VENT - Loving fiance sucks at wedding stuff!

Re: VENT - Loving fiance sucks at wedding stuff!

• VarunaTT member

  

  February 21

  Ma'am, I don't know you and I realize you're trying to vent and asking for support. 
  
  At the same time, I married the man you are talking about and I divorced him almost 10 years ago.  I think you need to slow down and figure out if he's actually the husband you want material.  B/c this nonsense of never planning anything?  How far does that go?  How much of your SHARED life are you in charge of now?  Is he a partner to you, or a roommate/child that you have to take care of?  Does he always fail on the 10%?  What happens if that 10% starts to grow?  Each time the relationship has taken a step, is it b/c he seems to want that step or you were growing tired of the BS and about to leave, so he stepped in to do the minimum to keep you?
  
  I'm sorry to be the naysayer.  There are more than 4 men in the world and there IS one out there who is willing to be a partner in your shared life and love you, rather than this person who just seems to need an enabler and scheduler for their life.

  �

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• levioosa member

  

  February 21

  knottief945e71ab697d93e said:

  hello. i'm sorry, but i just need to rant for a minute.

  
  

  my fiance (32m) and I (33f) have been together for over 11 years and are deeply in love and very supportive of each other in all things, but everything related to our wedding has been horrible. i'm at wits end.

  
  

  for the first 5 years or so of living/being together i waited for a proposal (we discussed marriage many, many times) and then just sort of gave up. a year or two later, a medical emergency landed me in the hospital during the height of covid. i was so scared that if i didn't make it, he wouldn't be allowed to come say goodbye since we weren't family and were unmarried. after i got home, i asked if we could just go to city hall and get the license and forgo the formalities since i have a longterm medical condition and it wasn't unlikely that i could end up in another situation like that. he didn't like that idea - he said he wanted the proposal and ceremony to be romantic, so i reluctantly said ok and thought he'd plan something and ask in the next few months.

  
  

  a few more years went by, we bought a house, and i (again) gave up on a proposal. one day when i was recovering from a painful surgery and was mourning the recent loss of my dog, who'd been battling a terminal illness, he took me into the backyard, got down on one knee, and pulled out a ring. i was honestly pretty hurt that he'd made me wait almost 9 years, despite my medical fears, under the claim that it was to give him time to make it romantic, and then did it in this way while i was feeling like total shit. i asked him about it later (i was planning to keep my feelings to myself - what's done is done - but couldn't hold it in after a certain point) and he said he'd made the decision to ask and wanted to do it before he lost his nerve, so when shit hit the fan with the surgery and pet passing, he went ahead as planned. i was disappointed, but relieved that we were finally engaged.

  
  

  a little time went by and i asked about wedding planning. i asked again and again and again and kindly explained that wedding stuff needs to happen a year or more in advance if you want something formal. he kept putting it off, so i finally said i'd plan the wedding if he'd plan the honeymoon. ok, fine.

  
  

  i spent so much time planning this wedding - which was a nightmare even though we'd both agreed we wanted something small and very simple. it's still a lot of work no matter how small you try to keep things. i don't even want the wedding anymore. it kind of lost the magic for me after so many years of waiting and all the stressful events along the way. i asked about just canceling and doing the license thing again and he said he would support that, but that he would like to have the wedding so we could celebrate with friends and family. he does so much for me (outside of anything related to the wedding) so i said ok.

  
  

  now the wedding is coming up in a couple of months and he still hasn't gotten his suit or even started looking (i've reminded him so many times that that's one thing i can't do for him!) i tried to explain that depending on what he chooses, it might need to be ordered and tailored and that all takes time, at least a couple of months, but he just keeps saying he'll get to it.

