I also think this is all about the fact that he might have never been officially married with all that means to a woman (in terms of how big deal it is to them and what conclusions they draw from it while assessing a guy as a potential SO).
It’s all a bit “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia” for mine. Adolescent nonsense.
Another vote for “Friend” is a mental case.
Where and how did this loon get into your “friend” bucket? If I found one of these in mine, I’d really start thinking about my selection criteria.
It doesn’t sound as if they were really “involved” yet.
The fact that it was a de facto rather than a de jure marriage is material, and it’s the kind of thing he should make sure she’s aware of when and if they do embark on a serious relationship. But it seems like they’re a long way from that point, and if he personally considers it unimportant, I don’t see why he should have been expected to say anything about it.
In other words, he didn’t lie and your friend is nutty.
Marcia was new to the area and another ‘friend’ Sue introduced her around. Marcia and I had a falling out back in December, but she recently started calling/texting me, which brought all the reasons for the falling out back to mind.
No, not a jerk.
I get irritated with my mother for doing the same thing.
I could see her thinking that way. She makes a lot of assumptions. For all she knows, Paul may have wanted to marry but his ‘wife’ didn’t want to. Or just because he didn’t marry this woman doesn’t mean he will never marry.
This is the same friend I mentioned in another thread that was upset because Paul’s ex was involved with another man within two weeks of the breakup. Marcia wanted to know what was wrong with Paul that his ex was able to get over him so quickly. That was a real wtf moment for me.
Her brain works in ways that baffle me.
I once was the recipient of the opposite of the OP. A cop who asked me out after proclaiming that he was “single, single, single, never married”. Never married, true in a literal sense. Father of three weekend children by three different exes, also true. I got out of Tucson before there was any chance of becoming Mother Number Four.
The situation in the OP is what’s called in English a “common-law marriage”. To me, there is no lie involved; only less paperwork (or, depending on the situation, different paperwork) than if there had ever been a legally-binding wedding. If there are any children involved, there are custody issues; having common property (which after 15 years you do accumulate, even if you’ve done your best to keep my stuff and their stuff) there are division of property issues… they just get solved differently depending on the paperwork involved, but that’s a procedural difference, not a social one.
If it were a somewhat different situation, I could see Marcia being furious about being lied to. Like say if Paul gives being married as a reason for doing or not doing something. For example, he can’t marry Marcia until he gets a divorce, and he has to get his wife to agree because a contested one will cost too much money so of course, any wedding plans with Marcia will have to wait. ( I actually know someone wo used a variation of this- although that was a lie , too. His wife wanted a divorce, and he wouldn’t agree , apparently because he did not want to be available to marry his new girlfriend)
If it was the other way around, and she found out his ex-girlfriend was actually his ex-wife, that would be something worth getting upset about. As-is? No.
It’s not a lie and not a deal breaker.
But in this case, it’s lucky for Paul that it is a deal breaker because Marcia is the crazy.
My answer to that would be influenced by exactly what he said, but my read on this situation is that she is overreacting or reacting to something else.
BUT, that doesn’t mean you should try and talk her out of the breakup.
Either she is reacting appropriately to something you are not entirely aware of, in which case … her reaction is appropriate. Or she is reacting bizarrely to something minor, in which case she is likely to do that again, and the relationship is likely doomed.
I once saw a talk show where someone gave this advice to a woman who suspected her boyfriend was cheating: it doesn’t matter. The relationship is over. Either it is over because he violated your trust by cheating, or it is over because you just couldn’t trust him even though he did nothing wrong. And figuring out which one it is might help you in future relationships, but it won’t help you with this one. If you get proof he never cheated, you should still leave him because you don’t trust him, and that lack of trust will drive him away.
This.
The English language is imprecise at times. Sometimes you play it a little loose - my Grandmother never married her third partner, but they were together for decades. He wasn’t biologically related to me, but for all intents and purposes, he was my Grandfather. Who wants to explain all of that baggage? He gets rounded up to Grandfather in casual conversation.
Sounds like this guy did something similar. I agree with everyone else - if there’s a problem, it’s with your friend. This is a minor offense at best.
I’ve called my now-fiancé my husband at times. It just short-circuits the whole thing, I mean we are in a committed relationship, going on 20 years now. It’s not really strangers’ business that we are not actually married.
