Everyone said we got married too quickly and they were right – now it's all over

Dear Coleen

I’m a 27-year-old guy and got married a year ago after being with my partner for only a year. We met when we were travelling and fell in love quickly.

Pretty much everyone in our lives thought the wedding was a bad idea, as we hadn’t known each other that long, plus I was 26 and my partner was only 24.

She got really into planning the wedding, which cost her parents (and mine) a fortune.

However, a lot has changed in the past year and we’ve started to socialise with our own groups of friends and hardly ever go out together.

And after living together for 18 months, our sex life is fairly nonexistent, too.

For months I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’d made a huge mistake by getting married.

As soon as the wedding stuff was over and we had to get down to a normal life, I realised how little we had in common and I struggled to come up with reasons why we were even together.

So, a few weeks ago, I finally admitted to my wife how I felt and now the marriage is effectively over.

She hates me right now and won’t speak to me, while I spend my whole time justifying myself to other people.

It’s hell. Please tell me I won’t regret my decision.

Coleen says

It’ll take a bit of time for the dust to settle, but I promise you will feel better. It’s only been a few weeks, so you’re still in the middle of the storm, but please don’t doubt your decision.

I think it takes a lot of guts to do what you did and I’m sure you were worried about hurting your wife and letting other people down.

However, you could have let things carry on, becoming more unhappy and disconnected from your wife, and you might have had an affair or even a baby, which would have complicated things further.

Even though you know you’ve made the right decision, it’s still going to be difficult and it’s still going to hurt because it’s the end of something that once meant a lot to you, even if it didn’t last long.

There will always be people lining up to gossip or judge you, but they aren’t your responsibility.

You know you did the right thing and, although your ex might not see it now, I’m sure in time she’ll realise it was the right decision for her, too. She deserves to be with someone who loves her.

Allow your family and friends to support you, and do forgive yourself. We all get things wrong in life, so learn from it and try to move on.