We’ve (34 and 37) been together just over 2 years. At the onset of our relationship, I was dating for marriage while she was a bit more loosely seeing people. We stayed “casual” for ~6 months but she was never dismissive while she considered our compatibility, and once she said yes to me as a person, she has never been wishy washy about major milestones in the future.
We have had serious conversations about timelines and logistics (e.g., I would be pregnant yesterday if it was all in my hands, she wants a big wedding and I want a small), but nothing has ever indicated she had doubts about the general plan. Our relationship has been very positive — open, honest, sexy, fun, loving. We have our things, but conflict generally brings us together and we stay safe. I have no doubts about our compatibility for marriage.
We agreed on a summer 2025 engagement through multiple conversations. Everything until recently has felt both calm and exciting. Of course, getting married is exciting, but also it has felt so right that it also feels extremely normal and like very obviously the next step. We started designing custom rings in February and paid deposits last week. Every appointment with our ring designer was special and fun. She never flinched writing her half of the check. We’ve also agreed that I would do the asking. She’s given some input but is leaving the planning up to me. We agreed early on that a total surprise engagement is insane in any context. The ball is already rolling on my side with planning the actual ask – as in I have the date, location, and a deposit on a photographer. She just knows that it will happen sometime in Summer.
We are in couples therapy and always have had a therapist as a regular component of our relationship. In our most recent session, my gf said she had a baseline level of irritability recently and needed to talk more about our engagement and feel more connected and emotionally intimate with each other. We had a “prickly” couple weeks with us both traveling back-to-back and me admitting to being a bit distant (planning our engagement!!!). We both agreed to be a bit softer and more focused with each other. That was the conclusion of the therapy session – to recommit in the coming weeks to focused time talking about our upcoming milestone and notice/resolve our own contributions to prickly situations. Pretty regular relationship maintenance stuff. We’ve had off weeks before.
In the conversations since then, my gf has been very open and vulnerable about her feelings leading up to engagement. I’ll just mention some quotes because typing it all out is too much and anyone with insight into this feeling probably knows what she’s saying: “I can’t conceptualize what is beyond that point (engagement)” “I don’t know who I am or will be in a marriage” “I feel overwhelmed….like I don’t know what’s going to happen” She described feeling “on the edge of a precipice” and she asked me, moving to the edge of her chair with much emotion, “like are we really going to do this? Like are you for real?” She also said, “it feels like I don’t trust you” which was low-key shocking, and I responded with a question, “Am I deserving of your trust?” which really tickled her. She eventually responded “yes, I think so.” She identified “astonished” and “overwhelmed” from a feelings wheel, to help me understand what it felt like for her. She said the extra gaze of friends and family once a relationship moves to an engagement makes her anxious.
Throughout this out loud processing, I’m embodying my strongest and most stable self. Of course these things could impact insecure parts of me, but I maintain some distance from her expressions to not take it personally. I’ve actually felt like it’s cute and interesting. My main goal has been to be curious and accepting. But maybe I’m not listening close enough…
Last night my girlfriend had a panicked, full on cry over something we had talked about months prior (me visiting a friend) but she had forgotten about. It was scary for me to see her like that but I just held her and did some soothing. She said something through her tears like, “this is why I can’t trust you” but I didn’t catch it and she didn’t repeat it when I asked. I reminded her of the conversation we had and took responsibility for not reminding her the trip was coming up. I assured her I could cancel the trip and she was my first priority. She seemed to calm down almost immediately and apologized later after having some down time.
This panic attack response feels like an indication of her inner turmoil. It wasn’t a normal response for her. We both travel a lot and forgetting the prior conversation was…odd. I think my girlfriend is overwhelmed and needs support/reassurance or is going through something really, really heavy (like we need to break up heavy). Should I pump the brakes and/or push her to be more decisive and clearer about whether she is ready for this? Does any of this sound like normal pre-engagement or pre-wedding emotional whirlwind? My tolerance for the human emotional experience is pretty high, but I’m wondering if I need to take things a bit more seriously.
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Oh boy. I couldn’t live with that level of instability and drama. If you love her and really want to make this work you can probably push/therapize your way to keeping it going, but this sounds exhausting. A healthy marriage does not require this level of crisis and emotion management and talking through every single feeling in excruciating detail. Personally this does not scream “ready for a lifetime commitment” to me.
