What Changed?

[DonaldOrwinRenKern]

What changed in the way you were when you first got married to who you are now? If you feel you've change, can you describe why and why is it positive or negative?

 

[mkgal1]

I was VERY insecure when we first got married. When problems began, I believed it was my fault. If only I were a better wife, a better mother, a better cook, a better housekeeper, etc. etc. I tried for years to perfect myself, but when I was busy working on one area, another area would suffer. I felt as though I was chasing in circles trying to please everyone. I was allowing the demands of others to dictate my life.

I finally hit a wall and realized I will never be perfect and all I can do is strive for my best with my focus on God's priorities for my day, not what others have for me. This will let people down, but I can take that now. God's yoke is light in comparison.

 

[snoochface]

I've grown up a lot I think. I'm not as selfish as I used to be, and I've learned how to compromise on things. I think when I first got married, I didn't know enough as much about how to show love as I do now.

The biggest change is I'm a Christian now and wasn't then. The other changes likely stem more from that than they do specifically from being married.

 

[dayknee]

I changed so much during my marriage..the first 8/9 years was realatively good.
No big issues other than some small lies and small amounts of pornography.
I didnt make a big deal of it becuase I thought that all men view porn and will probably lie to some extent.
I lost myself..I lost my self respect..I lost Dayknee...I lost my decision making skills...I lost my the ability to trust my own judgment...I lost the ability to be the happy go lucky person I used to be becuase I was bogged down by control...I couldn't even crack a joke for fear that he would be disappointed in me. Sometimes he gave me these looks like..[wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth]..she said that..or [wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth]..I cant believe she just did that. I started to feel bad about the person I was..I started to really strive to be a better wife and to not push buttons and to really work on meeting the needs he had for a wife.
After the past ten years of problems and unhappiness..we got seperated and have been for the last two.
His porn habit became an addiction..he neglected me and didn't desire me or want to be intimate with me. The lies were still infrequent, but much worse..The illegal issues in the marraige regarding our own company and the company he worked for. The rping sex online with other women..
Once he left..I started counseling and have slowly gained back some self respect..I no longer doubt myself when I hear what he says or see what he does..I AM ACTUALLY HEARING WHAT I HEAR AND SEEING WHAT IM SEEING. I am lovable for who I am..I am funny and fun loving....I am a good person..I have a good heart and I do not have to do things that change myself just for another person to love me.
It's hard to be me now, becuase this place is very lonely and scary..trying to go back to the person I used to be..or rather..the person I've always been is very very hard and is taking a lot of work. I do regress admittedly..and I hate when I do..I cry often and am torn often in where God is in all of this..but I am working so hard to get back to being me. I hope I get there!

 

[tiredwalker]

I don't use volume to try to win fights...or even try to "win" fights. I came from a very loud family. When DH and I got in our first argument he said, "Look at you. You're so angry, oh my gosh." I replied sort of shocked, "Oh, I not really angry, I just wanted to get my point across." I've toned it down for the better.

 

[hisbloodformysins]

What changed in the way you were when you first got married to who you are now? If you feel you've change, can you describe why and why is it positive or negative?

I have changed for the better. I have become more comfortable and confident in who I am and what I stand for.

This did not come because of a marriage of bliss, this came out of the difficulties and hardships of our marriage. I think my husband and I have both had to learn our oneness... what makes us special as individuals and what we will and will not compromise/tolerate with one another....

I have been forced to look at my own faults inorder to help improve our relationship. I have also had to take a stand and maintain my stand even when my husband doesn't agree and when things get tough.

I have also learned how to rely on God to meet my needs and my faith has grown immensly.

I have learned to see past my own nose.

All these things are good, but it hasn't been an easy road getting there.

HB

 

[hisbloodformysins]

I was VERY insecure when we first got married. When problems began, I believed it was my fault. If only I were a better wife, a better mother, a better cook, a better housekeeper, etc. etc. I tried for years to perfect myself, but when I was busy working on one area, another area would suffer. I felt as though I was chasing in circles trying to please everyone. I was allowing the demands of others to dictate my life.

I finally hit a wall and realized I will never be perfect and all I can do is strive for my best with my focus on God's priorities for my day, not what others have for me. This will let people down, but I can take that now. God's yoke is light in comparison.

