How would you feel and would you do anything about it if you found out you where your partners second choice, because their first choice was not available or interested?

A gal told me today that the only reason her husband married her was because the girl he really wanted to marry wouldn't marry him.  She just found this out after a few years of marriage and she is mad cause she wasn't the love of his life.  She says the marriage is just ok and thinks he settled and she is hurt?   It didn't sound like a rebound thing, just a settling thing.  So I wondered what I would feel like if that happened to me, and of course I wonder what other people would feel like if this happened to them.

So what would you do if you found out you where your SO default or second choice?

That sounds very old fashioned! What would I do...I have no bloody idea. I'd cry a lot, that's for sure...

I think this is pretty common.

Well, maybe it IS common, but hey... it's a little UNwise & a totally CRUEL thing to say.

Jeeez... I'd be FURIOUS & I'm not sure my ego could get past something like that!

Poor girl =(

I'm sure it is common but I'd still be extremely hurt.  It would very possibly be the end of the relationship for me.  Leo has to be QUEEN, dammit!

I'm still working on forgiving the ex for saying he never wanted to marry me and just agreed because he thought by the time the date arrived he'd be ready.  *shrugs*

How many came before, it really doesn't matter, just as long as I'm the last. (Bread, It Don't Matter to Me)

Awww @SaD... that sounds like pure Boy Logic to me! At least he didn't say he thought he'd have found an excuse not to get married by the time it came around =)

CArRiE I have heard it said,  "A woman wants to be a man's first. And a man wants to be a woman's last" 

@Daisy, I guess that must be my Venus in Aries talk'n then! ;-)

OMG, I can't believe he told her this!!

I would be really angry and hurt and don't know if I'd ever get over it.

That's what I was thinking CArRiE

@Daisy, I've heard it the other way 'round: A man wants to be a woman's first, a woman wants to be a man's last. 

@McK, thanks, babe.  :)  Honestly, I'm 78% over it.  Him proposing to the chick immediately after me within two months is taking much, much longer, though.  *winks, playfully bares teeth*

Don't confuse me SaD! I'm living an altered reality

sound like trying to make her feel insecure so she wont leave if he felt the need to tell his wife that she was second best, as in, be grateful you have me because you may not have if...

Not a nice person. I know honesty is important in a relationship but on a need to know basis and she needed to know that before she accepted his proposal, methinks

I would be devasted to be told that, and he would be shit out of luck.

@SaD... 78%, eh????  & yeah... I'd find it much harder to swallow that next bit. What a dick!! It's happened to me a couple of times. The guy I'd been seeing for ages decides to commit within a short space of time right after me. They have also come into sh*t loads of money too... Whatever!

Think I'll head back over to your bitching thread

Depends. I would be pissed, but was this said by her sS.O? It can't just be provocation? I mean it depends what the basis of the marriage was...if it was over the hill happy , romantic ...lets spend eternity together, I would drop the relationship, but if it was a ease into relationship, I would not care ...unless it was still his viewpoint. The one that got away. That is mean

@McK, *ROARS!*  :D

I think it's quite common, too. Unfortunately.

The boyfriend I had when I was 19 got married about fifteen months after we'd split up (I initiated the breakup) and his wife was eight months pregnant when they married. His brother called me a couple of years after that, tried to *ask me out* which... no... and then told me that my ex's wife was pretty unhappy because my ex had "not stopped talking about me" and was comparing her to me.

Just a mean thing to say, really, to someone you've taken vows with. I felt pretty bad for her, and hoped that he eventually appreciated her a lot more.

I have a feeling that her marriage is not very happy. If he just settled, his wife is always going to be found lacking. I don't know why anyone would just settle in a marriage!!! I would rather live alone myself.

It would definitely be a devastating, crushing thing to hear your partner say.

I don't think my Venus in Leo would stand for such a thing, but in the end it would depend on how much I loved him.

I've also been the "first choice" and witnessed the guy settling for his second choice. I always felt bad for the girl. If I've ever been the "second choice," they've not told me and I've not been aware of it.

I think the man is just not smart enough to know when to keep things to himself!!! lol Why the hell would you ever tell anyone this?? Whether it was the truth at that time or not. It is hurtfull to say the least.

I'd kick him in the nuts and then say "that was my second choice of what to do to you."

I would feel upset even if the relationship was good. I would feel thoroughly used. It's one thing to move on after wanting to marry another woman, but to know that it was a rebound marriage would just destroy everything for me. It would sour everything.

It'd probably hurt the relationship to the point I'd consider ending it. I need things above the board and if one thing hasn't been done right, I'd be way too suspicious to repair it.. I don't think I'd want to.

Depends on the reasons and exact circumstances, but I'd check for signs my husband learned that it's far better to have a real and loving relationship we'd built over the years rather than chase after some version of a woman he had a fantasy marriage with.

