Dopers, did you ever try to talk a friend out of getting married? If so, why? Did your friend take your advice? Did the friendship survive in spite of your frankness?
I did that last year. A friend (and coworker) had been bemoaning her single status. She’d been divorced a bit over a year and a half, and was constantly whining about needing a man. Since I’ve been divorced and unattached for longer than her entire marriage, I had little sympathy for her plight, but all of us at work helped her update her hair and makeup from 80’s mall hair and heavy eyeliner to something more attractive, and we helped her with her self-esteem issues…and she starts dating a younger man from her church, whom she has known for a long time, but not as anything more than Sunday School teacher and Preacher’s kid.
So things get hot and heavy, and she finally gets laid, and you’d think that would be enough for a while. But no, she has some issues with his body. Ex-husband was huge, this young stud isn’t, and she’s not feelin’ anything. Plus he’s a bit heavy. And he’s not good with his money. But he’s falling all over her and making her feel like a pampered princess again, and so she keeps dating him. I advise that they go slow, don’t rush, first guy she’s dated since the divorce…
Within three months they are engaged…and the wedding is in a month! They will have been dating less than 4 months by the time of the wedding! I go off on her, tell her to wait, tell her she’s being needy, that they haven’t even had a first fight yet, she has two kids to think about, tell her to date at least a year…no good. She’s so eager to move back out of her parent’s house into a place of her own again…she buys a house! They buy carpet, and furniture, and plan for the wedding, all in the space of a month! I keep telling her she’s being foolish, and she just pats my hand and smiles at me.
Now they are coming up on their first anniversary…and they had a baby a week ago. Debt out the wazoo, and they’ve had plenty of fights now…but he’s making up for the size problem with great hand and mouth skills, apparently, and they do seem to be happy together. She’s a princess who needs a man to take care of her, and I still rag her about rushing into this…and she still smiles and hugs me and says, “I know you’re just looking out for my, and I love you!”
So I didn’t lose a friend…sort of gained one, in him (he does not know that I know about the size issue!) but I didn’t change the decision one bit.
I wish I could say I had tried. I have a friend (well, a sister of a friend, but we’re fairly friendly, too) who knew on the night before her wedding that she was making a big mistake. A couple of years and a kid later, she has the messy divorce and all the issues that go along with child support and visitations from a reluctant father to show for her mistake.
If you’re thinking about trying to talk a friend out of a bad marriage, give it your best shot. She probably won’t listen, but at least you’ll know you tried.
I have a friend who is getting married for all the wrong reasons (well, in my opinion, of course). She needs an acceptable way to get away from her family, because cultural pressure and personal guilt keep her from moving away on her own. He needs pretty arm candy to boost his social status.
From what I’ve seen of them together, he treats her like crap. Dismissive, rude, subtly controlling. She doesn’t go out anywhere anymore unless he’s with her, because when she does, he calls her 15 times over the course of the evening. He’s immature - from what my friend told me he’s a mama’s boy who still expects Mommy to make his lunch for work. She was only dating him a couple of months before he proposed, and I was very confused when she announced her big news, because I’d never heard her speak of him in a dreamy madly-in-love way or anything. No indication whatsoever during the dating phase that she loved this guy enough to want to be his wife. And she was a close enough friend that I’m sure she’d have shared her starry-eyed hopes with me.
I couldn’t quite help myself, and had to ask her about it. I didn’t try to talk her out of anything, I just wanted to know how it got to that point so quickly.
And… we’ve barely spoken since. Part of it might be because she’s upset at me, and part of it may be that she’s not talking to any of her friends anymore, because of him. I don’t really know. I’m a little worried about her, though.
My friend Irene had a pretty serious drug problem before I met her. She worked her ass off to get clean, and stay clean. She was doing great (11 years of one day at a time). She met up with a loser named Steve. He was nice to other people, but very coarse with her. They announce their engagement. Two weeks before the wedding, she calls to ask why she hasn’t received a reply from me. I tell her I can’t come. She asks why, and I tell her “because I can’t watch you ruin everything you’ve worked so hard for. You are making a terrible mistake.” She very calmly tells me that even though she knows I want only the best for her, she loves the man and hopes I’ll be there to see them celebrate their union. I went to the wedding reception, but I refused to be present for the ceremony.
Long story short… she ended up using again, he threatened her life a few times. She’s dead now, apparently drug-related. (Although I never got the entire story, as I’d lost touch with that entire circle after the wedding) He’s in jail for kidnapping some guy and beating the hell out of him.
Miss you Rini! And I’m sorry I didn’t work harder to intervene.
Yes. About seven years ago.
A friend announced her engagement to a bloke who was simply not right for her - for many, many reasons. I, and several other of her close friends, advised her that she was making a big mistake.
The advice was unsuccessful and fell, unsurprisingly, on deaf ears.