God bless you on your journey sister

 

[clycleader]

For the most part, things have changed for the better. We now have one beautiful son and another child on the way in about 6 weeks. We're doing well with our home, life etc. I can agree to some degree about what someone said about loosing part of yourself. I think that just happens though. Not that you "lost" anything (at least in my situation) but that things just change and you're not the person you used to be. I was really really independant adn having to work alongside someone to make decisions was sometimes difficult for me (still is).
I have stayed home with our son for the last 3 years and that was a HUGE struggle at first. Again, because of the independent attitude. I had always worked and taken care of myself, made my own decisions etc. I was in my 30's when we married adn pretty set in my ways.
I love having my companion forever (good and bad) he takes my bad moods pretty well and it's great to have someone to share the day to day things with. I love his personality. He never ever made me feel insecure about my decision to stay at home even though I thought it would happen. It was all me who made me insecure. It took me a while to find my "New self" and adjust to married life. Now that I'm here, tho (5 years later) it's great and I love having the love of my life by my side.
It's not always easy or romantic and mushy and stuff, but it's always..... for always.

 

[DonaldOrwinRenKern]

This is the reason I ask this question… There are so many different perspective on marriage and what a persons role is. I have seen people who meet and have this beautiful connection throughout their marriage. Sure, they’ll have their ups and downs but it will be relatively mild compared to many others. It seems that people who are lost and not sure who they are end up in not so great situations.

In my situation, unknown to me at the time I freaked out as many do at certain times in their life. I was 25 years old and had not had a solid relationship in some time. My father who was fifty at the time called me up one day and said he had gotten married. I freaked, wondering if I would be fifty and getting married to someone I barely knew.

Ironically enough, the next relationship I had became my wife. There were many red flags that I ignored because a lot of these red flags were the cause of many break ups before hand… but I went into the relationship thinking there was something wrong with me and I needed someone to straighten me out.

Big mistake…

I lost my identity.

I learned something huge out of this whole thing and do not regret a single day of my marriage. I will never get into a relationship with anyone thinking that there is something wrong with me. Ironically enough, it caused me to really research human behavior and conditioned patterns of the mind. The deep reason behind all human behavior is to escape pain or find pleasure, pain is usually based on some imagined fear… such as my fear that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life at the age of 25. It is so ridiculous but I believed it with enough intensity that I made it real in my mind.

At the time of my marriage I felt like I was drowning… and although I was with someone, I constantly felt alone. I also felt ashamed because this was not the typical feelings that a “MAN” was supposed to have. When we were getting seperated I was attacked on all levels by the church and although she was out having a good time rebelling and enjoying dating again, I was willing to bite the bullet and let her be the victim. The looks I would get were unbelievable. I stayed at home with the kids, she went out most every day... I didn't care, I still don't, I just think it's amusing how people will judge you without knowing the full story... even to the point where they hate you...

Eventually everyone looked down on me and I was the bad guy, I was also told that I would no longer be under the umbrella of protection from the church… The story is more exciting but out of respect for certain parties I’ll leave it at that.

After a deep depression (no details, but it was bad)

I woke up… I had been told that I was evil and imperfect and that God would no longer be there…

But God was still there, God had always been there and will always be there… no conditions, no judgments, No record of wrong, always protected, always trusted, always persevered… Gods love for me is ruthless and stops at nothing…

At that moment I realized that no one, not even those who claimed to be the authority on God could threaten me and try to scare me into control by claiming they knew what God was thinking…

I had the best marriage ever, because although it was a nightmare and ended… I came out of it with so much more than when I entered it.

Yay me!

 

[Sign Of The Fish Burger]

About 10 lbs... for both of us

 

[DonaldOrwinRenKern]

About 10 lbs... for both of us

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Autumnleaf]

I've been through the five stages of grief.

 

[LoisGriffin]

I am actually about 30lbs lighter and dh is the same weight he was back then.

I guess we have both grown up alot. The first year we had loads of challenges like getting used to living together, the little disagreements turning into arguements, living expenses leaving no money for luxuries, health issues.

Now we rarely right. We disagree sometimes but have learnt what winds the other up so can avoid having big fights. We are more mature in so many ways.

 

[Niffer]

I've changed so much - my husband , Remi, is a laid back, placid guy. (I call him a hippy without the drugs.)
Whereas I'm a huge extrovert and love to be running around doing things. He's taught me how to mellow and relax once and a while, not to mention he did the (what I thought was impossible) and tamed my tongue.
I love debating and arguing and I use sarcasm in an argument like second nature..but shortly after getting married I realized that this wouldn't work with him. He hates sarcasm, yelling and deliberate misunderstanding. And the argument would go nowhere, so I changed and though I can slip back into my "biting" ways, I have gotten much better at controlling my tongue.

And he's learned that remaining silent when we have an issue is the worst thing possible to do.

