You may have married the wrong person: Study

A new UK study revealed that 9.6 million Britons have regrets about their marriage.

The study, conducted by Direct Line Life Insurance, revealed that a third of married Britons have regrets about their marriage, 1.4 million admit they married the wrong person and more than 1.2 million are only staying in it for the children. A further 2.4 million people believe they walked up the aisle too early, with many feeling they didn’t make the most of their independence in their youth. 

The study also revealed that more than 1.6 million people who are currently married regret cheating on their partner and having an affair. However, it is not only affairs that have people looking elsewhere, according to the research ‘the one that got away’ still haunts over two-and-a-half million married people.  

Jane Morgan, Business Manager at Direct Line Life Insurance, said the study showed many Brits are living with regret and dissatisfaction. 

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and when many people look back they may wish they had taken a different direction in life,” she said. 

One woman who can certainly relate to the study’s findings wrote about her own marital regrets in an anonymous piece for The Telegraph. In the article, titled, I was married to the wrong person – and there’s a good chance you are too, the woman said it never crossed her mind that she was choosing the wrong man, but it soon became clear that this was the case.

Having married in her early 20s, the author wrote that doubts first began to “creep in” during their honeymoon and soon petty arguments caused big problems. 

“I thought he was arrogant, he thought I was clingy,” she wrote.

She stayed married for 15 years before she realised they no longer loved each other.

“I married the wrong person, and I spent many years guilty and filled with regret, but too afraid to undo it,” she wrote. “For all those other millions who are sticking it out, I say this, I don’t believe in “the one” anymore, but I no longer believe in staying with the wrong one, either.”

It’s a situation many Boomers can also relate to. The divorce rate for American adults over the age of 50 has risen by 109 per cent in the past 25 years and has remained steady since 2008, according to the Pew Research Centre. The steady increase is directly linked to the unprecedented high rates of divorce Baby Boomers experienced in their youth. Many went on to remarry, but second marriages are notoriously more difficult to sustain, according to US data, with 48 per cent of Boomer divorces in 2015 linked to adults in their second or higher marriage. 

Read more: The argument for leaving a long and OK marriage in search of true love

Did you marry the wrong person and get divorced? Do you think couples should work through their doubts or cut ties if it’s not right? 

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