The marriage too was spectacularly unsuccessful, lasting about two and a half months before the final separation.
We are all still very good friends with her and she has expressly commanded us to try harder to convince her if there’s ever a next time.
I was close friends to a couple and when they began discussing marriage I aired my views of marriage and expressed my concern that marriage might ruin the good rel that they had.
They did it anyway but don’t seem to have held what I said against me.
I don’t know that I’ve ever been successful, but I always recommend premarital counseling. But I think the people who know in their hearts that they’re making a mistake avoid it like the plague.
When my best friend called me up and told me she was engaged, I told her I had reservations. She had dated this guy on and off for nine years, and they’d never lasted more than a year at a time. She had also not told anyone they were back together, which made me suspicious that she knew this was not a good idea. I told her that I was happy for her if she believed this was the right thing for her, but I was concerned because of the reasons stated above–and a few other serious red flags.
I told her not to think of being engaged as a time to just plan a wedding and act like the decision was made. I told her to take the time she was engaged and really think about whether this decision was the right one for her. I also said that if she did have doubts, it was better to postpone/cancel a wedding than go through with it. I added that last part because I knew that she would be very worried about her relatives’ and friends’ reactions if she cancelled for some reason.
She genuinely thanked me and said she didn’t expect me to act thrilled, and was glad I didn’t pretend. She was actually kind of freaked out that her parents and other friends acted 100% thrilled by the news, because she knew that it was a huge surprise to us all, and because everyone knew about the big problems they had had. Nobody mentioned them at all–they were just thrilled to plan a wedding, like getting married was so important that she should do it even if it maybe wasn’t such a hot idea. Her fiance and she had worked hard to fix their relationship, but nobody else had any reason to know that.
She felt that mine was the only truly sincere response to her news. Because of that, she wanted me to be her maid of honor, despite having a sister and another friend who violently desired the job. She wanted someone near her who was grounded, and wouldn’t be all caught up in the fantasy-romance aspect of the wedding. I think she wanted someone she knew really cared about her, and not just appearances, close by.
Mind you, I still had doubts, well into the first years of the marriage. But after that initial talk, I let her know she could come to me–and I kept my mouth shut and supported her. We’re still best friends, and she’s still happily married five years later. Which goes to show that you can have all the good reason in the world to want to tell your friend to slam on the brakes, and you can still be dead wrong. Rule of thumb: air your concerns, but exercise restraint.
Same friend, two tries. Before wedding #1, she had doubts, and postponed the wedding for more than a year beyond the original date. But she went ahead with it eventually. I had been part of the wedding party for the first planned event but by the time they rescheduled I thought this was a mistake on her part. She actually told me she thought so too, but was hoping that wedding would increase their commitment, and then she talked me into being in the wedding because it would mean so much to her mother. (I sort of suspect that was the reason for the big wedding anyway.) So…at this point she and husband #1 had been together about 5 years, living together most of that time, but the marriage lasted less than six months. And she said if she ever wanted to do this again, please try to talk her out of it!
So, wedding #2. Another friend and I met with her at a bar with the express purpose to talk her out of it if we could, although this time we at least thought she had a good man who cared for her. We pointed out that she was happy with things as they were (talking on the phone daily, staying together at her place on the weekends) so why change? We pointed out that even someone you’re madly in love with can get damned irritating when you actually share the same living space, and it was somewhat complicated in her case by the fact that her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, also lived with her. (And she was not madly in love with him. She was settling.)
She didn’t take our advice that time either and didn’t invite either of us to the wedding. But we are still friends. Oddly enough, she has gotten a little closer to madly in love with him since the wedding (or maybe that isn’t odd, maybe this other friend and I are the odd ones).
That sounds like people who have kids to try to fix a failing marriage, and probably works just as well.
I have no friends. But if I did, I would try like Hell and break thier legs if they didn’t call it off to prevent them from a’walkin’ down the isle!
Did, worked, married him eleven years ago (two years after he broke off the engagement). He doesn’t seem to have held it against me.
Oh, I suppose I should say why. Well, he’d gotten engaged two years earlier because he’d hit the “engaged or break up” He wasn’t ready to break up and he figured in two years he’d be ready to get married. I’d see him and he’d say things like “well, once I get married I won’t have to spend so much time with Jane anymore - I’ll have more time to do things.” And I’d talk to her and she’d say “once we get married I’ll see Brianiac4 a lot more.” He’d talk about how the pressure would soon be off him, and she talked about how she’d change him once they were married. This didn’t sound to me like similar expectations for what marriage was going to bring to the relationship. Also, when he was around me, he would put her down and her friends down. She was a really nice girl, but not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
I’d been married when “I shudda knowd” and knew that whatever was involved in stopping a wedding it was less painful and less bother than a divorce.
