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Old 17th August 2010, 08:54 PM   #1
Scarletrook
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Engagement weirdness: Help please

Hi everyone,
I’m brand new and wanted to say hi before I dive right into my question. So hello there and imagine a cheerful wave! ^_^ I’m afraid this may get pretty long and detailed, so thank you in advance for you kindness in reading all my ramblings.

I’m a little confused about how I should take something that happened between my boyfriend and I a day or two ago and how I should proceed. I need to take you back a little bit in time. About three weeks ago I asked him how he felt about getting married roughly around this time next year. (We had both been hinting around a bit here and there about it for a couple of months so I thought it was a pretty safe thing to bring up.) He said he liked the idea and we even spoke a little bit about possible dates. Over the next couple of weeks a couple of other things were casually mentioned and nothing seemed to be amiss when they were spoken of. Suddenly a couple of days ago he asked me what all I thought would be involved in planning the wedding so I pulled out my iPhone and began reading a basic break down that an app I had on there had created for me.


He started to look extremely uncomfortable and I immediately knew something was wrong. Even though he continued with the conversation as though everything was fine I knew everything was NOT fine. I went over to him and told him that if at any time he felt like he didn’t want to do this or he wasn’t ready or whatever to please tell me. He said he was suddenly extremely nervous when I began naming all the stuff that had to be done and that his heart had begun to race. He said he needed some time to think about WHY that had happened and he couldn’t really tell me right then.


I had to go to work in just a few minutes and was not pleased at all to have to leave right in the middle of this and suddenly became extremely angry. Not that he had been honest, I was very glad for that actually; I think I felt angry because I felt stupid. Like I thought everything was fine and good and that we had moved to this point together when in reality just the IDEA of marrying me caused him extreme anxiety. I found that very hurtful.


Because of my sudden anger I was only able to wait about 30 minutes before I had to call him on my cell (on my way to work) and ask him what the &*^% his deal was and would he at least TRY to tell me what made him nervous because there was no way I could work all day without knowing what was up. That conversation really didn’t go well and I basically said that I didn’t think he was ready and that I was an idiot to think he would ever be ready, and let's just forget the whole thing, etc.


When I got home from work that evening he said that he felt like we were putting the cart before the horse because he had not even asked me to marry him yet and wanted to know if I wanted a ring . When I said that I did he said that he wanted to go looking for rings this weekend and then he wanted to hold on to the ring until he thought of a cool special thing he could do as a proposal.


I’m really confused by all this. We are both VERY practical people and it never occurred to me that he would want to do a traditional proposal with all the trimmings. I’m trying to figure out now if I just totally pegged him wrong (that he’s far more romantic than I thought) or if this is some kind of stall tactic because he’s not really ready to get engaged or married but he thinks getting the ring and sitting on/hiding it (for however long it takes him to be ready to give it to me) is going to make me feel better; like it’s a pacifier of sorts. There is also an issue of control that I can’t put my finger on that makes me slightly uncomfortable as well. Like he has to be the one to initiate all of this or he won’t feel like a “real man”. I’ve never done well with traditional gender roles so there’s something mildly offensive about that to me. But at the same time part of me thinks it’s very sweet that it seems to mean so much to him that we do it the “right” way.


Any ideas you guys have on this would be great! I’d love to hear from both men and women so I can see if there are two distinct sides to this or if I’m just being weird and difficult all the way around. ^_^ Oh, it may be important to know that we’ve been together for a year and a half and lived together for 6 months.

Thanks for reading and for any ideas!

- Scarlet

Last edited by Scarletrook; 17th August 2010 at 08:55 PM. Reason: Bad Spacing
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