Wedding is soon. I have serious doubts and don't know if I should break engagement

[Emmyjas]

6 months ago, I got engaged to my fiancé. The wedding is in 3 months' time.

I really care about him and I find him fun, interesting and caring. When we first met, I was besotted - we got on so well and I thought he was a dream come true. He really loves me and wants to commit - which I have never had in a relationship before.

I am in my mid-30s and would like a family. So I feel that now is a good time to settle down and get married.

So when he proposed, I said yes. However, I have been consumed by doubts ever since, and have been dragging my feet about wedding plans.

I've been trying to pinpoint some of the reasons. Some of these are:

• He can sometimes be irritable and impatient with people in public (e.g. with train staff if they don't give clear instructions about train times) - I think he should be less impatient and I've told him that. I feel embarrassed standing next to him when he's like this.

• Recently, I was meeting him for a drink in a bar. I got lost and was 40 mins late (I had texted him a few times in advance to let him know). When I arrived, he lost his temper and was angry that I was so late. I ended up crying. He apologised after.

• He has been critical about some of my friends, in ways which I think are unfair (e.g. a good friend invited us over for dinner with some others, a bit out of the way for everyone - my fiance thought they were being 'self-indulgent'. He said he didn't have anything in common with my friend's husband and didn't want to meet up with the couple again anytime soon.)

• He has been critical of my brother, saying he has been self-important because he said he needed to know date for the wedding asap, due to his hospital rota.

• I sent out wedding invites to more people than planned (wouldn't have made a difference to the cost). He got very annoyed at this, saying he 'wanted a small wedding'. I didn't realise it was a big deal. He said he would be annoyed if I invited anyone else.

The good things are that he's fun and loving. He is kind towards my parents and sends my dad books he thinks he'd like. We have lots to talk about and I find him attractive. He likes most of my other friends and gets on well with people. We also share many of the same values.

I feel I can't keep waiting around for the perfect man, and have to make a real-life decision that inevitably involves some compromise. We are different people and he is a lot more forthright and direct than me. He acknowledges he has a temper.

I have read a bit about wedding doubts, and I know it's common to feel sacred about big life decisions.

I feel overcome with doubt, but I don't feel I have good enough reasons for breaking the engagement and losing him. It was so hard to find someone like him. I'm worried I would seriously regret ending things.

What would others feel? Has anyone else had doubts like this?

He sounds like my now departed FIL. MIL and him were married for about 21 years. She has life long anxiety
.
He was just a nasty bastard with a thin veneer covering it. He was a bully and looked down his nose at people. A good way to truly judge people is to see how they treat people in service jobs.

Oh wow OP.
This is an easy one.
You need to end it or you'll be married to a horrible control freak.

A good friend of mine married someone who in her words ‘wore her down’ and she agreed to marry him against her better judgement. He was charming, the life and soul of the party etc. once married he turned into a control freak and someone who had to have his own way in every situation. She moved abroad to marry him and ended up stuck there with children. He confiscated their passports so she couldn’t leave with them without his knowledge. She had doubts and should have listened to them. She was vulnerable and on the rebound with low self esteem. These men can smell their prey and pounce.

My mother gave me good advice years ago. She said it is important to marry someone whose faults you can bear. The good bits are important but the bad bits are the deal breakers. I grew up in a house with a sibling who had me on eggshells because of her moods. I knew very early on that I couldn't marry someone who was moody no matter what their good points were - it would ruin my home life. Plenty of people could ignore moodiness but maybe couldn't take a different fault. No one is perfect but if you marry someone whose flaws you find very hard, you will be miserable.

I think the way a partner treats strangers in public is quite revealing. I remember having my eyes opened to someone by the awful way they treated a waitress. Conversely I have found someone suddenly attractive when I saw them be so kind to a stranger. I think these things are quite important. Good luck with your decision OP.

The last three things are him having an opinion that differs from yours. If you think he should be in lockstep with you on everything then you’re not ready to share your life with anyone in an intimate way which is what marriage is.

It’s the first two things that are worrying. The anger and impatience are out of proportion as a response to not being clear about train tables and being late for something out of your control, definitely.

