So here I was, 25 and with a really great guy. Awesome, even. I was living in Atlanta and very independent. I loved my free time and I loved hanging out with my friends and doing my own thing. He lived in SC and it wouldn't bother me that sometimes we would go a week or two w/o seeing each other. I was that confident in my relationship.
November '06 he proposed and I said yes. I said yes b/c I knew that I loved him. And I knew this was the next step. I was excited, sort of. I told myself that I had to stop being selfish and that this was going to be a good thing for me b/c I thought that if I didn't marry HIM then this was it for me. So for the next year and a few months I planned our wedding. Sometimes I care about details and sometimes I didn't. The clues were there.
I would make jokes about how 50% of marriages fail so it was either us or my parents, and Neil and Ro have been together 40 years so the odds were NOT in our favor. I also pick the Dixie Chicks "Ready to Run" as our cake cutting song (that's funny right?)
I couldn't decide if it was cold feet or if I just really didn't want to be married. Not to him, but just in general.
And when you start thinking that, you certainly can't tell anyone. If you tell someone and go through with the wedding then you know that they know and then you worry that they are thinking that on your wedding day, it's a mess. Then you start worrying about
everyone but yourself. You worry about people who made reservations, people who have thrown you showers and given you gift...it starts to become about something other than you and your happiness.
I thought of every way to get out of this. I thought I would just get married and then divorced. I thought I would just tell him I was a lesbian and that I liked girls. I even thought about how I could fake my own death (a la Lifetime Movie Network) and as funny and ridiculous as this sounds it is all legit. I looked for books on how to get through this and the only thing I found was a book on what to do with the gift. I needed something, or someone to tell me it would be ok b/c they survived. But I couldn't find anything.
So I finally broke down. My sweet, patient roommate came home one day and I had to tell her. I told her everything (not that she didn't know already) and then called my fiance and told him I couldn't marry him.
I was nervous to call everyone the next day, after all we were 3 weeks away. Everyone was AMAZING and the vendors gave us most of the money back. I had an overwhelming amount of support which floored me. I heard storied of people who wished they had called their weddings off and now have kids in split homes. I had people tell me they knew walking down the isle they didn't want to get married and are now in miserable marriages. Everyone, literally everyone, made me confident I made the best decision.
I don't mean to make light of a very serious situation, but if more people realized how easy it is to call of your wedding, maybe more people would have the courage to do it.
