A good friend of mine wanted kids. Met a like-minded woman who also wanted kids. Got married. Skip 20 years. Now divorced, childless, in his late 40’s, with the realization that his ex hated kids, never wanted kids, and was lying just to get married. I’ve talked to several of her teenage friends who have confirmed that she always felt this way.
I am related to Miss Beautiful 20’s Golddigger; She has informed her father that she intends to find a rich man, marry him, divorce him, and live off his money. :eek:
This has left me wondering: How common is lying used as a tactic to get married? I’m not talking about exaggerating our qualities or over-hyping our interests–nor am I talking about having attitudes and interests change after getting married. I’m interested in blatant lying–stating one belief when believing the opposite–just to get married.
So, Dopers, what is your take? Have you been guilty of doing this? If so, would you do it again? Why? How common do you think this behavior is?
Living a lie takes work. Primarily, trying to remember the things you’ve lied about. I can’t imagine wanting to be married (or wanting much of anything, really) so badly that I’d be willing to keep up a facade with the person I’m closest to for it. And that’s before even getting into how I’d view myself for such an extreme lack of integrity. And the idea that my ego would suffer from knowing that the person I was with wasn’t actually in love with the real me.
That being said, there are people out there of all stripes, and it would not surprise me to learn that some percentage of the population is willing to operate under such circumstances for personal gain.
Depends on what you characterize as lying. In my personal experience, it’s not so much a case of one spouse intentionally lying to another in order to decieve them as much as a case of self-deception, i.e. lying to one’s self.
Many people who get married don’t understand what they want out of life. People tend to have general ideas that don’t coalesce into specifics until certain high-pressure moments: marriage, pregnancy, mortality, etc. Before those moments, many people can think they want (or don’t want) something simply because of external pressures: society, familial, peer pressure from friends, what have you.
Which of course means that it’s entirely possible for two people to get married with both of them genuinely thinking that they want children, only to discover after that “Oh shit, we’re married!?” point of no return that this wasn’t what they wanted at all. From that point on, it becomes a race to confrontation: either the questioning spouse raises the issue and the couple deals with it (successfully, or in divorce), or the questioning spouse accomodates themselves to the situation, i.e. grins and bears it.
Anyway… I’ve known quite a few friends and family who’ve entered into relationships or marriages while in denial of their own desires. Technically, they could be accused of lying to their partners-- at the very least, they weren’t honest about their own doubts and lack of certainty-- but ultimately, they were lying as much to themselves as to anyone else.
Love is a tough, tough thing. Think of how hard it is to know oneself… now, add in another complete human being to the mix. Even the strongest relationships involve all kinds of confusion and toe-stepping.
EDIT: I know this was kind of a threadjack, as it doesn’t directly address the OP goldigger scenario… just putting out there a description of different kinds of lying.
I have a feeling that most people lie to themselves to get married. “Oh, i’m sure i’ll get used to his little quirks.” or “She’ll want kids eventually.”
Someone I dated for a while fit this description. She didn’t discover that she didn’t want to marry her fiance until she was on the altar. And by then she didn’t want to create a scene. She suffered through 10 years of marriage because of it.
Agree with the theory that people are mostly lying to themselves. Post-breakup, it’s easy for the bitter party to decide that the confused party did it on purpose.
Been there, done that myself. Now divorced. I think we all do this to some degree or another. My friend’s ex, on the other hand, is the only one that I know to have blatantly lied, and continued to lie throughout the marriage, just because she did not want to be single. I think she was convinced that he would learn that he did not want kids either.
Miss Golddigger has not managed to get married (thank God). She has some major mental issues.
One of my friends told me that his wife claimed she liked hiking and camping before they got married. This was about 30 years ago. She told him she was lying after they got married.
Now they are about 60 and they do a lot of hiking and camping.
It sounds like a better tactic to get divorced. I’m always amazed at people who get married under false pretenses; do they think that they can either keep up the charade, or that their partner won’t notice or care after the marriage certificate is signed? Silliness.
My mentally ill ex did everything she could to get us married. Made any promise, told me any story, blah, blah, blah. Once we were married and I sold my house, that all ended. Every single promise was broken as if never made. Bringing them up was “mean” and showed I didn’t trust her - and would result in massive numbers of phone calls to other people saying I was being emotionally abusive.
Pretty much came down to “anything I have to do or say to get him to take care of my debts until I don’t need him anymore”.
Ditto. I think a better term would be “delusion.” Deluding yourself (Well, maybe having kids wouldn’t be such a big deal) or deluding your partner (I’ll quit drinking, really!)
