Why Did Your Ex-Boyfriend Marry Her But Not You?

You’ve traveled the world together and spent every holiday with his family. You might even share pets or live together. You want a family with him, but again, the future is a long way away.

For whatever reason, you break up. Maybe you’re finally ready to get married and he isn’t, or vice versa. You’re heartbroken, but after giving multiple years to this person, you’re no longer in each other’s lives. You might say that you’re going to remain friends, but let’s be real, you drift apart as exes typically do. You might stalk his Instagram when you’ve had a few glasses of wine, but picking up the phone to check in or meet up is out of the question.

A matter of months later, a friend sends you a screenshot, or you see a post on his mom’s Facebook. He’s…engaged? You feel a rush of emotions. Anger, sadness, heartbreak. You might even direct all of those emotions toward his fiancée and none toward him. You might hatch an elaborate plan to crash the wedding, but of course you don’t. After dating him for years, he’s marrying someone else after breaking up with you. Despite all your emotions, there’s one essential question you have to grapple with: Why did he marry her but not you?

What Does His New Relationship Mean for You?

Being the one before “the one” might have you convinced that you’ve failed in some way. If you were better, prettier, or smarter, then you wouldn’t have broken up and he wouldn’t be marrying someone else. It’s natural in these kinds of situations to let your emotions take over. But that kind of thinking isn’t just cruel, it’s incorrect.

It’s painful to see your ex date someone else after you, let alone marry them. It’s also natural to probably feel jealous or envious, but just because she’s the right one doesn’t mean that you’re wrong in some way.

Statistically, most exes you’ve had probably go on to committed relationships at some point. What’s shocking or upsetting here is the length of time between the end of your relationship and the beginning of theirs, even if it’s been a year.

But walking down the aisle isn’t a contest, and she probably has an ex too. As sad as it is for you, their decision to marry wasn’t made to directly affect you and should only impact you if you share children with your ex. If you suspect that his marriage is a rebound, that’s their business, not yours. Otherwise, everyone arrives at different milestones at different times. Just because they’re getting married doesn’t mean you never will, and it doesn’t mean you’re any less worthy of love and marriage yourself.

Your Ex Isn’t a Back Up Plan

Having a relationship that ended doesn’t mean that you never mattered to him, nor he to you – but he’s your ex for a reason. Maybe you couldn’t stand the way he chewed with his mouth open, or you couldn’t put up with his messiness. Maybe deep down you knew you wanted different things and a future together wasn’t possible. 

In these situations, honesty with yourself is paramount for processing your emotions. Are you upset because you once thought you would be his wife and that is now impossible, or are you upset because, in the back of your mind, you thought of him as a safety net?

To some extent, it’s natural to think you’ll be married by a certain age, and to mourn your love life if you fail to meet that goal. This might motivate you to go back through your previous boyfriend rolodex and revisit past relationships, secretly hoping that if it worked once, it might work again.

But your ex isn’t a back up plan, and thinking of him as such means that you’d gladly settle for anyone just to be married, which isn’t fair to him either. He isn’t a door that you might open again in the future, and thinking of any ex in those terms doesn’t aid the grieving process at all. It’s difficult to watch your friends get married one after the other, or continually have family ask why you aren’t married yet. But being alone is preferable to being with the wrong person, and that’s a realization we all come to as we mature. It’s okay to be sad, okay to mourn your ex, your past, and what you once had, but if you’re upset because your “plan B” was taken away, a dose of reality will be more helpful moving forward than agonizing over him and his wife.

All Men Commit to Something

All of these situations are different, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all process to grieve this issue. However, an imminent marriage on his part is probably even more puzzling and saddening to you if he had issues committing previously. If pushing off marriage or avoiding discussions of having a family was always his go-to move, there’s something necessary albeit painful to realize.

He might say he’s not the commitment type. He might say he’s not built for marriage, for whatever reason. While this may be true to an extent, and through no fault of his own, all men can commit to something, even if they say they can’t.

A guy who says he can’t commit to marriage but is perfectly comfortable waking up at 4 a.m. to go to the gym each morning really just doesn’t want to get married. He might avoid the topic of marriage around you, but he can dedicate himself to being successful in his job or playing video games with his buddies every Friday night. Marriage isn’t the only kind of commitment there is, and all men commit to something. Even a guy dedicating his life to having meaningless sex and being with a new girl every night is a kind of commitment.

What changes for many men is meeting the woman he ultimately marries. He might meet a woman unlike any he’s ever met before who could change everything for him, and help him begin to seriously consider marriage for the first time. Or he might turn 30 or 35, and realize that he does in fact want to settle down and have a family, and the woman he happens to be dating at the time is marriage material. Men who say they aren’t interested in marriage but who get married soon after breaking things off with an ex are proof that all men can be marriage material – some just don’t want to be.

Closing Thoughts

There isn’t anything deficient in you if he marries someone else, and maybe in a way, the universe is doing you a favor. Stalking his social media or wanting her out of his life won’t change anything, nor will it help you feel better. All heartbreak fades in time, but you can help yourself heal more thoroughly by realizing that whether for one reason or a hundred reasons, it wasn’t meant to be.

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