I'd be extremely angry if I didn't know about this and he hid it from me. I'd want to know, if she ever became single again and showed signs of interest, if he would leave me and the kids, if we had any, in a heartbeat just to chase a dream.

Emotionally, it would depend on facts, but definitely angry, hurt, lied to, unappreciated unless he put it firmly in the past. This is my venus in aries talking...not allowing a husband to treat me as anything less than a priority now that we're together.

With my 1st house Sun/Moon, and Venus in Aries.....no, I wouldn't put up with being a man's second choice to the woman he really wanted. 1) because I would not like knowing I wasn't the one he loved most, and he was probably not really happy with me, and 2) because I deserve better.

*rawr from me too* ;)

Umm....I also found out from a girlfriend of mine with whom some definite drifting has happened over time (for other reasons), that I was the one that a long term boyfriend of hers really wanted to ask out first, but he didn't have the nerve to ask me out, so he asked her instead. I'll duck now. I wouldn't have gone out with him anyway though--not my type. And I had no concept of the opposite gender as much more than a nuisance 15-10 years ago.

Ouch. I'm not sure I would ever recover from that. My trust would be completely lost and I'd have to end the relationship. Otherwise I'd go crazy thinking "what if" (he's checking her up on facebook right now? thinking about her during sex? leaves me the second she makes herself available? comparing me to her right now?).

I'm still trying to figure out what the motive behind telling someone something like this is. That should have been information she had up front before she decided to marry him..but now?

Bless her heart of course she is hurt!

I'm playing this out in my head and the types of reactions I can imagine having are not pretty. I'm always mad before the pain settles in. I'd say Elsa is right tho; it probably is more common than you would think.

I'd be pretty prone to tell him something like "if I'm not the one, I'm granting you your freedom so you can find her and I can find mine"

My ex husband knew when we first met that I was devastated by the end of my two year love affair with the Actor (who's very famous). He nevertheless courted me and married me anyway, knowing I continued to be devastated by it. I married him - I settled - to get away from the city, away from any risk of bumping into the Actor, to change my life completely, and because he adored me. If I'd been able to drive, I might have left him and gone back to the Actor when his partner was killed in an accident... I hope I wouldn't, but anyway I didn't.

Even after we moved abroad, the Actor continued to haunt our marriage - we put on Desert Island Discs one morning over breakfast, and there he was, choosing the song he'd sung to me in bed in Ireland... and we went once into a French town to catch a movie, and he was in both the films showing at the cinema, argghh! (we went home!) In a real sense, I never got over that love affair. 

I never told my ex I wasn't in love with him (never told I was either!) ... In the end it ate away at my husband's confidence, and I think it was knowing he was 'second choice' that undermined our marriage. Towards the end we slept in different rooms. 

... just not smart enough to know when to keep things to himself!!! lol Why the hell would you ever tell anyone this?? Whether it was the truth ...

Exactly! Never, ever tell - these are bargains you make with yourself, if you decide to 'settle' as I did (exhausted with emotional overload, at 35, and longing to get off the treadmill and settle down in the country). I'd never ever do it again, ie 'settle' - but at the time I acted in good faith and openly, and I put everything into my marriage of which I was capable.

As a postscript, the Actor did try to get me back after my marriage ended and I returned to England, but I fled in terror... and wept uncontrollably for a week: that was eight, maybe nine or ten years after it finished...  He often does high-profile 'voice-overs' on the TV so I still can't get away from him ... oy vey!

@ Nota Rikon -  that would be my first impulse, too.

Who would ever tell someone that truth? Holy shit! Seriously.

I know it would change the dynamics of my relationship from that moment on. I really don't know if I would stay after being faced with that. No - I do know, I wouldn't. I couldn't. I'd be worried that if his first choice ever became available, I'd be dropped and WORSE - everytime there was an argument, I'd be the first to sting with being "only your second choice."

Not proud to admit it, but yes - I can be very vindictive when slapped in the emotional face.

Lots of tears and anger for sure.

I would be extremely hurt and angry.  My Leo Venus would roar in outrage and that would most definitely be the beginning of the end for me and the guy. 

@Blessed Place : I wanna know who "The Actor" is :(

what a smug bastard...I can't believe he said that, I would do what Nota said.

Lots and lots and lots of tears. And if I wasn't already happy in the relationship, I'd leave him.

I would hit him with a bat. Literally, not metaphorically.

What idiot says that to a person?

In my last relationship, I got to hear FREQUENTLY about how much my girlfriend pined for this guy she went to school with.  The guy apparently did not share the same interest, so she just continued to pine away and seek something else to fill the void that couldn't be filled by him.  She ended up naming one of her sons after him.

It sounds like some people just don't know when to shut up.  There is no future in the past so why go there?