I have to be frank here, people who have been exclusively dating for less than 2 years who are in couples therapy should not get married.
Is she in individual therapy? I feel like there’s some context missing about her feelings about commitment and marriage etc. I mean personally I’m not married and have always been a little…IDK, skeptical of the whole institution, but I am in a long term committed relationship that I intend to stay in and have felt my perspective on marriage change quite a bit over the last few years – I wouldn’t ever have described myself as someone who was afraid of commitment or who felt like my sense of self would be lost if I became a spouse or wife – it seems like that’s how your partner feels though, and that’s something that probably does require some discussion and work on her part and maybe even together as a couple.
Marriage can be something women disappear into. There is a lot of social baggage around the identities of husband/wife, and people do legitimately sometimes struggle those expectations and their sense of self in a way that isn’t necessarily related to how much they love or want to be with another person.
You’ve been full steam ahead on this relationship the whole time- but has that maybe blinded you to how your partner is really feeling and what she really wants? Her simply not protesting or going along with the process/steps isn’t necessarily an example of enthusiastic consent. I think it’s important to maybe take a moment, as a couple, to pause and really check in that you’re aligned and that she’s not just telling you want you want to hear from her – she loves you but that doesn’t mean she’s ready, but if she feels she has to be ready because this is all you’ve dreamed of since you met her, that’s a lot of pressure for her/on her to meet you on your terms.
You think you’ve been patient, but, IDK, you seem a little unaware of where her hesitation is coming from, and thus, unable to really work through that with her.
I don’t know you all of course, but this behavior sounds very “I don’t want to get married”
The only people I know who went through this amount of turmoil and anxiety before or during an engagement all ended up calling off the engagement, or got divorced months after the wedding.
Pre-engagement should be a time to address any issues and big life discussions, but it should mostly be exciting and fun! I agree with other commenters that this sounds so exhausting and unstable.
The fact that she has said more than once that she doesn’t trust you is enough of a flag to pump the brakes and figure out what is going on.
Man there’s a lot to take in here but I just want to say— I am kind of like your gf in my own relationship, but became that way after confirmed cheating.
Has that happened in your relationship? If not— Has it happened in another significant relationship of your gf’s?
Because if it’s happened in another relationship that isn’t yours then there seems to be a significant level of projection.
And— Knowing how hard it is to be the emotional wreck like your gf— I want to kind of say, I hope you don’t give up on her, especially if you’re not feeling personally overwhelmed until people here mentioned it, just because other people’s baseline means they would be overwhelmed (if that makes sense)..
Like I definitely read into things too much and see it as rejection. And unfortunately, even if I were to get in a new relationship the same insecurities from being cheated on would still rear up and probably make it harder for my person to be the calm one. I recognize this about me. But again it can be so hard to keep afloat in the moment.
But yeah the main thing I need when I’m upset is to talk through things, really talk through them. If you tend to freeze up or shut down when she needs reassurance then, speaking from experience, she’ll fill in the gaps of the silence with the worst possible narrative 😅 which sucks for you and for her.
But it’s easy enough to fill the silence with reassurance. I’m talking positive statements not only saying things like nothing’s wrong. Saying “I miss you” or “I want you to feel better because it’s hard to see you sad” etc
BUT. There might be a needed hard conversation for all this. Because her doubts are causing you doubts and it’s odd to me that this has happened seemingly unprovoked.
Final worst case scenario is all the cheating insecurity is actually her projecting because she has done some kind of betrayal to the relationship but again this is something only you would know right so I would be careful addressing this directly.
Is it a same sex relationship and is the friend get together also with the same sex?
Then the jealousy would have some context; I struggle with the same dynamic in my queer relationship when my partner goes with their same sex friends and just tell him directly what I need (assurance that nothing will happen with them without telling me, since we’ve established that kind of dynamic)
Blegh I hope I addressed this properly and hope I gave you some context; definitely try to address in therapy why these issues would be coming up right now… what the catalyst has been. And go from there (ask about needs etc)
To me this sounds exhausting. And in my opinion if someone in their 30’s has to point to a feeling on a feelings wheel to express themselves then I don’t think they are at a place of emotional maturity to be entering into a marriage.
Are your intentions to remain in couples counselling for the rest of your relationship? If not, how do you plan on dealing with regular relationship maintenance stuff in the future? And are you willing to be in couples counseling for the rest of the relationship?