I Wouldn’t Marry My Husband Today if I Had to Do it Again

Welcome to Ethels Tell All, where the writers behind The Ethel newsletter share their personal stories related to the joys and challenges of aging. Come back each Wednesday for the latest piece, exclusively on AARP Members Edition.

My husband and I met in college, near the end of my freshman and his sophomore year. We got married once I graduated after having dated for three years. We thought we were grown, but we were just babies. We had no business getting married. I just didn’t know it yet. 

The reason we were compatible is because we were both blank slates. Chunks of clay that had yet to be molded. Just because you age into being an adult doesn’t mean you know who you are. It takes a lifetime to come into your own because it’s living life that shapes you.

For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for sure. Can do. Have done. But what about when one or both of you change so drastically from who you were at the altar that you hardly recognize each other anymore?

If I were to meet my husband today, I wouldn’t choose to commit to spending my life with him. Today, I’m an emotional overthinker. He’s an apathetic compartmentalizer. I’m sensitive to harsh energy. He’s quick to yell obscenities over every perceived slight in traffic.

I feel loved by acts of service. He feels love from physical intimacy. Community service and engagement is a cornerstone of my life. He’s content to go to work and then come home.

I’m a natural doer. He’s a drafter. He happily drafts behind me in life while I take charge and get things done. This is a now-untenable pattern that we created and fell into early in our marriage.

I blame our dynamics on my broken home life in childhood, my lack of healthy role models, and a misguided notion of how to keep my man happy. I think I thought it was up to me to make our marriage last. I didn’t yet know it’s up to each of us to make ourselves happy. I blame him for being complacent and not turning back around to take care of the one caring for him.

Our lopsided levels of responsibility for everything from meal planning to getting the oil changed in the car to filing our taxes became unbearable for me. I want a partner who notices what needs to be done and then does it. I don’t want a partner who waits around for his life to be smoothed out in front of him.

Because breaking behavior patterns is slow going, we’ve spent the last half of our 30-year marriage working to right the ship and create a more equitable union. We had no political views when we got married, at least not that I can recall. Today, we are at different points on the political spectrum. He has staunch beliefs that do not waver, and I’m a fence sitter.