Sorry about the epic post..don't want to drip feed...
I am feeling very ambivalent about getting married and just don?t seem to be able to unpick why I feel this way. DP and I have been together for five years and have a two year old DS. We have been engaged for almost two years, but just don?t seem to be able to move on to actually getting married.
DP set the pace to our relationship when he asked me if I wanted to move in together after just four months of dating. He had been so very far from my experience of the two other serious relationships I had been involved in (one eight years, one three and a half). He was a ?slow burn? IYSWIM. I didn?t instantly fancy him, but enjoyed his company and the falling in love crept up on me. I?d also never been in a relationship with a man who did not have ENORMOUS commitment issues.
We eventually moved in together after six months. He is lovely man, who I love very deeply. He treats me well, we share a sense of humour and I know without any doubt that I will spend the rest of my life with him. He is a wonderful partner and father to our DS. However, like everyone, we are not without our problems. Sex has always been an issue, in as much that I would have liked an awful lot more. Even before our son was born, once a month was about average. Perhaps I had done myself a disservice in always feeling that my confidence, my sense of being attractive came from my comfort in my own sexuality. The upshot was that I felt somewhat insecure about things - does he love me? Am I attractive? Is this going anywhere? All questions I struggled with.
We had often talked about getting married. It was quite refreshing to discover that not all men run away from the topic and owing to previous disappointments in this area, I was quite upfront about the fact that I hoped for marriage and children in my future. That said, we have not always been on the same page about it. We once had a (drunken) argument where he told me that a marriage certificate meant about as much to him as a swimming certificate. I was rather devastated about this and told him that this was a deal-breaker for me and that much as I loved him, if we weren?t moving in the same direction, it was probably best to split up. This was in no way an ultimatum or me trying to pressure him. I genuinely felt that I didn't want to waste any more time on the wrong relationship. We managed to work through this though and he said that he did want to marry me and have children with me, but that the notion of a big wedding in front of lots of people made him incredibly anxious.
This I totally respect and scaled my expectations back. A large wedding was not what I ever really wanted anyway. What I wanted was a carefully planned, intimate day, with immediate family and a few close friends and he, I think, felt relieved that we were able to meet in the middle. He said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and that he would propose, but he would do it in his own time. I was sort of fine with this. I would have much preferred for him to propose sooner rather than later, but I also didn?t want to feel that I had forced him into it. I would get hopeful around special occasions (birthday, Valentine?s Day etc..), but it never came and I always felt a little bit sad about it.
Three years into the relationship, I then discovered, quite by surprise that I was pregnant. Although we?d talked about the possibility and I knew that he was, if anything, a bit keener on the idea of children than me, I was very happy. It was at this point that I felt more able to say to him, ?What are you waiting for??. I was open and honest with him and told him that I had always envisaged being married before having a child and that now we were expecting one, that was never going to happen, so I would like to be engaged before the baby arrived. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen and he eventually proposed on my birthday, when DS was four months old (he had asked my father?s permission on the morning that DS was born).
We began looking into small venues and went through several ideas before we found somewhere we both loved, booked it and set a date. All seemed to be going really well until a couple of months later, when my mother passed away very unexpectedly at the age of only fifty-nine. My father then put enormous pressure on me to cancel the wedding. Mum died in January, the wedding would have been in December. I don?t think he could bear the idea of me doing this without her there. I sincerely wish I hadn?t now, but I did cancel it and the idea of getting married was put very much on the back burner.
DP and I eventually got back to thinking about planning the wedding. I felt very strongly that I could not go with the original venue we had chosen. I had planned a lot of this with my Mum and I felt like that wedding went with her when she died. I still pass the venue twice a day going to and from work and seeing it makes me feel quite, well, bereaved. I should have been married for six months by now, but I?m not.
My close friends keep asking about wedding plans and I keep saying ?Oh, we haven?t found a venue we like,? or some such excuse, but the truth of the matter is that I just cannot muster a scrap of enthusiasm for it. I?ve spent time looking for appropriate venues that would suit both of us, we?ve agreed a guest list, we?ve both found clothes that we like. It should be easy, but it just isn?t happening. I want to get married, DP wants to get married - that?s not in any doubt - I just don?t really feel excited by the prospect and I cannot understand why. It could be unresolved issues about my mother?s death; it could be because he dragged his feet for so long that I had made my peace with it probably never happening. Whatever the reason, I just can?t bring myself to believe that we will ever marry.
I have had some minor issues with my MIL-to be. She is lovely and we get along very well, but she seemed to go a little bonkers when we announced my pregnancy. She had a metaphorical attack of the vapours and insisted that we ought to be married. As I say, she and I get along very well and I hoped after my Mum died, that as a mother to an only son, that she would like to be involved in the planning. She completely blind-sided me by going the other way totally and being a bit sniffy about the venues we were interested in, telling me how expensive everything was and we can?t afford it (not an issue, as my father has given us a sum of money, as he did for my sister) and that no-one would judge us if we snuck off and did it without telling anyone. As she has always been so welcoming and kind to me, I would belying if I said that this did not hurt my feelings rather a lot. DP and I talked about it and he pulled her up on it, which I hadn?t expected him to do. She did apologise, but her stance does not seem to have altered.
Events finally came to a head this weekend. We went to see a possible venue and although we both liked it, I could sense DP was not really in to it. We talked about it and he basically said that he did not want such a big wedding (forty guests) and that the whole idea of it made him sick with anxiety. He later apologised and said that although he still feels very nervous about having to be in such a large group of people, he will do it for me, because he knows it matters to me and that he wouldn?t want us to look back and wish we?d made more of a celebration of things.
Of course, I now feel that I cannot possibly ?force? him into something which makes him so uncomfortable. I do think he has anxiety issues - he dislikes socialising and is perfectly happy at home on the sofa with DS and me. The irony is, is that he is an immensely charming person with beautiful manners and you would never know in a million years that being in groups of more than three people makes him feel so wretched.
I don?t know how to move forward with this now. I don?t know if I can. I have no intention of ending the relationship, but cannot see us marrying. I cannot really deal with any more obstacles and have completely lost my taste for the whole endeavour. I had been collecting things on a couple of Pinterest boards for the best part of two years and deleted them last night, because I simply cannot bear to look at them any more. I have taken off my engagement ring and put it away, because it seems meaningless to me now. I love him, so surely I should feel something? If I could go on line and just fill in a form that would make us married, I would. I feel that anything we do now will be only for the benefit of DS. I just do not understand why I feel like this and why and I don?t feel that I can say anything to anyone in real life, as the thought of getting married should be a happy one, but for me, it?s not. I am confused, sad and feel hollow.
Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody
Relationships
I should be excited about getting married, shouldn't I?
TheDemonShedMaster · 25/06/2013 13:22
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