You could postpone the wedding until you’ve spent more time with him and determine whether those two instances were isolated incidents or are harbingers of more and escalating disturbing behavior down the pike.

You’ve already sent invites, did those two incidents happen before then? All you can do now is get in touch and say you have to postpone for a while while you get wedding details worked out.

Very good advice

Great advice.

He sounds awful!

Bear in mind that this is as as good as it gets in most relationships. The longer you are with him the more his faults and the things you don’t like about him will annoy you, and the head over heals bit will wear off. Everything will be magnified x 1000 if you have children.

There are no perfect men (or women) but you still have time to meet someone nicer and more suitable,

he's fun and loving.

No, he's really not. He puts you down. Please don't marry him.

Life just gets better without an asshole in it.

The things about him calling other people "self-indulgent" and "self-important" really stuck out to me, as IME that's the sort of thing only bumptious little twerps with paper thin self-esteem routinely say about others.

Yes this is really insightful. He's projecting his own faults onto others. I always look askance at people who rush to impose the worst andmost cynical possible interpretations on the actions of others.

Tetchy, angry, aggressive, hypercritical and controlling men don't mellow and improve with age.

Dealing with pregnant wife, screaming baby, sleepless nights, tantrumming toddlers, trying adolescents, scary teens and then menopausal wife … . They only get worse.

The phrase 'walking on eggshells' is mentioned a lot here, for a reason.

For women, coping with a difficult and demanding husband as well as baby/toddler/adolescent is a recipe for anxiety, sadness, regret.

Are you in any way frightened of how he will react if you tell him how you feel? As a child my parents had friends who married, it soon all turned nasty, and the wife later told Mum 'I was afraid to say no when he proposed'. It was my first awareness that this kind of marriage was possible.

8 pages of advice and not a single acknowledgement that you have even read them OP????

Oh god.

You're going to marry him, aren't you?

Op, my husband and I got engaged fairly quickly, we worked together for about a year (equal footing and similar positions) then started dating and got engaged nine months later then married three months after that, so we got married a year after we started dating.

In that time of working with him and dating, I saw no flaws (in love ❤️) however, one time I did notice he got irritable/grumpy for a reason that seemed trivial or didn’t exist. I decided to just let it go because we all get grumpy sometimes, right? And it was a “one off”.

I grew up around easygoing men (and women) who were even tempered when faced with frustrating setbacks or challenges. So I was used to a certain standard of behavior. Well imagine my shock when I realized the man I married not only could be ill tempered and moody but could act like a little baby sometimes. He had been on his best behavior around me at all times while dating then felt comfortable enough to be “himself” after we got married. I was disappointed in him and didn’t know what to do. On top of this, my in-laws were jerks to me and my husband was afraid to stand up to them. Those two factors were what I thought of as dealbreaker material. I don’t like being around pessimistic ill tempered people and here I was married to one, and I believe in loyalty and standing up for what’s right and I felt he had failed me in a huge way in that respect too. But he did agree his family were completely insane (not ordinary and common in law problems) and broke off all contact years ago and told me he knows it was the right decision. I wanted him to verbally and firmly clap back at them but he wasn’t able to do that which upset me, because I would have done that for him if it had been my family. And I still don’t “accept” it but I know that he did what was he was capable of. I think they did a number on him growing up and so his psyche is ingrained with a fear in that department.

Now, my flaws. I am lazy. I do what I want with our finances. I have many faults. I have serious flaws, and my husband almost always overlooks them. He is the opposite of lazy but he doesn’t criticize me. He does the dishes when they pile up, the laundry, he takes up my slack. We hold the same values and beliefs, we are on the same page with raising our son and on so many things. We have a lot of the same interests. Some different, some similar. We also work in the same field and so understand all of that. When I read here on mn the awful abuse women take, I am very thankful for my husband. I can say whatever I’m thinking to him. I mean, anything. And he apparently feels comfortable unloading to me 😄 If you’re afraid to talk to your partner, then something’s very wrong.

