A Good Catch Indeed!

Well, shoot! Now I really feel dumb, because my warning signs weren't cryptic at all - I was just an idiot. Let's see...

1. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth once very early on in our relationship. My future H was waiting for me in bed, and he shouted to me enthusiastically, "I hope you like a lot of sex!" And after I said, "Praise Jesus!" and crossed myself, it occurred to me to ask him what he considered "a lot of sex". Once a week at least, he said. I had a bad moment while I did some math around that: Less than once a day is a hardship for me, but once a week is more than the zero I'm getting now. I figured we'd eventually be able to meet somewhere in the middle. Hahahaha... :)

2. He always used to start without me. Big warning sign that I wasn't really, you know, essential to his process.

3. This should have been the capper, but see "idiot" above. "Gee, hon - you don't mind if I just flip through this **** magazine while we're doing it, do you? Here, I'll just put it right above your head, where it won't be in the way at all, and I can flip through it at my leisure." I guess I'm lucky he didn't put it right over my face.

Yet 24 years later, I'm still here. Yeah, see "idiot" above.

kimberly62, I also attended marriage prep classes -- Catholic, yes? I was not Catholic. Hell, I didn't even want to get married in a church, but I acquiesced. I said, "Fine, but no communion." It was recommended that we abstain from sex (we had already been living together for about 2 1/2+ years) until after the wedding. I don't recall how long that was from the classes until the wedding. Lame.

Can you set yourself free?

Ubetcha. When H & I were first dating, he took care of all cooking and things domestic. Fast forward to his refusal of a long=distance engagement & move to be with me as I took a new job. We're driving along, talking about something, when he says, "I'm not going to do this forever," referring to his overall willingness to take care of us while I got my career started. It had the ring of truth. I locked him out of my apartment while I thought good and hard about what I had gotten myself into. But hey, here he had moved physically, and moved a small mountain to get his own training program switched to my location. And without him, I was utterly alone and at a job that was far less than optimal. So I went ahead.



During this time, he would also tell me what we should do before I had the opportunity to form my own opinions about things. It was irritating that he would jump in so quickly before I had thought things through on my own. Or that he would dismiss my assessment of a situation. But hey, he certainly had been more successful in life than I had. It spoke volumes of his tendency to do just what he wanted without feeling any need to compromise.

"You are gay. You'd be a good bottom."

OMG, YES!!! I was so young and dumb! He was disrespectful towards his mother at times; today he does not call her often....now, I know that he does love her...but, he also supposedly "loves" me....I think he's always had issues with being bossed by women (the way he grew up..dysfunctional family, large family, raised by grandmother, mother and aunts...)....I think he has quite a disdain of women..or perhaps a fear of them? At 20 you don't see these things..too bad I didn't see it at 32 when we FINALLY tied the knot either (even THAT was my idea!!!)...omg...

The comments from my soon to be sister in law about their narcissistic controlling pants wearing mother, followed up with your soon to be wife is much like her.

I recalled an event from when we were dating that really should have sent up some red flags.

My wife had a cousin visiting from out of town, and was staying with their family. I took them out for the night and on the way home, her cousin was rubbing her hands all over me while I drove, she was in the backseat.

So, when I drop them off, her cousin asks me to come back and she would sneak out.

I was tired and just went home. I figured she was a nut and let it go.

Well, I told my future wife about it a couple of weeks later, because I had just forgotten about it, and she accused me of coming back to see her cousin. She even said her dad saw my car in their driveway later that night.

I joked that "I doubt I drove over in my sleep. I went home and went to bed."

She was mad at me for a couple of weeks over that.

I didn't even do anything!

Well - When we got married my wife is a very conservative Christian (I am too but not to that extent) She was also definitely a Virgin.... Sex never occurred while dating and she acted as if it wa not an issue...... I always thought that after we were married she would warm up to sex (you know experiance an ******) Well 23 years later she is still overly conservative and Sex is infrequent..... So much for the try it you'll like it therory....

A week after I was married my wife refused to perform oral sex, as she had done frequently while we dated, because "we're married now." A quarter of a century later.......she meant it!

I did not heed that warning and should have.

"Nobody in my family gets divorced."



And there might have been a comment about a shotgun.

Well, to be a bit flippant - your wife did heed the calling, but without the early morning vespers & she got a comfortable bed too. And even worse, the tackle box closed on your ****.



I agree in retrospect there are usually some glaring warning bells that we wish we'd listened to. One thing that became clear to me was the relationship between her parents and the way in which her mom was the boss, and also had a crazy focus on the kids. W essentially repeated those patterns.

Not necessarily comments per se, but he had some unresolved psychological issues, some bitterness towards his father and his ex-wife that precluded his ability to maintain a healthy relationship.

When I was a newlywed during my early 20's, married, I recall that I asked my wife what was the reason she married me. I know, sounds like a dumb question, but there were issues just prior to the wedding that almost derailed the event. Her answer was, because you had a job!!! I sort of laughed at the answer, because it sounded like a worn out answer you might hear on TV. Well, many years latter, and given the intimacy issues that I have been facing for over ten years, I look at the answer and see it for what it really was. Along with the protective courting (Isolation from others) that transpired after we met, and started to date. For her, yes she got a good catch, and I made it easy for her having just gotten out of the military, and just ripe for the plucking. 20/20 hindsight is a great tool. Too bad its wasted on a mature crowd.

My husband used to work on a survey ship in Alaska. He'd been gone something like three months, and I went down to meet his ship when it came in.



We got back to the car with his things, and I put my arms around him and went to kiss him. I still remember exactly what he said in a harsh and scolding tone as he refused to reciprocate. "I have to WORK with these people".



Then we went home and he went straight to sleep.

Yes. Her mother's behavior and attitude(s) toward marriage and what was instilled in her daughter as to what a male-female relationship was all about.

It sounds like maybe they were close?



"Catch" is a funny word. It can mean to snare (I caught him in my lair) ; to entangle (I caught his life up hopelessly into mine), to trick or deceive (He didn't get caught in my scheme. Damn it.)



It can also mean to become aware, to understand or perceive (I caught on) and, among others, to check oneself (I caught myself before I made that mistake again).



Words are important - I always pay attention to them.

They cannot be retracted; they're out there for the world to see (and hear) and may not be forgotten.



That "joke". Did it feel like a sucker punch? It sounded like one.

The convent comment... any woman who says she should've joined a convent has considered a completely sex-free life. Run!!!