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Many girls here have marriage as a goal. I'm not here to discuss whether this is a good idea or not, we have multiple threads for that.
I am here to warn you that men will sometimes behave themselves until he believes he has you shackled down, then show his true feelings. He will start to act entitled and expect you to do everything, all cooking, all cleaning, all errands, have sex whenever he wants to. He will become abusive. He will cheat.
Don't ever think "but we just got married!" Girl, doing it after 6 months is better than doing it after 10 years. Doing it after 10 years is still better than doing it after 15, but the earlier the merrier.
A similar thing may happen only once you have his kids. Again, don't subject yourself to that kind of behavior just because he feels you can't leave now.
If you do feel that his behavior is shifting after marriage, be very protective of your birth control. Look for signs of tampering in pills and condoms. He will try to have your child whether you agree with or not.
I know a woman who got married and the day after, she caught him doing heroin. He said it was too late because she was stuck with him now. Good thing she's not a chump and divorced his ass.
Yep. Know someone who's bf was ready for kids, she wasnt. She was even doubting the relationship and preparing to leave. The condom "accidentally" broke and he bullied her into having the child and did a shotgun wedding. Relationship became more abusive and controlling after birth and marriage.
Men can absolutely baby trap you to get what they want
Didn't really see the writing on the wall until a couple years into the marriage and our child was just a little over a year old.
We dated years before marriage. we had a beautiful wedding, amazing honeymoon, romantic vacations.
*Always keep vetting*
He regrets his behavior...in so much as it cost him losing me. I really don't think he regrets anything other than it affecting him negatively now.
Absolutely. Abusive men don’t reveal who they really are until after they feel they have you locked down. So after marriage, once you get pregnant, and after you give birth are prime times for them to drop their masks (and yes, they will tamper with your birth control in order to force those situations to occur).
Fortunately, FDS teaches vetting techniques for identifying such men before you are in those situations with one, but you have to trust the process. If a man doesn’t pass the vetting stage, then you need to drop him. Marriage isn’t a prize. Marriage to the right man can be rewarding, but THE RIGHT MAN is key. Marriage itself is nothing, and marriage to the wrong man is hell.
My first sign was before our wedding, but after we'd already paid for the venue and sent out invites. I saw my soon to be husband and his mother editing a document on the computer. I asked what it was, and they explained that he still had his ex wife on his insurance, so they were editing it (fraudulently) to get her off. I still don't completely understand what they were doing, how they were able to do it, what it really meant. For all I know, he was still married to her- maybe still is.
He ended up stealing my identity, getting a car repossessed in my name, taking out multiple lines of credit and loans, destroying my credit.
I should have paid attention to that major red flag.
Until marriage? Men I’ve met are too impatient for that.
💯 A Just World fallacy/delusion thing we do is to act like every secret life-long con predator displays his red flags in advance. This is not true. Many do, but a great many don’t have a single red flag to spot. Some of them have perfect masks and only drop them years into a marriage. To talk about “the red flags the victim missed” makes the victim sound crazy to most people. This abuse is disturbingly subtle.
All we can do is always know where the exits are, have a prenup, stash emergency cash, never let a man isolate you from friends and support, leave at the very first sign of an affair, and file for divorce as soon as you think you need one.
Something that scares me about legally marrying someone is that there are right wingers who think no fault divorce should be illegal. With roe vs wade im wondering what’s stopping them.
All of these stories make me wanna start dating when I go into menopause 😂
This happens all too frequently.
I couldn't agree more! My ex seemed kind and considerate before we got married, he would volunteer to get pick up my groceries and give me lifts (I didn't have a car). And then when we got married he started punishing me for forcing him to do those things
This is true in my case. I was married for 2 months when he physically attacked me! It was the only and last time! I never looked back after that!
It's worth noting that this can go in the other direction. I've seen a couple of men acknowledge their wives want kids that later mysteriously "convinced" them not to. It's a lot more easily reversible to divorce these guys, but definitely make sure he's on the same page as you unambivalently before tying the knot, since these guys can waste the time when it's safest for women to have children if that's something you want.
Less than 2 weeks after getting married I found out my husband was under investigation for a hit in run in his work truck. He kept it hidden from me. Nothing was proven, but over time I learned he was prone to using the company vehicles for "off book" runs that he was making money under the table. Other criminal activities became clear to me as well. He kept all that well hidden until we married. It was a nightmare. I was and still am a very law abiding, good two shoes that has terrible taste in men evidently. I worked with him in the military and got to know a completely different person. The person I got to know was an act. The reality was horrible. I began divorcing him before the first year was up but it still took a long time. He fought me tooth and nail. He also admitted that he hid things from me hoping I would stay married to him. If he could have baby trapped me he would have. That's another story.
Another time I was in love with a man who I almost married. I found out after starting a business with him that he owed the IRS a lot of money and was a chronic tax evader. I closed out our business and lost all interest in him after that.
My second husband had huge secrets that I never fully uncovered but I have some clues to his having bizzare fetishes and really disturbing behavior related to them.
Not everything can be found in a CBI or credit check but every woman serious about a man should do the minimum and get a criminal background check and credit check of anyman they are getting serious about. The rest is well, trust your instincts, don't give him credit for things he hasn't actually proven to you, listen carefully because most of the time these men tell on themselves. I wish hiring a P.I. was affordable but if a woman can do it, perhaps she should. But if she gets found out, it will ruin a relationship with a man who may be worthy. I don't know how to navigate that. The best warning is that men are by nature deceptive and never underestimate what they are willing to hide from you.