Anyway, marriage is not easy, those moments of joy and harmony are there a lot but what we don’t often see in others’ marriages are the inevitable bristlings and conflicts that arise just from living in married intimacy with another human being. We all have faults, serious faults, and yes sometimes it is lopsided or it is one person causing problems at one time, then the other person at another time. Ultimately, I am at my husband’s side and he is at my side no matter what. We each try and fail to be better humans but we still keep trying and we have that bond between us we don’t ever want to break. He is my person and I’m his. It’s something you just know. That being said, any marriage can go kaput if one of the people cheats or hits, commits a crime etc.

If I had known what his flaws were, I wouldn’t have married my husband. But then, I wouldn’t have had all these many wonderful years with him and especially our son. I can’t even bear the thought.

I’m glad I didn’t know.

In any marriage, your spouse will disappoint you at times, you will disappoint your spouse. So there will never be a perfect person. No matter who you marry, there will be some conflict of some kind. And realize you’re not perfect.

If your fiancé is going to be abusive, that is, will harm you, then no don’t marry him. If he’s malicious, manipulative, don’t do it. Take some time to get to know him better, postpone wedding, and call it off if you have serious doubts.

Obviously no one can tell you what to do but I would say go with your gut. You should know if you're marrying someone if it's right.
Personally, none of the examples you have given would be make it or break it for me.
Re: wedding, surely you discussed the type of wedding/invitees before you sent out invites?
Re: 45 mins late, that would annoy most people to be fair even with updates. Were you lost the whole time or running late anyway and got lost? 45 mins is quite a long time....

You don't mention loving him. There's your answer.

I think this is a good perspective. I'm actually taken aback at how one-sided the majority of responses appear to be. I had doubts for similar reasons before marrying my husband in my 30's, with the difference that he bends over backwards to be nice to staff of any kind. The only thing I can say is that in the case of my husband he has mellowed a great deal and demonstrated growth within the first 2 years of marriage. No person is the same though, and no circumstances are the same which is why posting for advice on a very personal situation (where we'll never know the full circumstances) can be a bit dangerous. I think that all of us have our complexities, some more than others and sometimes it's too easy to write behaviour off as "controlling" or "abusive" etc without knowing full circumstances which apply to that unique relationship and maybe that person is actually just more difficult, insensitive etc rather than categorically abusive.
@Emmyjas
I think the brother thing also is the main issue. My husband got annoyed at my brother on my behalf when he sent a hurtfully casual response over not being able to attend our wedding (Covid was still lingering, we live abroad), but he has since encouraged me to try to be more understanding which I think is a big deal. It sounds like your fiancee could have the capacity to see how he was wrong here, given that he can apologise.

Re the lateness, I know how that can be very unpleasant and upsetting when someone is annoyed with you and it's not your fault. It is a sign of a potentially more controlling person for sure, but agree it's good he apologised. Some men are just highly insensitive and lack the maturity to get rid of their rough edges when things are not on their terms. It's not excusable, especially if it's recurring but I don't agree that it's necessarily a sign that he'll be a terrible father or anything more dramatic. All I can say is that I haven't had this experience with my husband for a long time.

Being in a relationship with someone on the more "controlling" (let's use that word) or unpredictable side is tough. Sometimes the bad things seem as if they outweigh the positives when in fact they don't or become greatly minimised if that person is really capable of change. So you either have to sort of take a chance if you really do love him (not sure you do) and be open to seeing his point of view to a reasonable degree, or, really deep down know something is wrong and call it off.

I married a man when I had serious doubts. Save yourself the heartache, and the cost of divorce. Don't do it to yourself.

This is a good post.

I read your thread this morning and didn’t reply

upon Consideration I’d say …

I’d not marry him
if he was a newish boyfriend you’d dump him for these traits no ?

imagine a second date , you turn up late hes all pissy and then rude to waitress ? You’d not like it
and there is clearly more …

maybe he hid this ?

sorry x

He sounds quite normal. I’m sure you’re not perfect either?!

Raise your standards if you think he sounds normal.

Or.... Is that you, OPs boyfriend?

I married him and had kids. All the red flags became redder and he became abusive. I'm happily remarried but my children suffer from anxiety and it was the worst decision of my life.

Why? I acknowledge I can have a temper. How is that a red flag? Nobody is perfect