31 thoughts on “Was Your First Husband Just Like Your Next?”

  1. Umm … this is one of those things which I don’t think most people can see except (unfortunately) in retrospect. Oh well, live and learn (or burn) – lol 🙂

  2. yup. you basically have one major dispute you create when you are 5 years old and keep it your sole life. Mine is “No one listens.” So I spend my whole life (Merc Rx, Cap Moon and Aries aspects and all) pouting no one listens to me. So, any husband, friend, or Mother is going to meet this in me!

    As for keeping the first husband? Well hell, who wants to keep remarrying when you can meets and greet your bad habits by yourself?

  3. The secret to not repeating is time – lots of it – in between so you can really figure out what you want. When you pick someone at 20 you have a very different idea of what makes a good man than at 50+. When I was young I would have hated the man I love now, but time has mellowed us both to the point where we challenge each other but not so much that it’s annoying, just enough to keep things from being boring. If you’re lucky, you grow up together and this happens in one marriage. If you’re not, and you want to be sure you don’t make the same mistake twice, you have to spend time with yourself first. If you don’t know what you really want, how can you expect to find it?

  4. My best friend’s mom said to me once….”Damn, if I knew it was gonna be like this (current husband), I would’ve just stayed married to my first husband.”
    But I voted “No”, because I do think that it’s usually a pattern repeated in the men one picks, rather than “all men are the same”.

  5. Hahahaha yeah my first one wasn’t a keeper. Or maybe I wouldn’t know until I got a second one to compare him to. But still…. nah.

  6. My option would be “I don’t know, I’ve never had one” – but “I have Libra and I can’t decide” is true for me, too 🙂

  7. when i knew better I picked better, so I chose ‘no’. however, I do agree with the general sentiment. if the problems that would cause you to seek another mate are problems you’re going to perpetuate you’re better off staying with the one in which you have an investment and working on those problems from that angle.

    in other words: the unexamined wife is not worth leaving!

  8. To speak like she does, she obviously divorced at least one of her husbands. And now we’ve got the same question – would she be able to say that if she hadn’t got divorced? I guess not 🙂

  9. Egad I hope not. That kind of thinking really offends me, not honoring the possibility of individuality, claiming stuff like “all men are alike.” It’s like misanthropy, in saying things like “all people are alike in their baseness, in judging, you elevate yourself as the one unique gem. Misanthropy is pretty narcissistic, I think, because ultimately the person is ok living with themselves and therefore have to make the exception between themselves and other humans.

  10. What a pleasant turn of phrase, satori! Brava!

    Deirdre, if your slovenly housekeeping annoys your menfolk then why don’t they just do it themselves, to their satisfaction? People confuse me sometimes. . ..

  11. I didn’t vote because I have been married once. He is dead 10 years now. I feel I have been there and done the married deal, I don’t believe I need to explore that again.

    But I also have learned to never say never. I think if I were to change my mind it would be a very lengthy engagement, with the escape hatch always open LOL.

    I think that Adela Rodgers St. Johns, didn’t realize is that it wasn’t the husbands, but herself that didn’t change 🙂

  12. This made me laugh. I didnt vote and I dont know if I agree or not because I havent been married yet I dont really intend on getting married unless of course the man who loves me wants too.

    But I think my first step at the moment is to find me a man. Well at least a man I like

  13. I’m glad you asked Elsa because I thought of submiting an open question that was related to this. The other day I had a trip down memory lane and realised that an ex of mine was more present than I thought he was. In short, it felt like some of the male figures in my life lately were also him (i.e. they brought up the same issues and feelings).

    So my question was: are we always with the same man for the rest of our lives? Or alternatively do we have two or three male figures that we tend to attract over and over again? Or even…is every man really different? Is it us and our perception that make them feel like they’re all the same?
    I was wondering what people’s take on this was. It’s complicated because it probably envolves a lot of projection issues and patterns and getting over them (or not). Perhaps this was already discussed too often over here, I don’t know.

  14. Joana,

    Interesting. My oversimplified response would be, yes, as long as we’re the same – the man is. The more complex we are, the more complex choices in men – some may represent our more “traditional” side, while others may represent more of our “wild” side, but in my 36 years of life so far, I’ve come to the conclusions that we are our primary relationships (for the most part). We are looking out at mirrors and projections.

    Of course, there is some evolution to just loving people for who they are and even when they’re nothing like us – but I really still think it all comes back to working out ourselves, our complex sides, the parts of us that internalized our parents and so forth.

    Geesh. How romantic. 🙂

    Well, that was intended to be a simple answer; I guess not!

  15. No, that was perfectly understandable, doublecappy. I suspect the same myself. It’s a little scary thinking like this, but it makes sense, if one believes in personal development and evolution, so to speak.

  16. I am now on husband 3.0 he is nothing like either of the other two. Thank the heavens! However I do know people who get involved with people who are exactly like the person they just left. My younger brother for example got married the 1st time at age 19 his then wife was also 19 they were way tooooooooooo young and it did not work out although it lasted like 10 years. It took him like 8 years to get over the ordeal. He gets remarried and I will be damned if the second wife is not a damn near a carbon copy of the first, They had a child and she left him like 6 months after the baby was born. He is still getting over it but he is a darn good father.

  17. I don’t think so. The seventh house rules first husbands, the ninth second husbands and the eleventh third husbands.

    And I know a lot of people whose subsequent husbands were very different from their first. Many people learn what they need in a relationship in their first marriage, takes those lessons find someone else better suited themselves.

    I googled Adela Rodgers St. Johns and she’s from a different era. I think her quote is the same.

  18. 2 Cancers with mother issues — 18 yrs apart in age — one aggressive; one passive-aggressive! Aries son is great!

  19. That’s really interesting Cecile! I’d never heard about the different houses for different husbands. Where does that come from?

  20. Hmmm…I’m glad I left all of them. Sometimes I think of the absence of pressure and bullshit and I literally thank God for having the strength to dump them, as I plan my own day, roll over in bed or have a stress free holiday/event.

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