Being engaged was one of the absolute worst stages in my entire life. The only other stage in my life that rivals it in horribleness so far was the first two years of high school in which I was bullied by a short, hyperactive brunette who hated me for reasons I still fail to understand. But that’s another story.
My engagement was filled with so much fear, anxiety, confusion, and busyness that I hated almost every minute of it.
I thought I’d discuss some of the issues that I dealt with. I think it’s productive to be realistic about life, especially those parts that tend to get romanticized — like engagements. We need to share what makes life difficult for us. So often, when we talk about love and relationships, we only focus on the positive aspects, and when we do talk about the “rough times” we only talk about them in theory. As a result, many people — myself included — tend to have unrealistic expectations about the various stages of life. It’s hard to picture what the “tough times” are like. So this is the engagement that I experienced. These are the things I struggled with.
First of all, the things that worried me at the time of Ben’s proposal (which I discussed in earlier posts) never ceased to trouble me. In those eight months prior to the wedding, I found no real comfort for my problems and issues. I still hated the thought of being a woman. I still fretted tirelessly about sex. I still worried that I wouldn’t be able to be a scholar. Nothing changed regarding these things before the wedding day.
But there were lots of other things, too, that made the engagement hard for me. For starters, I am the kind of person who doesn’t deal with change very well. I get kind of hysterical when my schedule gets thrown off or my identity shifts. Change turns me into a monster. And for the eight months prior to my wedding I was perpetually being reminded that my whole world was about to drastically change. I felt short of breath and panicky almost constantly, realizing that I couldn’t even really conceive just how different my life was going to be in a few months. I was going to live in a different home – I didn’t even know what home. I was going to sleep in a different bed, with a different bedfellow; and my relationship with said bedfellow was going to be unlike any I’d ever had before. I was going to sign my name on credit card receipts with a different surname. I was going to have to eat food that I had prepared myself rather than relying on my mom’s cooking. I was going to have a new address and a new phone number. I wasn’t going to have my mom and sister around any more, or be surrounded by my noisy, boisterous family any longer: I was going to live in a world dominated by silence. I was going to have to pay my own bills. I was going to have a different bank account. I was going to have my own furniture that I would share with Ben. I was going to be responsible from now on for my own carpets and dishes and lamps and shampoo. This was unnerving. I was just a teenager, a kid! I had never thought about carpets and dishes and lamps and shampoo before.
It’s hard to feel giddy about life when faced with all of these changes. In fact, it’s downright terrifying. It was for me, anyway. Maybe other people enjoy the thrill of novelty and opportunity that comes with engagement, but for me the seemingly infinite prospects of change for the future were almost debilitating.
This is just one of the many reasons why my engagement was not the enchanting, idyllic time of life I thought it would be.
(How about you? If you have ever been engaged, did you find it hard? Or was it easy? Why?)
Continued in Part 2.
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I am starting to feel this way….I’m getting married in about 2 months— and in less than a week we’re moving 1000 miles away from my family, friends and everything I know. Change is scary and I don’t know how well I’m dealing with it…Engagement has NOT been fun — however I am looking forward to the marriage— just not all the crazy change that comes with it!