~ Niff

 

[poohgirl]

I love my husband and I am so very thankful for him every day more and more. We are not perfect acting or perfect looking, but we are perfectly happy with each other. Over the years we have had bumps and we have shared forgiveness.

So, that even now as I am dealing with my recent medical diagnosis no words can express the level of appreciation and love I have for my husband being here for me.

God is good and he has given me a really good man!!!

 

[Million Pieces]

What changed? I lost my identity; I got lost in a post-partum depression that went undiagnosed, and instead of having the security in himself to support me through it he took it personally and withdrew from me. I continued to withdraw from him as a result of simply not having the emotional skills at that young and damaged age to draw my own strength from myself. He became domineering and controlling, he became a very angry man, and tried to control the spinning thoughts in his head by controlling the rest of us. I retreated even farther into his control, only because it was easier than taking responsibility for the life I had. I was smothered, I never traveled, I never went to college, I never developed my own interests or ambitions.

Then I met one of my best friends and started to upset his apple cart. I began to change myself, to make my OWN choices. Except that because I wasn't doing it the way HE wanted me to, he didn't like it. But at the very same time, down deep in his heart, he didn't like the puppet I had become. It ended up being a very brief period of self-discovery for me.

So now we've found ourselves disconnected from each other, and very unhappy with our lives, and with each other. I'm not the vibrant, world-wise, confident woman he seems to want, and he's not the strong, giving, disciplined man I wish I had. I don't want to have to divorce, I have every faith that it can be restored. At the same time, I wish for nothing more than to gain my confidence back. He seems to think those things are self-exclusive; that I can't possibly be confident and self-assured and still be married to him. Fact is, he doesn't want to be married to the mousy, repressed woman that he made. At the same time, he doesn't seem to see the value in investing the time into re-creating a complimentary marriage.

Blah, sorry for the downer, I'm in a bit of a funk tonight. And seeing the glowing loving and starry eyed resonses up above mine just made me look harder at what I DON'T have.

 

[dayknee]

What changed? I lost my identity; I got lost in a post-partum depression that went undiagnosed, and instead of having the security in himself to support me through it he took it personally and withdrew from me. I continued to withdraw from him as a result of simply not having the emotional skills at that young and damaged age to draw my own strength from myself. He became domineering and controlling, he became a very angry man, and tried to control the spinning thoughts in his head by controlling the rest of us. I retreated even farther into his control, only because it was easier than taking responsibility for the life I had. I was smothered, I never traveled, I never went to college, I never developed my own interests or ambitions.

Then I met one of my best friends and started to upset his apple cart. I began to change myself, to make my OWN choices. Except that because I wasn't doing it the way HE wanted me to, he didn't like it. But at the very same time, down deep in his heart, he didn't like the puppet I had become. It ended up being a very brief period of self-discovery for me.

So now we've found ourselves disconnected from each other, and very unhappy with our lives, and with each other. I'm not the vibrant, world-wise, confident woman he seems to want, and he's not the strong, giving, disciplined man I wish I had. I don't want to have to divorce, I have every faith that it can be restored. At the same time, I wish for nothing more than to gain my confidence back. He seems to think those things are self-exclusive; that I can't possibly be confident and self-assured and still be married to him. Fact is, he doesn't want to be married to the mousy, repressed woman that he made. At the same time, he doesn't seem to see the value in investing the time into re-creating a complimentary marriage.

Blah, sorry for the downer, I'm in a bit of a funk tonight. And seeing the glowing loving and starry eyed resonses up above mine just made me look harder at what I DON'T have.

You just wrote my life..Add porn is there and lying and yeah..you have my husband.
I've been seperated from him for two years..in school for one and a half years getting my BA..working my tail off to get through school so I can make it on my own..and trying so so so hard to get my own identity back. I can relate becuase you are me..or at least I see it in what you've said. I have a very controlling husband and a very angry one also. He hates that Im in school and he hates that I don't "listen" to him.
Anyways, I just didn't want you to feel alone in this.

 

[mkgal1]

What changed? I lost my identity; I got lost in a post-partum depression that went undiagnosed, and instead of having the security in himself to support me through it he took it personally and withdrew from me. I continued to withdraw from him as a result of simply not having the emotional skills at that young and damaged age to draw my own strength from myself. He became domineering and controlling, he became a very angry man, and tried to control the spinning thoughts in his head by controlling the rest of us. I retreated even farther into his control, only because it was easier than taking responsibility for the life I had. I was smothered, I never traveled, I never went to college, I never developed my own interests or ambitions.

