Married men’s regrets
“I made decisions that I regret, and I took them as learning experiences…” Actress Queen Latifah’s quote is the kind of guidance some of the men below use to chronicle their experience with their marriages — not as decisions to regret, per se, but among life’s many experience points.
We asked men, what’s your greatest regret about marriage.
Ken, 54:
I regret not setting boundaries when we were younger, and she started entering her independent phase. She stopped cooking for me and doing my laundry, and when she started her degree, I took on a lot of the child care. I regret not expressing what I was feeling then, because I didn’t want to offend her. Today it’s worse, we live separate lives, and she didn’t revert to doing any of what she used to do, before she started her degrees. Our kids are older now, and she still doesn’t act like my wife, more like a room-mate.
Tyrone, 48:
I regret how marriage ties you down, and how it’s like prison that you can’t escape. We have a mortgage and if I left, I couldn’t afford rent out there. We can’t sell the house because it’s the children’s inheritance. Like they say, it’s really an old ball and chain, you really can’t get out, even when the love is dead, because you’re chained to each other through all these responsibilities.
Stevie, 43:
We shouldn’t have had children. The school fees are killing me. We would have been so perfect together, if it was just the two of us.
Richard, 35:
I should have married the woman I loved, rather than let my parents force me to choose a girl of my faith. Now the whole faith thing has crumbled, because we had a bunch of scandals in our church. So if I had married who I wanted, at least I would have been happy. Because if God is not gonna judge these people harshly for the sins they’ve committed, He wouldn’t have cared about my unequally yoked union.
Keith, 46:
Don’t marry someone beneath you socially or intellectually. The beauty is only interesting for a while. After some time you’ll need a friend who you can actually hold a conversation with, and not some nincompoop who’s just good to look at.