  
  

  i also asked about the honeymoon he was supposed to plan... over and over and over in the last several weeks/months. i've tried to remind him playfully... kindly... gently... lovingly... and now i'm starting to get pissy because i have another medical procedure coming up after the wedding that will prevent me from traveling for about a year so it can't wait. we both agreed we wanted a honeymoon to unwind after the ceremony and prepare me for all the physical discomfort and stress ahead and that we didn't want a delayed honeymoon. i explained that travel things book long in advance too and increase in price if you wait until the last minute, but he won't plan it. i've asked around for trip ideas, sent him blog posts about destinations that fit our ideas/budget, and told him what's important to me (very little), but to no avail. i've already decided i'm not going to do it for him/us. i'm sick of planning and will just be irritated the whole time we're on the trip if i have to be the one to plan it too. i'm about to tell him to just forget about it but that will make me angry as well. i waited this damn long for the wedding and i'd like to have the honeymoon to go with it.

  
  

  i feel like such a petty jerk for being so upset but i'm so tired of handling 90% of this event that i barely care about and having to remind him repeatedly to pick up the 10% he said he'd deal with. i'm confused and hurt and frustrated - he's always come through for me on everything except for this wedding b.s. if he cares about the event, why won't he help? if he doesn't really care about it, why did he say he did and put me through all of this?

  
  

  i've told him i'm at my limit and he's saying he's at his (from listening to/watching me stress over it i assume, since he hasn't done much of anything to help) so he's said he now also would prefer to cancel it altogether. but now i've put more than a year into planning this stupid thing, the deposits have been made, the family is excited to attend... it's irritating to think of throwing it all out the window (time and money and effort and stress) at this point and would be embarrassing to explain to people. i wish i could say i wouldn't resent not having the wedding (because i'd dreamed of it for so long before most of the fun was taken out of it) but i can't assume that. i think it would always hurt if we skipped it, especially under these circumstances. but at the same time, it will still always hurt because it got this far in the first place! and on my wedding day... will i even be happy at all? right now i just dream of getting it the hell over with.

  
  

  like i said, this was mostly just a vent/rant, but any words of support or encouragement would be appreciated. also like i said, our relationship is amazing outside of this one damn bubble of wedding nonsense. i think everything will be fine once it's all finally over, but i hate that i feel that way

  
  

  P.S. and yes - i did ask him if he's sure he actually *wants* to marry me. i told him if he doesn't, he needs to be straight with me. but he says he really does. he said he waited so long because he was afraid he wasn't ready to take care of me as a husband and wanted to work on himself first and etc. etc. etc. that all makes sense for the first few years... but after a while, a girl can't help but wonder. idk.

  You sound a lot like my H and I. We were together nearly a decade before he proposed, much to my discontent. I also have health issues which are chronic and lifelong, and during COVID became freaked out about it. Now, I won't lie, I was pretty disappointed with the proposal itself as well. We decided to get married and we went and bought the ring together (zero issues there), but then when we got home he got down on a knee in the backyard and proposed and honestly I wanted a little more planning and effort and like...a little surprise (obviously it wouldn't have been a total shock as we bought the ring together). We were engaged almost three years before we got married. At first it was fine because I had just really wanted to get engaged after being together for so long. But eventually I did really want to get married. He did too, just the pricing of everything felt rough. We started talking logistics. It was a pain in the ass. We talked about options. We looked into venues and cost, and decided together that eloping/private wedding was going to be the quickest and more sustainable option. We probably would have had a regular wedding if we'd had an extra 20-30k lying around, but the thought of either going into debt or working ourselves to death to pay for it made us wince so private wedding it was. Once the decision was made we planned it in like 2 months, he got a suit, I got my dress and we booked the hotel and got our marriage license and requested PTO. Boom, done. 
  