Then I met one of my best friends and started to upset his apple cart. I began to change myself, to make my OWN choices. Except that because I wasn't doing it the way HE wanted me to, he didn't like it. But at the very same time, down deep in his heart, he didn't like the puppet I had become. It ended up being a very brief period of self-discovery for me.

So now we've found ourselves disconnected from each other, and very unhappy with our lives, and with each other. I'm not the vibrant, world-wise, confident woman he seems to want, and he's not the strong, giving, disciplined man I wish I had. I don't want to have to divorce, I have every faith that it can be restored. At the same time, I wish for nothing more than to gain my confidence back. He seems to think those things are self-exclusive; that I can't possibly be confident and self-assured and still be married to him. Fact is, he doesn't want to be married to the mousy, repressed woman that he made. At the same time, he doesn't seem to see the value in investing the time into re-creating a complimentary marriage.

Blah, sorry for the downer, I'm in a bit of a funk tonight. And seeing the glowing loving and starry eyed resonses up above mine just made me look harder at what I DON'T have.

I came across a great web site called Marriage Today. They talked about something that made a lot of sense to me. The couple that is behind the site married right out of high school. He was very domineering and she was almost self-hating. Their marriage was spiraling out of control with him yelling and trying to control her, which in turn caused her to retreat more into herself. When it reached bottom, she then began to gain more confidence and that changed their marriage. They say we marry according to our health, as she was emotionally weak she married in contrast to that. They explain it as like a teeter-totter. If we are an extreme we will marry the contrasting extreme, but we can work on getting that teeter-totter balanced and a change on one side side affects the reaction on the opposing side. Check out their site, you can watch several different teachings of theirs online. They do a MUCH better job of explaining than I ever could. Once on the site, go to "show archives". The one that I was referring to was under "Emotionally Healthy Marriage". It was called "Disarming Destructive Dominance."

I don't see your marriage as hopeless at all. You don't want to be that "mousy" woman anymore, right? Focus on YOU and getting yourself healthy. It is a shame that he doesn't see that he has some responsibility for what you have become, but that is something you have no control over. God's best to you!!

 

[BereanTodd]

For us there have been alot of changes. Not just because of 14 years of marriage, but because we started at 18, and neither of us was really mature enough for this. It is very hard when you are married that young.

We both had a lot of growing up to do, and a lot of learning to view things from the other person's point of view. A lot of learning how to truly, sacrificially love one another.

We were both insecure in many ways and had to grow out of that as well. However, as hard as it has been to get to today, and as close as we came to divorce (extremely close at one point), our marriage is stronger today than it ever has been before. I know that you are never "totally" safe, that there are couples divorced after being married for 30 years, but we would say that having made it through what we've come through, nothing will ever damage or seriously threaten our marriage again.

 

[DonaldOrwinRenKern]

I came across a great web site called Marriage Today. They talked about something that made a lot of sense to me. The couple that are behind the site married right out of high school. He was very domineering and she was almost self-hating. Their marriage was spiraling out of control with him yelling and trying to control her, which in turn caused her to retreat more into herself. When it reached bottom, she then began to gain more confidence and that changed their marriage. They say we marry according to our health, as she was emotionally weak she married in contrast to that. They explain it as like a teeter-totter. If we are an extreme we will marry the contrasting extreme, but we can work on getting that teeter-totter balanced and one change on side side affects the reaction on the opposing side. Check out their site, you can watch several different teachings of theirs online. They do a MUCH better job of explaining than I ever could. Once on the site, go to "show archives". The one that I was referring to was under "Emotionally Healthy Marriage". It was called "Disarming Destructive Dominance."

I don't see your marriage as hopeless at all. You don't want to be that "mousy" woman anymore, right? Focus on YOU and getting yourself healthy. It is a shame that he doesn't see that he has some responsibility for what you have become, but that is something you have no control over. God's best to you!!

I think you make a good point, although I would describe it a little differently and unfortunately it doesn't end with just the spouse.

Most people (and by most I mean 99% of people are very self abusive)

Some physically, most emotionally but they all abuse themselves. People will abuse us slightly less than we abuse ourselves and others.

Many people think very poorly about themselves and will stay in a relationship as it downward spirals. Allowing these personal shifts to take place and feeling like a victim in every circumstance.

Listen, I don't know if you should save your marriage or not, that really isn't up to me and frankly only you can make that decision. It is important to understand that every relationship one enters with this lack of self respect will resemble the failed relationships before it.

Respect yourself, treat yourself well, love yourself... Then demand that everyone treats you with that same respect or gets out of your life.

Working on yourself and how you feel about you is completely in your control... trying to get someone else to understand, or change... that's wasted energy and quite exhausting.