Of course, when I say 'yesterday', I actually mean Sunday 15th, which from where I'm sitting as I'm writing now (Wednesday 11th) is four days away. I'm telling you this, and thus removing the air of mystery from my blog posts, because I know I'm going to get my timelines all muddled up at some point, so I figured full disclosure from the outset was probably best.
(I've also been up since 4:30am to drop Jon at the airport, and so I've been up for like 5 hours and it's not even 10am, and I've been in work for three hours, except I couldn't get into the building until 7:00am so I sat in the car park for an hour before that, and I hurt my foot opening a door like an hour and a half ago and it's still sore, so this might not be very coherent at all. But let's just have fun with it.)
Now, I spend a lot of time skulking around over on the forums at Weddingbee, which are nice and active. (I actually found them because Jon spent time lurking on there trying to get tips on engagement rings in the run up to our engagement - ever the academic, putting hours of research in!) There is a huge subsection of this forum dedicated to people who are 'waiting' to be engaged. This is not a concept that I had ever come across prior to Weddingbee, and I will admit I'm still not sure on what people mean when they say they've been "waiting for x number of years". Is that how long it's been since they and their partner talked about getting married one day? Or is it the length of the whole relationship? And if it's the length of the whole relationship, does that mean that they've literally been waiting for their partner to propose since their first date? What about just enjoying the relationship? Does it not count in its own right? Is it literally all about getting married?
I'd rather hoped society had moved past the idea that all women need is a husband, doesn't matter who, by now. And that relationships were all equally valid whether they were legally certified or not, so 'waiting' was a redundant concept, that was demeaning to both parties involved, and seemed to be tragically reminiscent of eras long gone.
But I'm getting off-topic. My point is that I wasn't one of those girls who was constantly expecting a proposal. In fact, to say that the proposal was unexpected feels too mild, too understated to describe exactly the state of mind I was in when it happened. I was so set and comfortable in my life and relationship as was, and I don't take surprises very well at all, so my reaction was definitely less-than-dignified.
Fortunately Jon knows me well enough not to take my reactions personally, and also to know that I am easily distracted by shiny things so the beautiful ring he chose helped very much to take my mind off my anxieties from time-to-time.
Because by god I was anxious. I'd had this sudden change in status thrust upon me with no preparation, no warning! Jon had been planning for months, he had some idea, but me? I was entirely passive in this situation - a victim of a drive-by proposing! Shell-shocked and unbalanced, and utterly panicked.
How can I explain it? There were multiple issues at play. Firstly anxieties about this sudden 'change' in our relationship. It was silly because I knew I was committed to this man and had no desire to leave him, but suddenly getting a ring made it all seem very official and public. Another cause of anxiety was that I dreaded people commenting on it - I wasn't expecting bad comments at all, but we've kept our relationship very low-key and downplay it a lot. We're totally different people in private, honestly we're obnoxious, but in public we're much more reserved - which is how I think it should be! The private parts of my relationship are like my underwear: essential, always there, supportive and something that I'll invest in, but just as I'll never be comfortable showing my lovely matching bra-and-knickers off in public, the idea of making this part of our relationship public property for however long it took for the excitement to blow over made me want to squirm. Whilst I'm certain I'd probably get some compliments on my underwear (set I'm wearing provided - I have, if I may say so, excellent taste, but not necessarily the money to indulge it), I'm not about to run it up the flagpole and see who salutes; so knowing that we'd only get good reactions to our engagement didn't make me any keener to shout it from the rooftops.
Another issue was perhaps this inbuilt fear of aging and that getting married required a level of maturity I did not possess. The 'reasons I'm not mature enough to get married' strips are only the tip of the iceberg. Marriage has always felt like a 'some time in the future' sort of thing, when I felt like I'd achieved the fabled status of 'Grown Up'. I still feel like I don't know what's happening half the time. I struggle to keep on top of my laundry. I like pick-and-mix way too much, and I get frustrated at museums when little kids hog all the interactive displays and I can't have a go. Jon can always tell when I've been watching TV during the day because he comes home and it's set to a cartoon channel. I got annoyed when kids pushed in front of me in the queue at Disneyland so I didn't get to meet Belle, because when I got to the front of the queue they swapped her out for Beast - if I have to queue, why don't they? (I'm also compiling a lengthy list on why I'm not mature enough to ever reproduce, but we'll get to that later)
But also the terrifying thing about 'some day' becoming 'today' means that all the things that previously followed 'some day' in a vague way are now in front of me in an inevitable timeline that has made me staggeringly aware of my own mortality and how quick life disappears in front of us, something which I had been comfortably denying to myself for years. Basically, now I'm going to grow old and die and it's all Jon's fault.
Part of my motivation for starting The W Word in the first place was because I felt frustrated that in the midst of this anxiety, all I could find were posts about how wonderful and amazing it was to be engaged (which yes, it is nice) and women who were giddy and happy and laughed and shrieked and danced. Not women who swore and got drunk and hid their ring in their bag when they first went back to work after the proposal because they didn't want people to see and say something. I know there are other girls out there who have felt engagement anxiety and GUYS: YOU'RE NOT ALONE. Wedding culture can easily make anyone with doubts and nerves feel like an alien or an outsider (unless you're a man, in which case it seems to be expected and nigh on encouraged) I wanted to do this post because I'd felt a bit like my initial reason for this had been lost in the year since the engagement, because my anxieties about being engaged have settled, but my motivation was to help other people facing this.
I perhaps didn't deal with my anxieties in the healthiest way. I acknowledged them, and then I forced myself to push out of my comfort zone, anxieties be damned. Like tearing off a plaster. What helped though was the realisation that nothing had changed between Jon and I. We didn't have to start treating each other differently, we didn't magically feel different because suddenly I had some bling. Nor, fundamentally, did my relationship with the world at large change. And continuity is a lovely calming thing.
Now, I know myself, and I know that the closer we get to the big day the more likely I am to have a bit of an anxiety flare-up. And not in a cute, demure blushing bride sort of way. More like in a climbing out of the bathroom window and running for the hills sort of way.
But I'm talking about it - and talking helps, even if I'm just cracking jokes. Because that means I'm not just bottling it all up and letting the pressure build and build until I pop.
This post ended up in a totally different place from what I had initially, vaguely planned in my sleep-deprived brain.
Did anyone else suffer from Engagement Anxiety? If you have, how did you overcome it? Have you overcome it yet? This is a safe space!
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