However, I wouldn’t deceive someone close to me about it. That being said, this is not a HUGE LIE, this is just a “Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t married?”
I swear, some people feed off drama, instead of just reasonably talking things out. I’ve come to the cynical conclusion, that when some people are happy, they don’t recognize it as happiness, because it’s too mundane and not full of fireworks every single second, so they stir up some drama to feel excitement.
Happiness is an ongoing state of affairs and you cannot maintain fireworks that long.
Not exactly. Texas is one of the states with Common Law Marriage. The phrase is not a synonym for “Living Together.” A Common Law couple did not marry officially but they’ve held themselves out as married & must divorce if they want to split.
This case seems simpler. Married or not, children must be provided for–let’s hope the father is fulfilling more than his monetary obligation. If the couple bought anything together, legalities may be involved. Texas is a Community Property state–so marriage (Common Law or not) complicates things.
The “relationship” in the OP is a plan to meet; the woman is already hoping for something long term. I wouldn’t be upset if a man was truly free, no matter the nature of the previous relationship. I would be concerned if he was still going through a divorce. Or the marriage was “over” but they hadn’t seen lawyers yet. Or he’d had several kids by different women…
It would only be a lie if he explicitly said they were married. If he said this with the intent to deceive rather than simplify, then it would be a big red flag, possibly a deal breaker. But based on the facts in the OP, the most this sounds like is a lie by omission. Most people would probably assume a 15 year-old relationship that produced kids involved marriage.
I don’t think I know enough about the OP’s friend to say she’s a drama mama. It could be that she’s been burned in the past by someone who has played fast and loose with facts, and is extra wary of being taken in again.
It could also be that she wants to find someone who values marriage the same way she does. With this revelation, she’s now questioning whether this guy is that. Who knows what all has been said between them in their conversations? If the OP is truly her friend, she’ll help her work through these emotions.
The guy could be a good fit or he could be bad one. My thought is that if this bothers her so much, it’s probably a sign she doesn’t really trust him.
Yeah, but that is true exclusively in Texas; it’s not true of the general concept of “common law marriage”, which is what I was talking about when I brought up the term. In general terms, breakups for long-term relationships carry different legal consequences depending on specific local laws and on how those local laws view the specific long-term relationship, but “marriage” as shorthand for “long-term relationship with shared children and shared property” is something I do consider valid. My own legal system doesn’t have the concept of “common law marriage” but the breakup for such a situation would still require paperwork.
In common law, which was the same across the United States and any other country with a common law legal system, “common law marriage” didn’t mean “we aren’t really married; we’re just living together.” It never meant that. It meant “we are really married; we just didn’t go through the usual legal processes of achieving that status.”
Once you were married—regardless of whether you reached that state through common law marriage or through the usual statutory marriage process—you would have to get legally divorced in order to end that marriage. “Common law marriage” does not and never meant “a pretend marriage you can just walk away from.”
Now, most states have abolished common law marriage. It still isn’t a synonym for “just living together,” because all states recognize any marriage recognized by another state. So if you are common law married in one of the few states that still recognize it, you are considered really married in every other state.
And those two weren’t “just living together”, were they? A child in common, a house in common, how is that “just living together”? By the definitions of the Catholic Church (a bastion of libertarianism the world over), they could have called each other “husband” and “wife”; back when RCC tribunals had legal weight in “civil society”, if one wanted to break up and the other disagreed, this second one could have called upon the Church to declare that the first party couldn’t just skip obligations with a “don’t wanna do it with you no more”. I guess I’m not understanding something basic in the terms but I don’t see what is it I’m not understanding.
What you’re not seeing is that “common law marriage” reflects a change in legal status, the same as a statutory marriage does. And it has very specific legal antecedents.
And Roman Catholic Church tribunals have to my knowledge never held legal authority in the major common law countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
To have a common law marriage, one of the requirement is that you must hold out to the government and the public and your friends that you are legally married. If you tell your friends and family and each other “We’re not married,” and so far as they are concerned “they are not married,” because you have never told them explicitly or implicitly that you are married, that is, husband and wife in a legally binding union, then you do not have a common law marriage.