Dallas Divorce Law Blog by Michelle O'Neil

How many times do I hear spouses in Dallas divorces say, “I just don’t know the man I married.”  Christie Brinkley in her divorce complained that she didn’t know the man she married after she found out that he had been spending $3000 per month on internet porn and had an 18-year-old mistress.

Catholic priest Pat Connor has been lecturing high schoolers for 40 years about choosing the right person to marry.  “Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work. But you can be deeply in love with someone to whome you cannot be successfully married,” says the white-haired priest.  Here are his tips:

• Never marry a man who has no friends.  This usually means that he will be incapably of the intimacy that marriage demands.
• Does he or she use money responsibly?  Most marriages flounder because of money — she’s thrifty and he’s on his 10th credit card.
• Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to your’s. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.
• Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings?  When he wants to make a decision, say, about where you should go on your honeymoon, he doesn’t consult you, he calls his mother.
• Does he have a sense of humor? A therapist said, “more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.” Of course, domestic violence is very serious, but in Dallas area divorces, I do see more people that have marital problems because of a lack of communication.  The strong silent type may be charming and intriguing at first, but ultimately destructive to the marriage.
• Don’t marry a problem character thinking you can change him.  People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.  If he’s a heavy drinker before marriage, he’s not going to change just because he marries a good woman.
• Take a good unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitudes towards women.  Is there a history of divorce in the family?  An atmosphere of racism, sexism, or prejudice?
• Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to your’s?
• Does he possess those character traits add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous?  Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious or secretive?