  Do not get married to this man. At least not like this. You will be parenting him for life. Maybe you decide to have kids. Will you be doing all of the mental load and emotional labor there? Or if you chose not to have them, what happens if you become really sick and need more care, and he has to take care of household business? Everything has been on his timeline. He hasn't shown consideration in your feelings with anything marriage related. He's even shown a lack of emotional respect to you with the proposal and it's timing. I was disappointed in a backyard proposal and we were in a great mood, I can't even imagine my headspace if I had been grieving the loss of a pet and dealing with an acute health issue. I get that there is a lot of history and I'm sure he's done a lot of wonderful things, but there are a lot of red flags here. At the minimum you should postpone and go to couple's counseling. You say it's just about the "wedding" but it really isn't. You had numerous health scares and he didn't seem to care about how that impacted you. "Working on himself" is such a copout. If he wanted to show you he was ready he would be involved in the planning. Getting a suit is like...the lowest bar he could have for helping plan and execute this wedding. A honeymoon is just a vacation with a title and he could easily help with that. Throwing up his hands and saying "fine we'll just cancel it" is really sitting poorly with me. He has control over this and instead of taking any accountability or responsibility he's saying "go ahead and cancel then, it's just so hard on me to see you stressed out." All of his actions (and words, apparently) have said he never really wanted to be married anyways. He gets to have you but without any of the responsibility that comes with the title of marriage. Maybe there's more into this aversion of marriage that he hasn't dealt with personally. But you don't need to be the collateral damage while he takes over a decade to figure it out. 
  

  
  

  
  

  

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• knottief945e71ab697d93e member

  

  February 21 edited February 21

  @levioosa thank you for taking the time to read my post and share your experience and thoughts. I will be thinking about this.
  

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• knottief945e71ab697d93e member

  

  February 21

  VarunaTT thank you for reading my rant and sharing your thoughts. i will think about what you said.

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• MyNameIsNot member

  

  February 21

  If I were you I would take him up on cancelling this. One of the lessons that took me a long time to learn was "if he wanted to, he would." This guy may talk a good talk, but he's showing you over and over that he does not want to marry you, he does not want to be a partner to you, and you are not his priority. 
  
  You deserve to be with someone who is so excited to be married to you that he's chomping at the bit to plan it, not someone who insists that it must be on his terms and you have to plan the whole thing. (That's setting up impossible hoops so that if the wedding doesn't happen, he can tell you it's not his fault.) 
  
  I hope you're realize that you deserve better. 

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• short+sassy member

  

  February 21

  I have a similar story to you and @levioosa.
  
  My husband and I were together for 13 years and living together for 12 years before he finally proposed to me.  We'd talked about marriage a few times.  Always brought up by me.  He knew it was important to me.  I finally just gave up.  I even debated at about the 7-year mark if I would be happier staying with him and never getting married or leaving him so I'd have the chance to find someone I loved and who loved me enough to get married.
  
  I stayed.
  
  About 5 years after that, for the first time he initiated the marriage talk.  He had come into some money and asked if I wanted to go engagement ring shopping.  That was actually a much more exciting moment than the "official" lame-ass proposal he did a few months later.  It was on my birthday in our living room, right after I'd gotten home from work.  I think he made me a nice dinner, only because he usually does on my birthday.  Not because I have any actual memory of it.
  
  We live in New Orleans, ffs.  There are so many beautiful, iconic places here.  Places we have good memories of.  But our living room was his proposal venue choice.  Oookkaaayyy.  Whatever.
  
  The wedding and honeymoon planning actually went pretty smoothly, so no issues there.  My mom did almost all the wedding planning.  We did the honeymoon planning together, but it was more him because he grew up near the OR coast and that was where we went.
  
  I knew he was lazy about getting shit done.  TBH, I can be also.  But I stayed about the same on that front and he got worse, over time.  Including lazy about BIG things.
  
  On the plus side, I'm fairly happy in my life.  We are fairly happy together.  I wouldn't be happier if I left.  But my dark confession is, "If I knew when I was single and 25 that this how our relationship and marriage would turn out, I NEVER would have gone on that first date with him."  He has impeded some of my biggest dreams with his inaction, instead of helping me achieve them.
  
