Trying to heal from WW - part 2

[SteveLW]

SteveLW, i recall you asking me about this early on in my first thread. I definitely think it played a role, i was working and had done a substantial amount of studies and she was still finishing school and she couldn't drive (she still hasn't got her license and blames me even though i took her driving alot to practice a few years ago). I think the main issue though was that she was still a kid and her personality and what she wanted constantly seemed to change and i struggled to adapt and know what was going on, add to that her lying to me in the beginning and cheating before the marriage and it wasn't sustainable. I didnt feel like i could trust her or what was coming next or what i was going to get told i wasnt doing well enough, it became a very stressful environment and we struggled to even have a normal conversation without arguing. I also tended to want to control the finances and decisions etc. but eventually she just started rebelling against everything. I also built up alot of resentment.

Thanks Ace, I do think we covered this before but thanks for indulging me again. I dated a 19 year old right before I met my wife. I was 27, she was 19. And we were just at different places in our lives. And it quickly started to devolve into a father-daughter relationship. She was driving an old beatup clunker. I was already earning good money living on my own. I was going to lease her a new car! (I thought I was in love.) I mean it was really crazy stuff that I look back on and realize, even though she was extremely attractive physically, my life would have been a roller-coaster if I had married her. She was still in party girl mode at that point, I was way past party mode by then (and recovering alcoholic to boot so I certainly did not need that in my life). Our society for PC reasons tends to downplay age differences, but I really do think that if you were to move on and end up with someone closer to your own age you would realize the night and day difference in the dynamic.

Of course my wife ended up being very attractive too, but I learned a valuable lesson in that failed R with the 19 year-old. Physical attraction should be one component of what brings us together. Western society tends to place an awful lot of emphasis on vanity and shallow things like looks.