Married Couples: were you ever broken up before engagement?

[KafkasLastWords]

I am wondering if anyone married ever went through a breakup with their now spouse. If so, why did you feel you needed to breakup then? What made you come back together?

[Mme. Chaucer]

I did. We broke up for 4 years and did not see each other during that time. He dealt with his addiction and came back; we got married and remained married for 14 years. Then he returned to drugs and we divorced.

 

For the record, I don't regret the marriage. It was a known risk I took with my eyes open. That being said, I would not advise my course of action to others. Too much pain, and really put our daughter in a terrible mess.

[Lecturer]

During our 3rd year together we broke up for 1 day. She had been depressed for months, and was completely sexless. I was depressed and that made me crave sex that much more. The conflict built and built until I couldn't take it anymore. I gave her a sort of ultimatum which she refused so I ended things.

 

I was so upset and miserable and broken (and guilty), the next morning called and asked her again to work things out. We did and made radical changes to get out of depression.

 

The fact is, in the 8 years since, our sex life has never recovered to pre-depression times. Maybe it is just because that is also when the 'newness' chemistry wore off, or maybe she still resents me for hurting he so badly that day and has never gotten over it.

 

The question of whether it was the right decision? I don't know. I wanted to end it for a valid reason, for sure. The same conflict has always remained present (with varying magnitude) throughout our relationship and marriage. Maybe we could have found new partners that matched us both better. Or maybe I am happier with unsatisfied sex life and decent everything-else than I would be with the opposite.

 

My wife is incredibly attractive, works very hard for our family, and is a wonderful mother. Still, I do envy other couples that are better sexual matches and get to share intimacy in a deeper way.

[Scrybe]

My wife and I broke up before marriage. Twice.

The first time was probably a combination of us rushing things, not being open and honest with each other and the stress of getting pregnant in our first year of dating. After a little over 2 years together I called it quits. We fought all the time. I was miserable. I felt like a shadow of myself. I couldn't be honest with her anymore and felt very tempted to cheat. I'm not a cheater but when I realized I was actually considering it I knew it was over for me. The final straw was when she left early on vacation with our kids (I have a child from a previous marriage) I was to meet her and the kids a week later. During that week I did a lot of soul searching and spent some well deserved time alone. I found myself doing things that I told her I wouldn't do like going to a strip club or internet porn. I was dissapointed with myself and decided that I was going to make things work with her when I saw her again. The first day there was magical and beautiful. We made love under the stars. The rest of the time was miserable. We fought the entire time.

When we got home…I walked into the house…dropped my bags and told her I wanted it all to be over.

It was a tough breakup and we didn't get along very well. I gladly paid child support and helped out our child as much as possible while she finished her degree. She took a job an hour away and moved.

A little over a year later I was visiting her and my daughter and just missed her so much that I offered to come back. She happily accepted me and I commuted to see her each weekend. 4-5 months into that I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I wasn't ready to get back with her and broke up again.

6 months later we are having an argument on the phone and I'm just damn tired of fighting with her every other phone call. She was angry and hurt and she let me know it everytime she could.

A couple months after that I noticed that the angry phone calls and confrontations had stopped. She had been dating someone finally but it ended. I had been dating on and off for the past 18 months. The last few months I was having less and less physical interest in women.

Finally we had a long….very long talk about everything. No yelling. No calling of names. Just honest caring talk. She actuallly listened. I did too. We started to become friends again. A few weeks later I realized that I was still very attracted to her….more so than I had ever been with any of the other women I was with since the break up. I knew then if we got back together I wouldn't cheat because we were apart and I had no interest in other women. Finally one night we slept together. It was amazing. But I told her that I wanted no commitments and that I am still dating around. To my surprise she said okay but if I started sleeping with someone else we needed to stop being intimate. After 2 months of this I was head over heels for her. Even though I told her I was dating around I actually cancelled all the other women I had been in contact with. I was only seeing her but I didn't want her to know that. Finally I confessed the truth two months into our new "arrangement" and told her that I still loved her and apparently had all along. We decided to try again and re-committed to each other. 6 months later we moved in together. 9 months after that we got married. 6 months after that we bought a house together and now we are happier that we've ever been.

We still have the same challenges. The difference is that we handle it much better. We talk more and yell less. We are more gentle and caring with each other's feelings. We still have a lot of work to do but I can't remember loving her more or being more attracted to her. I literally smile looking down on her several times a week when I wake up to find her in my bed. It's like a dream

[KafkasLastWords]

thanks for the feedback! i guess i'm trying to identify whether there are any patterns or common threads for couples that do end up together after a break-up. even though there is a happy ending, it seems like the journey isn't always the smoothest and none of you could have known that you would have gotten back together

[george44]

My wife and I broke up 4 times before we got married. It's a lot easier to break up if you're not married (at least if you take your vows seriously), but the problems still don't go away. Now you just have to put up with them (or get a divorce, which is hard for some people).

 

My opinion is that if break up several times before marriage, don't get married.

[MsRight]

My husband and I broke up one time. We were teenagers when we started dating, and about a year into it, I just felt like I wanted to date other people. It was a distressing break up and we never stopped communicating the whole time we were separated. So, we got back together a year and a half later and that was....over a decade and a half ago. I've often said that I feel like we just met too young.

[KafkasLastWords]

We've never broken up before or even talked about it. In fact, we were really happy but we were about to move in together and were talking about getting engaged (all of last year he told people he couldn't wait to marry me)... then right as we were preparing to start looking at apartments, he said he wasn't happy and broke it off. Either he never meant it when he said he wanted to be with me forever and was convincing himself or he meant it and the reality of it freaked him out. Either way... right now we are done.

[Scrybe]

If someone said they wanted to marry you and then ran for the hills consider it a dodged bullet. Just read all the threads of unhappily married couples and thank your lucky stars you won't be one of them. In my case I had no idea we would ever get back together. In fact I swore that I would never be with her again. Well ....I ate those words. But in the end I think it was better that we didn't get married then. It would have ended in disaster. We're happy now but even in happiness it can be a struggle sometimes. I don't think our relationship could have handled it back then.