Many people dream of one day finding the love of their life and saying “I do.” For some, this dream comes true, while for others, it doesn’t turn out exactly as they’d hoped. Maybe they missed the red flags before walking down the aisle, and now they realize that they got hitched to the wrong person. Here are some brutally honest signs that you’re married to someone who just isn’t right for you.
1. You fight about everything.
Even in the beginning, you argued with your partner a lot, but you just chalked it up to both of you being passionate. Now, however, you’re starting to realize that you fight about everything because you’re incompatible. Even the most trivial things are debated, and you can’t imagine disagreeing about everything for the next 40 years.
2. You find (and seek) comfort in other people.
While you might not have gone as far as to cheat on your partner yet, you might already be getting your emotional support from others. Even if you’re not looking for this in another romantic partner, you’re turning to parents or friends for a shoulder to lean on. You do this because you don’t feel like you receive the comfort and support that you need from your spouse.
3. You’re stressed at home.
If you think you’ve married the wrong person, you may spend more time at work than necessary. This is because you find it stressful being at home. After all, if you were honest you find it stressful sharing your home with your spouse. Every little thing that they do stresses you out — from leaving their clothes on the bathroom floor, to turning the TV up too loud in the evenings when you’re trying to go to sleep.
4. You’re nostalgic for life before marriage.
Every marriage experiences rocky patches, Psychology Today notes, which might make you look back on times when life was easier with your spouse. However, if you think you married the wrong person, you might find yourself looking back on life before you were married and wishing that you could go back and experience that again. You remember how freeing it felt to go out on the weekends with your friends and not worry about what time you got home, or how much you miss meeting a random person at the bar and flirting them over text for a couple of weeks.
5. You’re feeling alone.
You might feel lonely even when you’re at home and your spouse is at home with you. This is most likely because you have grown distant from your spouse and don’t feel comfortable around them anymore. You might not feel like they truly understand you anymore, which is why you might be feeling isolated from them. When you’re feeling down or sad about something, you don’t feel like you can confide in them. You know from experience that they’ll just interrupt you or cut you off, suggesting an unhelpful solution instead of just listening to you and making you feel heard and understood.
6. You no longer trust them.
Faith is crucial in marriage, especially if you want to stay married for a long time. Without it, the relationship starts to break down. There’s no relationship without trust. If you feel you married the wrong person, then there’s a good chance you won’t trust them anymore. You suspect that they would betray you if given the opportunity. Whenever you go out together to a social event, they’re quick to break away from you and spend the evening with others. Or perhaps they’re secretive about what’s on their phone, refusing to share their password with you and claiming that you’re being paranoid when you accuse them of having something to hide.
7. You get annoyed at everything they do.
Even in a happy, successful marriage, you will do things that frustrate your spouse and vice versa. This is par for the course when you live with someone for a long time. However, if you believe the person you married is wrong, you most likely get annoyed at everything they do, even if it’s petty. You know it’s irrational, but you can’t help it.
8. You find yourself keeping things from your spouse.
If you don’t trust your spouse and don’t turn to them for comfort like you used to, then you may have things that you have been hiding from them. While these things might not be a big deal, they still indicate that you feel in your gut that you got married to the wrong person. For example, a colleague at work the other day made a pass at you, which made you feel uncomfortable. Normally, you would share this with your spouse, but now you feel like you can’t. You’re worried they would be quick to blame you for the situation, accusing you of being the instigator and leading your colleague on.
9. You’re highly critical of your spouse.
Constructive criticism is essential in a marriage. Even though you care about them, you still need to have tough conversations when you might communicate something they don’t want to hear. However, there’s a difference between this and being hypercritical of your spouse. If you find yourself criticizing everything they do, then they might be Mr. Wrong. The moment they walk in the door after a long day at work, you accuse them of being late, not taking the trash out that morning, or not putting their clothes away properly and causing wrinkles after you’ve ironed them.
10. You’re defensive with each other.
If you find yourself in a marriage where you feel that you have made the wrong choice, your guard is going to be up. Even if you don’t communicate it freely, how you feel inside will show through your tone and body language. You will be resistive toward your spouse, and in response, they might be resistive towards you. When they ask you what’s wrong, you quickly reply, “Nothing, why would something be wrong? You’re always asking me that.” Or maybe you ask them how their day was, and they reply, “Long, okay? Like every other day. I don’t want to talk about it.”
11. You find yourself attracted to others.
When you’re in love with the person you choose to marry and know they’re the one, you only have eyes for them. Nobody else interests you like they do, and even if you see someone who is conventionally good-looking, they could never compete with your better half. However, if you’ve chosen wrong in your marriage, you may find yourself wandering and wondering what it’d be like to be with someone else.
12. You had different reasons for getting married.
You might not have communicated this initially, but you’ve realized that you had different motives for getting married than your spouse did. Perhaps you were feeling the pressure to get married from your family, or maybe you thought that getting married would fix some existing problems in the relationship. You remember telling your partner that your mom had always wanted you to get married before you lived with someone, and considering you’d been dating for four years, she thought it was high time you tied the knot. Marrying your partner had gotten your mom off your back.
13. You don’t feel strongly about staying committed.
When you’re in the right marriage, staying true to your other half is easy. You do it because you want to. However, if you’re married to the wrong person, you’re likely not feeling convicted to stay committed to them. You start to see commitment differently, believing that people who are truly committed to one another spend intentional time together, confide in one another, and share tender moments. You see someone cute at your local coffee shop, and you start to fantasize about what life would be like with them instead.
14. You think about divorce.
Divorce is so common now that you’ll see it everywhere, from TV shows and movies to celebrity news. However, if you believe that you married the wrong person, divorce might not just be on the periphery — it might be in the forefront of your mind. Your friends have recently gone through a divorce, and while it was hard on both of them, you look at them with envy. You see how much happier your friend is, and wonder if it might be the best path for your marriage.
15. You find yourself holding things against them.
You’ve never been one to hold grudges, but now that you’ve figured out you’re married to the wrong person, you find yourself holding things against them, even if they’re trivial. For example, you went to a friend’s party together, and your partner ended up ignoring you the whole night, and not introducing you to a couple of their friends you hadn’t met yet. This was six months ago, but you still think about it, and still get annoyed when your partner does something to remind you of it.
