I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of marriage. I do want to get married in the future, I really do. But lately, I’ve been feeling like I want it to be in the distant future. I dunno, it’s kinda weird. I think it may be the influence of my sister, {Teresa} visiting. I was talking about marriage with her and my neice, {Amber} (I think), and I mentioned that I would like to get married soonly. T jumped right in and said, “why do you want to get married now? You’re too young! You have the rest of your life to be married. Have fun being young now.”
And I started thinking about what she said. Why DO I want to get married now? Obviously because I love {Mike}, and I want to be with him all the time, and I started thinking… what would change if we got married? Would we be able to be together all the time? No. We would get to see each other pretty much the same amount, and then get to sleep together at night. Which I like.
And I AM too young. I’m only 19, I wanted until I was at least 21, but now I’m thinking longer. Maybe like 23, that seems like a good age. I don’t know why, lol.
And she’s right, I have plenty of time to be married. It’s not like if I don’t marry Mike tomorrow, he’s going to run off. And if he were going to run off, it would be a lot easier for him to do so if we weren’t married (haha, that sounds really bad. :angel: ).
I do want to have fun being young! I want to get drunk and be hung over, I want to go on a roadtrip and get completely lost, I want to go to a concert and act crazy, I want to study abroad, I want to go clubbing, I want to be a typical college student! But I can’t do a lot of these things if I’m married.
Mike has often said, if we get engaged, it’s not like we have to get married right away. We can wait a few years and have a lengthy engagement. And initially, I agreed with him. But now, I’m not so sure. I know that if we get engaged now, we’ll just be itching to get married, and I doubt we would be able to wait longer than a year to be married. Not to mention all the pressure from our families to get married after we’re engaged. No, I’m pretty sure the long engagement plan is out the window.
So yesterday when he showed me a ring online that he liked, I thought little of it. I thought, oh yeah that’s cute, put that on the list of maybes. But when he suggested going in to the store to look at it, I have to say I panicked a little. But it’s not like we haven’t gone into jewelry stores to look at rings before. We’ve even talked to assistants about financing. So I don’t know why I got panicked when he suggested it this time, but I went ahead and agreed to go.
Today when it came down to it, I decided I didn’t want to go, and I spilled my guts about all this marriage business that I explained above. Poor guy, he was really crushed I think. “A few years?” He said. “How many, exactly?”
“Oh, I was thinking maybe after we finish school, or when I’m 23.”
“But by then I’ll be 24! I’ll be old!”
“Old? 24 is hardly old!”
“I know but… older than I would want to be married…”
We had a good talk about it though, and decided we won’t think about marriage again for a good while. I’m not sure if maybe he’s feeling pressure from his mom, and I know I’ve been a bit obsessed about it in the past, or from somewhere else. Maybe it’s what his mom and I talked about before. She once told me that she wanted Mike to be married, before it was too late. I wasn’t sure what she meant until she went on, she started talking about Mike’s cancer and how afraid she and his dad were that he wouldn’t make it. So maybe he’s trying to seize the day, to fulfill all of his dreams before his cancer comes back. Or maybe he’s just really in love with me and wants to marry me. I tend to think it’s this last one more than all of the others, just because Mike isn’t melodramatic like me. :cheerful:
After we settled on all of this, he told me that if I liked the ring (I think it was this one) today, and if the price was good, he was going to buy the ring and propose to me on our 2 year anniversary on the 20th. Part of me was disappointed I said anything, and part of me was glad. But I think if I had any doubts about getting engaged, it was good for me to say something now. 🙂
I love you, Mike.
You can never predict the day you will get married… by the way, I like the new changes around here!
Also…
Happy New Year!
I’d like ask you to vote for my blog, Nite Owl, in the Best of Blogs awards. 🙂
I’m sorry if this makes me sound dumb, but I’m a little confused. You said the “long engagement plan is out the window,” so why would Mike buy the ring and propose to you this month if you don’t think you’d be able to have a long engagement and you don’t know if you want to get married right away? Are your doubts settled now? I’m a little bit confused, I guess. 🙂
It’s good that you confronted Mike about all of that, I was going to advise you to while I was reading it until I saw that you already had, haha. It’s good to get it out in the open what you want and stuff. I was just wondering, does Mike want to be able to do those things that you mentioned (e.g. getting drunk, clubbing, concerts, etc.) that you can only really do freely if you’re an unmarried adult? That might be an interesting question to ask, since maybe there are some things that he would like to do, too, that probably wouldn’t happen as easily if you guys were married.
My mom always told me that I wasn’t allowed to get married until I was 26, haha. I sort of just roll my eyes at her, since it would seem to me like some lightning bolt would flash over me and make me all-wise about who I am and what I want. That’s how my parents are, though – they want me to wait a long time to get married, probably because they got married so young and it wasn’t such a good idea. They married when they were 18, and had me, their first born, when they were about 20. Now they’re divorced. I’m not sure of the statistics, but supposedly, it’s not good to marry so young. Not to say that you and Mike will surely divorce if you got married soon, but it is something to think about since we are pretty young. I remember when I was with Tyler, we’d say that we’d get married after undergrad, and maybe sometime into our graduate studies. I was talking about it with this lady, and she was like “oh don’t do that, grad school is hard on a young marriage since you won’t see each other as much as you’d like” and such, since you’d be bogged down with tons of work. At the time I was like “whatever, I’m sure people have done it in the past and it’s worked out,” and I still sort of am that way as well, even after breaking up with him. I can see what she means, and I know what my mom means when she wants me to marry when I’m older, but ultimately it’s your own decision and you have to do what’s best for you, while still paying attention to what the elders say. I personally wouldn’t want to get married this young because I can’t even see myself married at this point, and it was the same even when I was with Tyler. My parents were worried that I’d run off and elope with him or something, haha, but I would never do that because 1) I find it really hard to see myself married at this point, when I’m so young and 2) I think it could possibly mess with my education and I’d rather not have a husband to worry about in addition to education. But see, this is different than you because you’re not interested in graduate school or anything like that, so I guess in some way it’s irrelevant, but the way that it is relevant is that it seems easier to do the things you want to do, whether it’s school or just the other pleasures of being young and unmarried as you mentioned, when you don’t have that responsibility and committment. If it’s what you really want, you should do it, but it’s perfectly fine to want to wait a while to experience the unmarried life a little bit more. We’re only this age once, and if you think about it, we’ve only been adults for a little while. That’s why I don’t think I’d get married until after I’m 21, or maybe even later. And it’s fine to have doubts, too, just don’t ignore them, because it has to do with what you want and it’s really helpful to address them as you have.
Anyway, this is a really long comment, so I’ll end it. Love you mucho, see you on Saturday!
Mike’s plan for getting the ring for our anniversary isn’t going to happen now that I told him all of this stuff, we decided to wait on it. 🙂 And the whole school thing is true, too. I don’t want to get married while I’m in school because it will just be too hard, and I only have two or three years to go on it anyhow. And i kind of want Mike to be a little bit settled in his career before we marry, because like you said… being newlyweds is hard enough, without having to worry about finals and work and whatnot. 🙂 And also, once we get married, I know we’ll be impatient to start a family… and I know I don’t want kids soon. 😀
And about the things that I want to do, Mike isn’t into all of that stuff, so he wouldn’t want to do any of that, too. We talked about it. But he wants to do a lot of things that I don’t, too, so I think it’s good for us to have all of these experiences separately before we get married and such.
Can’t wait to see you again! Miss you!