I have every faith that when I walk down my aisle next year, it will be until we part.
However, with 42 percent of couples headed for divorce according to the most recent statistics from the government, it feels impossible to commit to one person for my entire life.
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I’ve lost count of the times I’ve asked myself: What is the secret to a long and happy ever after?
Und, perhaps most importantly: Will I ever do it right?
Up until when I met my fiancé Jonathan, 42, a musician, from Huddersfield, last year, my love life was littered with failed romances.
And there was a common theme — I never fully understood why each relationship had gone wrong.
I’m 33 years old now and ready to tie the knot, but I want to make sure I don’t repeat past mistakes.
What better way to discover what went wrong than to track down five of my ex-partners and ask them questions?
I expected some hard-to-swallow home truths, but if they help give my marriage the best chance of success, it’ll be worth it.
Here’s what I found out . . .
ATTENTION SEEKING WILL GET YOU NOWHERE
First, I contact Ben, the boy who I lost my virginity with when I was 16 years old. Despite a few fine lines at the edges of his eyes, he’s still as good-looking as I remember.
I’ve scribbled down on my notepad, “Was it me that led to the break-up?” — and it quickly becomes clear that it was.
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“You upset me, you lashed out, and I always regret how things ended,” Ben says. “It really did hurt at the time.”
But I did not know that he was hurt. I simply wanted his attention, and I must have tried to get it in stupid ways.
I was never satisfied with my eight months of marriage. I also didn’t believe he loved me enough. So I created a number of childish games to keep him interested.
When he couldn’t make a family holiday, I invited a mutual male friend in his place.
The singer of the band Ben was the one who drummed in. The teenage attempt to provoke him was successful and he ended up breaking up with me publicly at a party.
“I was so into you, but by the end I was just enduring it,”He says. “You pushed me out of love with you. I didn’t date for a year after we split up, as I didn’t want to risk feeling like that again.”
It shocks me now to realize how much I must have hurt him. I like to think I’ve matured, as I realise that my spoiled teenage self wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a marriage.
Ben married a girl he was friends with for many years. They now have two beautiful children.
THE GRASS ISN’T GREENER
I MET my next long-term boyfriend, Sam, at university. He was my next long-term boyfriend, Sam. I foolishly walked away from him after two years.
I wanted to “experience more”, but didn’t realise just how good I already had it.
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Sam is in a long-term relationship with his partner for many years. He may even be married.
My social media stalking isn’t very successful because I think he’s restricted what I can see. He writes me after I contact him: “Is it for a feature? I could have guessed.”
My reply is left unread and I don’t blame him. I’ve spent the last ten years feeling guilty about the way things ended.
The whole “grass is greener”Syndrome is a common reason why relationships end early, leaving room for regret and long-term damage. Could this explain why an average UK marriage lasts just 11 years?
I realize now that this toxic mentality was a part of a healthy, loving relationship.
Now I realize I must not shift my attention from what I have to where I might be lacking.
A THICK SKIN IS ESSENTIAL
After Sam and I had split up, the tenth decade of our relationship resulted in an unexpected pregnancy in 2014.
My son’s dad chose not to be involved, so I got on with life as a single mum. When my son was still little, one of my first relationships was with a struggling musician.
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Before things ended, we dated for several months.
This struggling musician was a finalist on X Factor. He appeared on quite a few reality shows before he was briefly a national treasure.
But apparently I’ve faded from his memory.
“Er, it was, like, six years ago, I don’t even remember tbh,”He replies with a thinly disguised contempt.
It is painful to read.
Dr John Gottmann is the author of Why Marriages Suffer or Fail. He believes that contempt can lead to divorce.
In fact, it’s the number one predictor of divorce within the first six years of a marriage.
I now see why.
DON’T POOL YOUR MONEY
I THINK I’m getting somewhere with a guy, David, I dated for a year in 2017.
For a start, it sounds like I’d made a decent first impression. He said: “You were fit, cool, funny, very, very confident and eccentric, which I liked.”
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The conversation then moves back and forth until he says he’d “rather not revisit things”.
He added: “It was such a painful time for me. I really cared about you and I’m still sad about how things ended.”
I’d ended things over a row about money, after David asked me to give him spending money for a holiday together.
I felt that he wasn’t pulling his weight financially, which very quickly caused resentment.
After that, it is wrong to continue asking for information.
It’s no surprise to learn that money-related conflicts were recently cited as the number one reason why couples divorce.
Experts recommend one way to avoid this is by having three bank accounts — one each and one for shared expenses.
DON’T CHANGE FOR ANYONE
I was an older brother to my son, and fell in love with Chris, a local barman.
His work was always moving him all over the country. We tried to keep in touch long-distance but things ended up falling apart.
We still speak on the phone and I’d always believed if he’d stuck in one place long enough, we’d have stayed together.
We agree to meet up at the bar where our first meeting took place five years later. I shared my theory with him about why we split up. He looks down at me in guilt.
“I’m sorry Amy, for me it was never going to go anywhere, it was just fun,”He says. “Honestly, I could never accept that you were a mother.”
This is a new thing to me. Chris never mentioned that he was having a problem being a parent.
I feel like a fool and want to escape from him, the bar, and the entire experience.
MY MISTAKES – LEARNING
EXPERIMENT over, I tell my fiancé Jonathan what Chris said and ask whether he’s ever had similar concerns.
Much to my relief he tells me that while he’d never wanted kids before we met — so much so that he had a vasectomy — he now loves my Star Wars-mad seven-year-old.
Reflecting on my past threw up some home truths and some of the new information was hard to swallow — especially hearing how I’d hurt others.
But I also realised that while I’ve given my time to too many fools in the past, my experiences have helped give me a much stronger chance of making my marriage work.
I’m now with the right guy, who can keep his cool with my drama and always sees the positive in every situation, and I know I definitely won’t be repeating my mistakes from the past. Bring on the wedding bells.
- Additional reporting: Claire Dunwell