing it up again when a new argument happened. My H actually did the same thing except he never verbalized his grudges, I did.

My H and I both had communication issues. In fact, when things were good between us we did see a marriage counselor many years ago with the hope we could improve our communication. I do believe she did nothing but hurt us more. We would sit in her office and go "round and round" about the same issues and she would tell us that we need to improve our communication skills and end our power struggle. We knew that going in, lol! We went to her so she could teach us how! We stopped going after a few months as it was useless.

I compromised huge parts of myself to keep the peace with my H. He grew up as a very spoiled only child and always got his way. He carried that to our marriage and I allowed it but silently resented him for it.

What it all boils down to is communication. Our lack of healthy communication really killed so much of what made us "us" early on. Had we both learned how to better communicate I do believe we would have made it for the long haul. My H doesn't believe R's should be "work" but had we handled things in a different way I don't think the "work" would have been as hard as he thought.

[tryingtilDorR]

Here are my shortcomings:

We quit becoming friends and became co-parents and roommates. I didn't know it was happening, I just thought this was normal in a marriage and even though I wouldn't classify our marriage as great I figured we had a strong commitment to one another and might have been goign through a bit of a rough period. We had 4 kids so I used that as an excuse I think.

We drifted apart. The unfortunate thing is that I didn't wake up and really figure it out for real until an OM had started filling this role with my W. It turns out I should have known earlier as she developed a parallell life with a group of people she started training with. She enjoyed her time with them and I wasn't part of that. It actually became a source of friction before OM showed up.

It would have been so easy to put in an effort to keep a strong connection with my W, but who knows, it may not have made a difference. It is hard to say. It seems like whatever problems we had in the M are now being dug up to justify what she has done in the past year with OM and why she now wants to leave.

I think this whole thing is really about her, but I know I could have done more to keep our M stronger which might have made a difference.

[LolaL]

What i did wrong: I think I have discovered there are two coinciding factors.The first is that I got complacent. I figured that being that I was SG's wife, it wouldn't matter if I tried or not because I had the ring on my finger. Because of that, I did not listen to him when he tried to tell me there was something wrong.
Although he was not completely forthcoming, he did drop hints that he was unhappy, and I just figured the issues would fix themselves.

I was wrong, and ultimately he turned to someone else.
Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming myself for his affair,. but the fact that i did not listen was a contributing factor.

[musclegal]

In the movie "Its Complicated" Meryl Streep tells Alec Baldwin that she did some things wrong too--but that she didn't have to admit them because he had an affair. I think that there is something to be said about that. But on the other hand, there was a post to Yahoo that seemed to BLAME the LBS for the A! That the whole reason for the A was because the R wasn't good between the H & W. We can all be better people. We can all strive to recognize our weaknesses, and we all have blame in a marriage for a loss of connection. But I still think that there are lots of people who would NEVER have an A, no matter how bad their marriage is. It makes it really hard to fix things. Communication is important, but really, an A is makes the playing field unfair.

[LolaL]

IMHO, any A is the fault of the perpetrator. No matter what the marital situation, an A is a choice between two people, one of which is OBVIOUSLY not the spouse.

Regardless, though, I have come to discover that no one is perfect, and there is always room to improve. I also believe that if you even have a friend of the same sex, who is not a romantic interest that comes before your spouse, that potentially could be the equivalant of an EA.

When it comes right down to it, somewhere along the way one spouse forgot to put the other first, forsaking all others.

[Done in VA]

I haven't been on this site in a LONG time. And I've been wanting to give an update on myself & what I've learned about my marriage. Our divorce will be final this August.

I'm not going to go into the dynamics of things between the 2 of us. That would take forever. STBXH kept saying I was "controlling" when he first admitted he was done (although he went to MC for 6 months after dropping the bomb, but never "tried" to work on the marriage). I could never figure this out. I was not possessive, we both had outside interests, etc. It's taken me over a year to finally "think" I may understand what he meant.

I was too controlling over MYSELF. I never fully let my guard down with him. He never got 100% of ME. I am a VERY guarded person...nobody's going to take advantage of me, nobody's going to f--- me over, I will not be used. I always had a wall up protecting myself from STBXH doing these things to me. And I don't even know why. He would make a mistake & I would not see it as a simple mistake, I would see it as - you did this to piss me off. you did this on purpose just to make me mad. I would never give him the benefit of the doubt.

After 6 months of MC, reading every book on saving a M, DBing my butt off & turning into June Cleaver, twisting myself into a pretzel to become the person I thought he wanted me to be...the most painful & agonizing 6 months of my entire life...he admitted that I'd made all the changes he'd asked for, but he still wanted a divorce. I got mad & I was DONE! I went out 2 days later & by some strange twist of fate, met someone else that I am still with today (9 months later). I may be judged for this, but I don't care. My timeframe for saving my marriage was 6 months & I tried my damndest to "make H love me again". It didn't work.

You would think in my new R, I wouldn't trust & would be even more guarded, but for some reason I'm just the opposite. I have given 100% of myself to (we'll call him Bill). If H had been sitting next to me & asked me to make him a sandwich, I would have said - get up and make it yourself! I'd be thinking - you're not going to control me & see if you can get me to do something that you could easily do yourself. If Bill asks me the same thing, I'll do it. I do it bc I realize I'm being asked to do something for the simple fact that it would be nice. I stopped overanalyzing everything, I stopped taking things negatively & I do nice things just bc I want to make him happy. I could honestly go on & on about different things that caused the demise of my marriage. None of which I felt could not be fixed...none of which I believe you would get a D over, but H did.