Dear Christine, I AM 22 years old and my fiancé is 25. We are supposed to get married this October, but I am having second thoughts.
We have been together four years and were neighbours growing up.
We both dropped out of college, but I have always held down a full-time job, whereas he got laid off and spent a whole year unemployed.
I have a lot of resentment towards him because he had no excuse to not find a job. He didn’t have the “drive” or “ambition” that I wanted him to have.
Since last June, he has been a truck driver.
Also, he still lives at home, and the thought of him being so dependent on his parents bothers me.
A little over two years ago, he wanted for us to get married, but I kept telling him I wanted to wait until I was at least 23. He proposed after I turned 21. Some days I am so happy to be engaged to him and some days I am not.
In addition to our other issues, our sex life is not okay. He always wants to have sex and I hardly ever do. I do not really know why I do not because he is not a bad man, but I just feel like I am not attracted to him anymore. This is the only relationship I have ever been in and I do not want to lose him but I do not want to “settle” either.
I want to talk to him about it but I do not want to hurt him. I guess now that we are making down payments for venues, buying a wedding gown and setting up classes with my pastor, getting married is hitting me. I do not want to be a divorce statistic.
– D.Y. Dear D.Y., You cannot marry this guy. Everything about this relationship is wrong.
For starters, you love him, but you are not in love with him.
If anything is clear in your letter, it is that.
You do not have to worry about hurting him now, but you will definitely become a divorce statistic if you go ahead with the wedding. All the red lights are flashing before you, and that’s why you have reached out to Dear Christine.
Your heart is just not there.
And you know what? You’ll be fine without him. As long as you have been together, it must be scary to think about not being with him anymore, but as much time as you spend on your own, you have to know you will be okay by yourself, or just being friends with him if he allows that.
Eventually, you’ll find someone new if that is what you want, and you’ll be happy.
But please think very, very carefully about what kind of future you are going to have with this man if you do not leave him. You are not even happy in your present. How do you think your future is going to play out?
If he is still so dependent on his parents now, he is just going to be dependent on you in the future.
Do you want to be financially responsible for him the next time he gets laid off and decides he will take his time finding a new job?
Do you want to spend the rest of your life with a man you are not in love with just because he has been in your life so long? There needs to be more.
Do not get married when you are already worried about being a divorce statistic.
Divorce should be the last thing on a woman’s mind when she is planning a wedding. Do not get married. October is still a long way away.
You have plenty of time to gracefully bow out of your wedding now, explain to your fiancé that you will always care for him, but you just are not in love with him anymore and cannot marry him. You owe it to yourself to keep an option of a happy future open. Do not settle for less than happiness.
I hope I have made myself absolutely clear and that you can accept my realistic, practical, and honest take, on your situation.
– CHRISTINE
Whoa… yeah this seems like marriage in your present state of mind with valid and legitimate concerns can only mean BIGGER problems ahead.
It’s truly important that we keep things in perspective. There must be common ground, common vision of the future and if he’s NOT prepared to lead, but rather is too laid back he’s gonna frustrate you and fracture your and his own outcomes.
Couples must have more in common than just wanting/needing each other. They will need something bigger a shared passion/goal focus towards which they look and are focused beyond their feelings for each other. Feelings are a fickle foundation for embarking on a healthy married life together.
Losing you could be the best thing that happens to him if it causes him to wake up, pull himself together and woo and win your heart afreshwalk on.
Sexual intercourse is a powerful driving force in men’s lives especially. Which is NOT to say that it’s not so for women. It’s just that very often a man’s sex drive is stronger than a woman’s. The Creator made us that way.
But men who understand themselves know that their sex drive must be subjugated to higher aims and objectives spiritually and emotionally with regard to their cultivating empowering and comprehensively fruitful and productive relationships with the women in their lives.
In fact; NEW FLASH, because you’ve already been intimate you are already soul-tied, emotionally bound to your fiance’. So in a real sense the pain of divorce is unavoidable. But there’s LIFE after divorce. Fulfilment is more about growing through growing pains.
I think your emotions and your hormones got the better of you both. You failed yourselves and your community failed you if they never educated and warned you about all the intricacies and complexities of building sound and solid relationships with the opposite sex.
But this need not mean that you’re fated to fail in this present or future relationships. This does not have to mean that you’ll never get married. But marrying simply for sex is always a bad idea. There must be more and there can be more. But he needs to value you beyond bedding you. And even if he doesn’t, you certainly must VALUE yourself. I think you both probably have some growing up to do spiritually and emotionally. At least postponing the marriage is a pause for a cause. By postponing I do not mean setting a new date. But leaving yourself the option to go forward on the basis of measurable and quantifiable change realized from real time apart. Time spent focusing on your personal development as individuals spiritually, mentally and emotionally.
Christine, is 100% correct.