Feeling a little too tied down

[anyuta]

Does anyone feel this way sometimes? I've been married for 3.5 years and it seems like I often find myself asking why I got married in the first place. I'll have good days when I forget my troubles and just go with the flow and find myself happy in my situation. But then I have other days when I just want to quit this relationship and run off. At the time when I got married, I was feeling pretty lost in life. I had dreams of leaving the country to study or work, but I had no idea where to begin and what to do. So I settled for the one stable thing I had going in my life. Now, I'm tied down by a career and assets, and although my husband and I travel once a year, I find myself pretty bored with the Monday-Friday, 9-5 routine. I'm doing the one thing I always told myself I wouldn't do - going through the monotonous motions of life, living from one trip abroad to another. I guess I'm still craving fun and adventure and I often feel like I was far too young and emotionally unprepared for marriage (I was 23). Has anyone else felt this way before and does it get ever get easier to forget the life you "could've had"? I don't want to find myself one day regretting every decision I had made. I'm hoping someone can shed some light. I don't want sympathy, I want brutal honesty. If I'm being childish and immature, I want to be made aware. Thanks in advance.

[whichwayisup]

It just takes effort. For both of you to keep life exciting. Go away on weekends, even if it's at a local nice hotel. Take advantage of your City! Do dinner nights, mid week. Pick an evening to see a movie or shoot some pool - Or even go dancing with your husband..Anything that is fun and will keep you two connected.

 

Meet up for lunch mid-week too..

 

Also make sure each of you have time for "you". Still go out with your friends and do things on your own. Being independant in a marriage is important as one can't rely on their partner for everything.

 

Do you love your husband, enough that you can see yourself spending the rest of your life with him? Any thought of kids?

 

Be honest with him and let him know that you need abit more excitement, and also a break up in the daily grind of life.

[Scottdmw]

Is a career change an option for you? If you find the 9-to-5 routine dull, maybe you could find something more variable or exciting. At any rate, spent some time considering whether you're feeling bored with your relationship, your job, your life in general, or what exactly. There are many ways to spice things up, foreign travel is one but it's not at all the only thing. Take a class, learn an instrument, join an interest group, etc.

 

The other thing I would keep in mind is that everybody always wants what they don't have. I'm in my 30s and still single, and I honestly wish every day that I was married. The ability to do a lot of travel is not particularly satisfying except when I’m actually away, it doesn’t help on a daily basis. I would willingly trade it all in to have someone by my side that would know me. So, keep in mind that it is human nature to massively take for granted whatever you have and think that the alternative is going to be a lot better.

 

Scott

[Calendula]

Does anyone feel this way sometimes? I've been married for 3.5 years and it seems like I often find myself asking why I got married in the first place. I'll have good days when I forget my troubles and just go with the flow and find myself happy in my situation. But then I have other days when I just want to quit this relationship and run off. At the time when I got married, I was feeling pretty lost in life. I had dreams of leaving the country to study or work, but I had no idea where to begin and what to do. So I settled for the one stable thing I had going in my life. Now, I'm tied down by a career and assets, and although my husband and I travel once a year, I find myself pretty bored with the Monday-Friday, 9-5 routine. I'm doing the one thing I always told myself I wouldn't do - going through the monotonous motions of life, living from one trip abroad to another. I guess I'm still craving fun and adventure and I often feel like I was far too young and emotionally unprepared for marriage (I was 23). Has anyone else felt this way before and does it get ever get easier to forget the life you "could've had"? I don't want to find myself one day regretting every decision I had made. I'm hoping someone can shed some light. I don't want sympathy, I want brutal honesty. If I'm being childish and immature, I want to be made aware. Thanks in advance.

 

Your post raised a number of questions in my mind:

 

First: Why did you get married in the first place? Give yourself a good long bit to think about it, go back to your journal entries from that time, think long and hard, remember both the good and the bad things... Why were you feeling 'lost in life', in what ways - had you just not figured out what you wanted to do with yourself? Had you recently lost loved ones or family members? What do you come up with?

 

Second: "I had dreams of leaving the country to study or work, but I had no idea where to begin and what to do." Should I read this to mean that you no longer have dreams, and you still have no idea where to begin or what to do to reach those dreams? What dreams did you have then? How have they changed? What is holding you back from pursuing them? Did you want to continue in school, perhaps study foreign language abroad or learn a new discipline? Are you afraid of trying something new because you think your family or husband wouldn't approve?

 

Third: "So I settled for the one stable thing I had going in my life." To settle is always a tricky thing. It makes me ask lots of questions: Why did you settle? What did you settle for? Are you truly miserable with what you got, and if so, why? Did your partner settle for you? What did/does he get out of your marriage?

 

Fourth: "does it ever get easier to forget the life you "could've had"?" If it is the life that you 'could have had' and it didn't actually exist, what is there to forget, the dream? There really is something to be said for trying to make the most of the life you have right now, and not dwelling on the past. The longer you wait to make a change, to find something new that excites you or stimulates you, the more time you will likely spend looking back on your life and say "Oh, if only I hadn't waited so long, I could have done ___," instead of moving forward. If you are constantly looking behind you at lost opportunities, you will miss the ones that are in front of you.

 

Fifth: "I don't want to find myself one day regretting every decision I had made." You have to consciously choose to regret a decision, and often in doing so people tend to overlook the good reasons they had for making different decisions and the good things that came from them. Like Scott points out in the previous post, human nature is to want what we don't have because we think it will be better. Someone who is alone wants a partner, someone with a partner wants a better one or none at all. Sometimes it just comes down to accepting what we have that we can't change, and choosing to change the things that we can.

 

My mom once told me that few people ever figure out who they really are before the age of 25 (ah, the wisdom of mothers). Having recently turned 27 and feeling the impending weight of turning 30 in three years, I'd like to think I have a few things figured out, but I know I still have a lot to learn. Many of these things I have left to learn (like how to stay self-motivated, how to continue to perservere in the face of frustration and failure, how to truly love someone and committ to a lifetime with another person), I am only now truly becoming aware of, enough so that I can take control of my actions to such an extent to change them. I have not yet married, but this is because I made a promise to myself at the age of 18 to marry only after I had finished all of my formal education. Nine years of college and graduate school later, I have a PhD but no wedding ring, and no regrets. I've also had two long term relationships (4 yrs and 3 yrs) which have taught me a lot about relationships and what I want out of one, but not necessarily about marriage. I'm still looking for Mr. Right, but I now have a much better idea of what I want than I did when I was 20 (or 23 for that matter).

 

If you truly love the man you are with, and he still loves you, and you still want to find a way to make it work, take some time to figure out what YOU really want from life and talk to him about it. If he loves you, chances are he will support you, and will at least try to understand that you need a change. Perhaps you just need a new challenge, something you can sink your teeth into and enjoy. Until you find that one thing, that one job, that is your passion in life, three years is long enough to do the same thing.

 

I hope this helps some, or at least gets you thinking.