Once and he got very angry at me. The friendship survived. Now, 10 years later, he seems to be every bit as miserable as I thought he would be. But who knows? Maybe he just likes to complain.
A couple of friends of mine (including my sister, in her first marriage) were obviously out of their minds and everyone but those involved knew this was not going to last. One was a lesbian marrying, well, a guy. Who didn’t know she was gay. It was very odd.
I kept my mouth shut (not easy for me, as you all know) and was all smiley and supportive and never said a bad word about the grooms. When the marriages ended, I patted backs and said “poor baby” and never said “I told you so.” All involved admitted that “it was a bad idea, but I never would have listened to anyone who told me so at the time.”
That’s nothing. My brother just married a woman that lives in another state. Sure, they’ve been chatting over the internet for about a year (while dating other people), but they have only spent a few long weekends together.
And my brother has a looong history of dating very questionable women. Tramps in need. The stories I could tell….
This woman had a job she absolutely hated, and was living with her parents.
She’s 42.
It would never occur to me to tell a friend what decisions to make, even if one asked directly, “Do you think I should marry So-and-so?” How could I possibly answer that?
Come to think of it, I was asked that question once, back in the late ‘seventies when my lover who was in the Army decided to marry a Lesbian in his unit in order for them both to receive an additional $100 in their paycheck. My answer: “I can’t tell you what to do. Do whatever you think is right.”
Yep and it didn’t work. After a hard breakup, my friend bounced back with his future wife. All of us disliked her immediately, but we were happy that we wasn’t sulking, so we kept our mouth shut. Before we knew it, it had been a year and she couldn’t stop talking about an engagement ring. She pestered him for two years until he finally proposed. At this point, even the friend who set them up thought she was crazy.
Everytime he would confide in me, I would offer, as non-judgementally as I could muster, that he could end it. Finally, I sat him down and told him that I was worried that he couldn’t have the life he wanted with her. Honestly, I was hoping he would get mad and defend her. Instead, he just nodded and said, “I know”.
Needless to say, they are now married and he doesn’t seem happy. I hope he’ll get a divorce and find someone who deserves him, but he’s a devout Catholic. He is resigned to being her whipping boy.
The good news of all of this is that we are still friends. He didn’t ever hold my concerns against me.
Twice: one good outcome, one bad. Bad first:
My roommate, after college, was desperate to get married. I’m still not sure why, except that I think she had it in her head that life progresses thusly: high school, college, marriage, kids, happily ever after. She was stalled in that nearly post-college, pre-marriage step, and so looked for a husband.
The man that she found was a recovering drug addict. He worked part-time, night shift, essentially as a security guard. He found working days too stressful, as he was expected to actually do stuff, whereas at night he could just sit on a couch and watch tv. Part-time only, however, because, again, full time work was too stressful.
So she’s a smart girl, working full time while going to college full time to finish her degree, loaning him money because he “needs it,” then getting pissed when she finds out that that he “needs it” for concert tickets for concerts to which he invites other people, not her (and meanwhile she has to borrow from me to make rent since he never pays her back). He doesn’t talk; she’s a talker, but when she’s with him, she also does nothing but sit on the couch and watch tv.
Anyway, we took a road trip to visit a friend who’d just had a baby. On the way back, she asked me what I thought of him and if I thought she should marry him. I was tired, wasn’t thinking, so I was honest. I told her that I thought he was not a good prospect, that she deserved someone who was respectful of her time and money, someone with whom she shared interests. She deserved a man who could support her while she stayed home with the kids, which is what she wanted to do. Seriously: if your goal is to be a stay-at-home mom, you better find a man who wants that, too, not a guy who finds a job too stressful.
Anyway, she barely spoke to me after that. I was invited to her wedding (which was a fiasco). After the wedding, the “young people” went to a bar to drink. After the first round came, there was a lull in the conversation. Her best friend raised his glass and said, “So: I give them six months. What do y’all think?”
I lost touch with her; last I heard, they were still together, and living with her parents. He still wasn’t working.
Good story: my sister was engaged. My family is pretty close, and her fiance met the siblings over a game of miniature golf. We were all having a great time, goofing off and playing, except the fiance, who was apparently getting more and more frustrated that he wasn’t winning. At one point, he became so angry he threw his miniature club into the miniature stream that flows past the miniature windmill.
So when my sister asked what I thought of him, and because I apparently do not learn from experience, I told her that I didn’t think that they were a good match. My sister isn’t competitive, whereas fiance really seemed to be all about beating everyone. I also told her I thought that if his behavior was his “good” behavior, to impress the siblings, I’d hate to see what he’s like when there’s no one to impress.
She broke it off with him a few months later, about three months before the wedding. I know that what I said really had minimal impact; he did a number of other things that made her realize he wasn’t a good match. But she’s still my sister, and we’re probably each other’s closest friends, so that’s the one that ended well.