'With just 7 words, my maid-of-honour told me my marriage wouldn't last. She was right.'

When Ryan* proposed to Joanne*, she was excited. Or, so she thought.

The couple, who were in their early 20s, had been together for almost two years, and had been friends for years beforehand.

The plan was to be engaged for nine months, have a big, beautiful wedding, and then start a family straight away.

After all, that was the trajectory for everyone around them.

"All of my friends were getting married," Joanne told Mamamia.

"I wanted to have kids young. I just got swept up in all of that, probably more so than him."

But a couple of months into the engagement, she started to have doubts.

Watch: Why you should by your wedding dress second hand. Post continues after video.

"I was like, 'Oh, I've probably made a mistake,'" she said. "I started to get a bit of a sick feeling that it wasn't right. That I didn't want to be with him forever. I couldn't see myself doing that for my whole life."

Ryan hadn't done anything egregious, but Joanne knew he wasn't the one for her.

"He was a great guy; there was nothing wrong with him. But he was a safe option," she said.

"I didn't know otherwise. I didn't have a lot of experience."

By then, however, the invitations had been sent out to 300 guests, and their respective parents had forked out a lot of money for a grand wedding.

Joanne "didn't feel like there was a way out."

The bride-to-be did, however, confide in her best friend and maid-of-honour about her feelings.

"We talked through whether I could pull out at that point or not," she said.

They both agreed it was the wrong call.

"It was really just naivety and I wasn't brave enough to do that, so I didn't," Joanne said. "I thought it would be easier to get married and then leave later, or that it would just improve and become what I wanted it to be."

As the ceremony grew closer, Joanne realised she was "excited for the wedding, just not for the marriage."

"That was just a naive place to be," she said. "I think I thought I was more mature than I was."

On the morning of the wedding, it started to rain. And Joanne had all the typical bride jitters, but tenfold.

"I was stressed knowing that I was walking into a mistake."

After posing for photos with the bridal party, Joanne took a breather near a rain-soacked window.

Noticing she seemed upset, the maid-of-honour approached the bride and placed a comforting arm around her shoulder.

"She looked out the window with me and said, 'Don't worry, it's only your first wedding.'"

For Joanne, those seven words "totally broke the ice."

"We both had a good laugh and thenI enjoyed the day for what it was."

But after the dancefloor had cleared and the centrepieces were packed away, the dust started to settle. And reality sunk in.

"Very soon afterwards, in the first couple of months, I went to my parents and said, 'I think I've made a mistake and I don't want to be with him.'" Joanne recalled.

Their response was clear: "You've made your bed, now lie in it."

"I think they thought I was being a silly teenager, just being erratic," Joanne said. "They didn't really understand or take the time to listen."

So the 21-year-old tried to make it work with Ryan.

"I actually moved out for a short while," she said. "I lived in my own place to see if that would help fix things, and it didn't."

Still, Joanne wasn't prepared to leave.

"I didn't feel like I would have the support of my family if I was the one to make the decision," she said.

So, she tried to put the onus on Ryan, and "spent the next eight years trying to get him to leave."

"I didn't account for him in the things that I was doing," she said. "I did what I wanted to do with no consideration for the consequences, or how that would affect him."

But no matter what she did, Ryan stayed.

"I would tell him I didn't love him and that he shouldn't be with me. And he just didn't want to leave."

Though they had wed young to have children quickly, Joanne kept finding excuses to delay becoming parents.

"I just knew that it wasn't going to last, and I didn't want to have kids with him," she said.

"So, I continued to make excuses about my career and things I wanted to do and achieve before we had kids. I just kept kicking the can down the line."

Finally, when Joanne was 29, things ended for good.

"I cheated on him in a way that he would find out about," she confessed.

When Ryan learnt what had happened, the pair visited a marriage counsellor.

Little did he know, this would be their last conversation.

"He went in with the mindset that we can fix this, and I went in saying 'I've been trying to tell him that I want to leave for eight years, and I can't seem to get it through,'" Joanne said.

"The marriage counsellor turned around and said to him, 'I'm sorry. I don't normally say this, but I think she's trying to say that she doesn't want to be in this marriage.'"

And that was the end of it.

"We drove our separate ways. I haven't really seen him since."

Joanne moved in with a friend, and she and Ryan officially divorced.

It took a while for her family to support the decision, "especially the way that it all culminated."

But, with time, they have grown accepting.

"Now they're fully supportive, and very involved with my kids and my husband."

Because, yes, Joanne's maid-of-honour was right; her wedding to Ryan was just her first.

"I'm married, I've got kids," said Joanne, who is now 37. "I'm in a great relationship. It's what I had hoped it would be."

This time around, the wedding was an intimate celebration, "rather than a party for others."

Joanne believes Ryan also re-partnered and is doing well. But wishes she "had the guts" to leave him sooner.

"I think it's a shame we both lost our 20s to that relationship that I didn't want to be in, and he knew I didn't want to be in," she said.

"That's a long time to be feeling unvalued and unloved and unworthy."

Feature Image: Canva (Stock image for illustrative purposes only).

*Names have been changed for privacy reasons.