The classic 'settle' issue

HermitHorace

An issue arose over the weekend with a friend of mine confiding that he is about to marry his fiancee but is not in love with her.
Don't get him wrong but he cares for the girl and they got on great, yadda yadda and everybody thinks they are perfectly suited but he just doesn't feel it.

She's been amazing to him and he does enjoy his time with her but the comparison he makes is that there was another whom he was in love with but that did not work out several years ago. Everybody's moved on but the bar has been set.

And this doesn't reach it.
His arguement is that he's happy to settle for this, ony a small percentage have a marriage whereby both people in it are with the loves of their lives,
for everyone else, someone has to settle.
Plus he's pushing on.

I suggested he might regret it and that both of them deserved more.
He said I was a hermit who did not live in the real world.

Is this the standard?

tbh

horses for courses. what's right for you isn't right for everyone else. you've done your mately duties and told him you think it's a bad idea, you should stop there.

Asking is human behaviour "standard" is only going to get you answers which relate purely to the person doing the answering.

HermitHorace

Understood,

it's all these Mills & Boon books that have me overly optimistic.

I live oddly.

SarahSassy

As long as he doesnt start cheating because he 'married the wrong woman' then its fine by me. Dont think its great that he is settling but thats up to him.

HermitHorace

I think he has weighed it up and he is committed for the long haul,
I was just surprised by his manner-of-fact reasoning.

He will have a version of happy, I guess I was just suprsied as I thought
they were made for each other.

All these nice picket fences keep much in.

SarahSassy

HermitHorace wrote: »

All these nice picket fences keep much in.

Never a truer word said... Maybe he just doesnt feel the passionate love he felt for the ex and he thinks this is a lesser love because of that - who knows?

Hope they have nice lives together.

HermitHorace

I think they will be fine, she is certainly delighted
and he is happy with it too.

Each union is different, it's like having a banana-ketchup sandwich,
not for me but I know people who like it.

Think they're called weirdos.

midlandsmissus

I'm going to go against the grain here and say it's a very very bad idea.

I was the same as the op's friend - there was one fella I was going out with who I was madly in love with, but I messed it up and he broke it up with me. I wasnt interested in anyone else for ages and then along comes this nice guy who asks me out.
I didnt like him half as much as the first guy but I went out with him anyway. I reasoned at the time that I did get on with him, he was a very nice guy, and that I might grow to love him. I guess I 'settled'

I stayed with him for two years, all the time I knew I didnt love him, but I stayed and told myself that love like the first guy was a very rare thing that I would probably never find again anyway.
Eventually I began to feel sick about the relationship, the thought of growing old with some-one I didn't really love made me feel pancky. When he started talking about marriage and the idea made me feel sick, I knew it wasn't going to work and that love is actually very important.
A loveless marriage is never going to work.
I'm single now and much happier for it, because there is always that potential that I may find such a love again, and if I dont it's better being single than being stuck inside a marriage where I would have always wondered 'what if?'

LegacyUser

I too was in your friend's shoes, I married the bloke who was good on paper, who loved me but who I didn't feel passionatley about, and who never measured up to the ex.

Needless to say, the marriage didn't survive. I feel dreadful about wasting years of my ex husband's life, of not being honest with him.

However, both of us have moved on now, and are with partners who we are passionate about.

Having said that, maybe it can work for some, but I do think that once the inevitable trials of life come up, you need a premise of deep mutual love in order to be able to survive them.

Didymus

Isn't that what Nick Hornbys book was about, High Fidelity? I suppose your friend has a point, albeit it's sad to hear.

But I think it depends on the individual. I couldn't bare to share my life with someone I wasn't in love with. I'd rather be alone and live in hope.

However I hope I can say the same for myself if I am lonely at 40 and still haven't found mr. right.

Moomoo1

'love' and 'in love' are such vague and person-specific concepts, that it's impossible to make any sort of generalisation here...

is that guy really not in love? Or is he just measuring everyone up against the ex and not realising he is in love? Can he expect to find someone he will be in love with as much as with the ex? If so, will he be drawing his pension by that time?

HermitHorace

I would fall on the 'bad idea' side of this. I think he's generally happy and because all the friends and families are invested in this, he has convinced himself that this would be fine.
Obviously everyone is free to make their own decision and who knows exactly how he feels or exactly how it will work out but you would have reservations for his future happiness or at least the extent of it.

That's like a Jerry Springer closing comment.

You take care now.

pinkpigs

For what it's worth I think it's a bad idea for him to get married. It's only a matter of time before he meets someone else who he thinks is on the same level as his exgirlfriend. If he is not totally in love and loves his wife to be then the realtionship to doomed to fail.

You both have to be totally commited at the outset, if he is half heatly going into marriage then it's never going to work, not to mention that totally unfair to his wife to be.

Aurora Borealis

Horses for courses as has been said but I don't think I'd be marrying someone I didn't feel "it" for. I don't know maybe I'm too much of a romantic but I do know I have been in love and I don't think I could settle for a lifetime of nice in its stead. I know people end up in those types of relationships all the time but to seal the deal with marriage when you know your heart isn't in it doesn't seem too wise to me.

HermitHorace

Thanks for your comments and if he does come back for a 2nd opinion I will suggest that the best and bravest thing to do would be to walk away now. She would be devastated but its either one chop or death by a thousand cuts I feel.

I've seen a few go down this road and while some make it work in a contented kind of way, the rest have fallen into affairs and one night stands and consider their partners to be the proverbial ball and chain.

I think its better to be alone than to slowly mess up someone elses life.

iguana

HermitHorace wrote: »

His arguement is that he's happy to settle for this, ony a small percentage have a marriage whereby both people in it are with the loves of their lives,
for everyone else, someone has to settle.

Where does he get that from? I don't think I know anyone who wasn't at least madly in love when they got married. I know some cases where the love has faded later on in the marriage and so far they are still together in a very settled way. But I honestly don't of anyone who entered their marriage planning to just settle.

HermitHorace

I have seen it in at least 2 other cases and the other examples maybe due to love fading over time. But I also think its not as uncommon as you may suggest for someone to get married because it works rather than because they are madly in love with the person.

I think love is the minimum requirement but sometimes, like in my friends case, people are happy to do without it.

I like your optimism though.

tbh

HermitHorace wrote: »

But I also think its not as uncommon as you may suggest for someone to get married because it works rather than because they are madly in love with the person.
.

I think the frequency of it happening is directly linked to the ages of the people getting married - for many reasons - some of which I think are valid

HermitHorace

That is true.

I think my friend is on a train with all their friends and families, expectations and hopes and dreams and theres a part of him which would like to stop it but a lot of people would be hurt by this.

Sometimes its braver to go than stay.

But each to their own.

iguana

tbh wrote: »

I think the frequency of it happening is directly linked to the ages of the people getting married -

That's true, the vast, vast majority of married people I know got married in their 20s. I think when you are younger you are unlikely to be settling. Though you're more likely to mistake passionate love with lifelong love which is why I do know some married people who started out in love and are now basically doing time together.

HermitHorace

I'm in the older bracket, most of my friends are getting married in their early 30s so while I wouldn't think they feel under pressure to do so (I certainly don't) but they do realise they are on the wrong side of things.

Filling time sounds awful.