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Does marriage change things?

secondplace's picture

Question for you ladies that lived with your SO, before turning him into your DH.

Did it change your relationship with the skids? the BM? other family members? Your own relationship with your DH?

My FDH and I have lived together for just over 2 years. We were "friends" for about 10 months before that. We are getting married next year. The skids (SD12 and SD10)seem excited about the wedding, but some of the posts on here are making me apprehensive. Some of you say your relationships changed after the wedding.

My question is simply - Why? What happened?

Comments

antidrama's picture

Ditto on the "BM hating me more". Until we were legally bound she viewed me as a "phase". SD was so excited when we got engaged and we even re-created the proposal when she was around (he did it while the 2 of us were at the beach) so she could feel involved. Then BM broke her heart (and ours) by telling her she couldn't be in the wedding or even attend. Eventually she changed her mind (thank god!!!).

Now she knows I"m not going anywhere. Smile

mom2five's picture

I didn't consider myself a stepmother until after I was married. I guess I went from being daddy's friend to daddy's wife/stepmother after we got married. That alone changed our relationship.

secondplace's picture

Wow Crayon! I wouldn't get married either if my income counted towards the child support amount. I make substantially more than my FDH will probably make when he finishes school. That's why I always tell him I'm glad I'm the higher income earner.

Hopefully Canada will not come up with such a law!

LizzieA's picture

Marriage made us happy--we got married with just a couple of friends for witnesses. But it made the s*** hit the fan with psycho folks in the family. Too bad for them!

Tx mommy of 3's picture

We didn't live together first but what changed for me was the expectations. He expected me to do everything for ss just because I was his wife. He also started enforcing extended summer visits which left me with ss all day for 30 straight days while dh worked. We had our dd right after we got married so i all of a sudden I was a mom to two kids, but was a first time mom! I didn't know how to parent a kid! Before we got married mil watched ss while he was at work then it was like I was responsible after we got married. Um...ok. But if you talk it all out beforehand- what he expects from you as a stepmom, what rules and boundaries you will have in your home and what role he wants you to play BEFORE you get marriedthen I think it would help.

squeegie_beckenheimer's picture

I guess I have to echo some of the other comments on here. My relationship with my husband only grew stronger after marriage. I think we feel more secure, too, like neither of us is going to bolt when things get stressful (not that either of us are that type anyway!).

SD10 was 5 when I came into the picture & then 7 when we got married. She was totally on board with the whole thing. We had a private ceremony (just the two of us & the Justice of the Peace), so there was no worry about SD10 being part of the wedding or of BM trying to ruin our day. We quietly did it when SD10 was with BM & told everyone after the fact.

I think BM did get worse after we got married. Someone else posted that it was like BM realized the relationship wasn't just a "phase" & that's exactly how I would describe it. I think hearing that we were married was like a kick in the gut for her. She was blindsided by it. And her behavior grew more & more desperate as time went on. She bothered us a lot more, which is pretty bad considering how often she already bothered us! She was very jealous of the bond between my husband & I, and made fun of our relationship, as if it was a bad thing to be so good together.

I think as long as you & your future husband have a strong relationship, you should be able to tackle anything that comes your way. If my husband & I didn't have that, we would have parted ways a long time ago. Good luck!

StepMadre's picture

I've had the same experience as far as my relationship with H getting even better after we got married. I am not a "marriage person" and never really wanted to until I met H. We would have been just as happy just being together, but it made it more special that we committed so seriously. We also had a small ceremony with just my immediate family and a judge there (H's parents live in another state and threw us a reception at their place so they could celebrate with us too) and it was wonderful. We went camping for our honeymoon and kept everything low key and personal.

We had a slightly different experience with the BM, where she was at her craziest and most out of control when we got engaged and the weeks leading up to our wedding. When we got married, she seemed to go into shock and it appeared to hit her really hard that we were really committing to a life together and that, as you say, it wasn't a "phase." She was subdued and shocked for about a month and then started getting bitchy and nasty again. She started a custody battle, after agreeing orally to keep lawyers out of it. She even told H that if he left me, she would drop the case! About a month after we got married, she went through a massive rage phase, spurred on by her crazy, white trash family, and was as nasty and vile as she's ever been. H's attitude after we got married was more detached with BM and she freaked out and I think it hit her that she had really lost him for good. Up until that point, he was very patient with her and spent hours letting her vent and sob to him without arguing or walking away. She definitely thought that she was going to have a much closer relationship with H than she does and even told me that I was going to be "excluded from family get-togethers," lol!

Very recently, as in the past six months or so, she has been a lot more subdued, but only because she has no material to fight with us. H keeps his interactions with her completely aloof and business-like and refuses to discuss anything personal or anything unrelated to the skids. I'm sure there will be flare ups of craziness in the future, but there's not really anything she can do. She's played pretty much every card and her life has fallen apart spectacularly, as we predicted. Smile