  It's like I can feel how much he loves me, but then how can he also be so neglectful of me in major ways.  I get some of that same vibe from your post.  I understand why it is so hard to weigh.
  
  One of the morals of my story is people don't usually change.  He has severely disappointed you in some important ways, both currently and over the years.  It will probably happen again.  But you've said it's usually an amazing relationship.  That counts for a lot too and neither people or life are perfect.  But you need to think about what you can live with and what you can't, in a partner.
  
  -----
  
  As for the immediate problem with the wedding and honeymoon planning, here's my advice.  Don't do anything else you don't have to.  Don't worry about the minor/medium details.  On the day of, you'll be happy to marry your fiance and your friends/family will be happy for you all.  That's the only part that really matters.  I know it's easier said than done, but try to stop worrying about the things you can't control.
  
  This includes don't worry about what he wears and looks like.  If he gets an ill-fitting suit that doesn't have time to be tailored, that's on him.  
  
  As for the honeymoon, this is another lesson that trips will always need to be planned by you.  I'd give him a deadline to plan it.  Like by the end of this weekend, because it's really not that hard.  If he usually has trouble making choices, that might be what is going on.  Emphasize again how important this is to you, especially because of your upcoming surgery.
  
  If he still doesn't, I'd probably just throw together an easy to plan but fun trip.  Like drive to the closest beach or fun town/big city.  Make a hotel reservation that can be cancelled up to 24 hours before check-in.  At least there's something waiting in the wings, if he waits too long to plan it.  Because I'd be more resentful if I didn't get to go on a vacation before I wouldn't be able to travel for a year.
  
  But that's me.  If you'd feel more resentful if you have to plan anything, that's also understandable.  Tell him he now has a year to plan and save for a VERY expensive dream trip to Fiji, because he screwed up so badly with the honeymoon.
  

  

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• MesmrEwe member

  

  February 22

  In many ways you answered your own vents.  There's an old saying "The straw that broke the camel's back".  Are you working on having a partner/husband/potential father to any children you might bring into the marriage, growing in love each day you're together and actually planning the marriage.  Or, are you positioning yourself to wait, and wait, and wait, and wait some more, getting frustrated by the second?  There's nothing wrong with that at all, it's to ask the question, is this the husband and partner you want to be with, and having to work this hard for, for the rest of your life?  It is okay to trust what and the deepest level of where your instinct is fired off.  Too many stay in situations that aren't the healthiest for them because they've spent so much time!  Some things work until the day that they don't, and your vent is addressing that the things aren't working and you're hitting your own threshold.  Yes, he can run in to a Men's Wearhouse or Nordstroms or Kohl's and buy a suit off the rack, even the morning of.  A Honeymoon can be booked for this weekend unless you plan to go to a country that requires more pre-planning on visas or if you don't have a passport yet.  That's not what the actual problem is though. 
  
  It's okay for you to be asking these types of questions of yourself and of someone who you will be marrying.  Plan the marriage not only the wedding.  Marriage and Family Counselors often offer a discount on "Premarital Counseling" where you go over the "Rules of Engagement" (planning things like finances, decision making, who does what, where you stand on kids/no kids, if you do decide kids things like parenting styles, etc...  Argument/conflict resolution, growing old, love languages, communications, etc.) and, it's not therapist type counseling, it's discussing topics that are going to be relevant to your future life together.  If you're involved in a church many offer this as well through there, and some even offer it to couples at large that aren't even getting married in the church because the goal of strong marriages is more important.  This is even recommended for what appear to be the strongest couples too.  

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• downtondiva member

  

  February 22

  He is not listening to you and not lifting his end of the load when it comes to your wedding and honeymoon. As others have said, this is not the last time this will happen. Please reconsider whether you actually want to marry him. You don't have to go through with it just because you've been with him for so long. 
  
  Yes, it would be unfortunate to have the planning be for nothing and to lose the deposit money. But a divorce would be a lot more expensive if you got fed up down the road and couldn't work things out. 

  
  

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