Weddingbee Blog

I’ve been keeping a secret from you, hive. Well…it’s not really a secret so much, I suppose. All my close friends and family know; it’s just not something I talk about much because…well, there really is no reason to talk about it. But with our wedding approaching, I’ve been thinking about it, so I thought it was only fair to share it with you. Ready?

This is not my first engagement.

GASP! It’s really not a big deal to me now, but with my wedding less than four months away, I’ve started thinking about what was different between this engagement and that one. For starters, that first engagement was to the wrong person! So…here’s the short (OK…who am I kidding, it’s really quite long) version of how the engagement came to be and how it came to an end, with a little bit of what I learned about myself thrown in the mix. Pull up a chair for this one, folks…

So, I started dating a guy in college…let’s call him Brad, shall we? If you read my “Then and Now” post about high school, you know that I didn’t date in high school…never had a boyfriend. So when I met Brad and he was as interested in me as I was in him, it was a huge deal. We met right before classes started our sophomore year, and by Thanksgiving he was flying across the country to meet my family. We were inseparable. We dated our entire sophomore and junior years, but then had a brief break-up our senior year. Basically, not having really dated anyone else, I had to go “sow my wild oats,” as they say. Anyway, that didn’t last long, and we ended up back together within the year. About a year after graduation, we moved in together, and I knew the next step would be marriage. I wasn’t in a hurry right then, as my timeline in my head had me getting married around the age of 26. (The best laid plans, right?)

A couple years later, I was itching to get married. We had been together for several years at that point, and many of my friends were starting to tie the knot…friends who had been dating their SOs for shorter periods of time than Brad and I had been together. It just felt like it was time. I was not a subtle Hippo either. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I brought up the idea of getting married at every possible opportunity. Brad wasn’t against the idea, he just “wanted to be more settled.” He had some debt to pay off and claimed that he wanted to be in a better financial situation before getting married. Completely fair and admirable. We continued on our merry way, paying off debt we had both built up in college and working toward becoming “more settled,” but I still wanted more. Then, Brad started working for a home builder, and as part of his company perks, he was able to get a great deal on a brand spankin’ new home. While I was hesitant to buy a home with someone I wasn’t even engaged to, we agreed that this was a deal that couldn’t be passed up, so we started socking away money for a down payment and other move-in expenses. The idea was that we would get engaged after we finished building the house. We were both really working hard to save, and I even remember him saying, “If you can save $5,000 for the house, then we’ll get engaged.” Funny. Looking back, that seems like a really weird, ultimatum-like thing to say, but at the time, it was just a goal. During the time the house was being built, I had saved the money from teaching dance and doing choreography gigs. When I proudly announced that I had met my savings goal, Brad was happy…but then he said he wanted to get a dog first, so that we were completely settled before getting engaged.

OK…I’m interrupting this story to say that as I’m reading what I’m typing, I know it sounds completely ridiculous. If I were you, I’d be screaming at my computer monitor, “Hippo!!! Take a hint! Brad didn’t want to get married! He wanted a DOG more than he wanted to get married! How could you be so clueless??!” But, I was. I didn’t see it. I was in the middle of it, and I completely didn’t see it. Anyhoo…we got a puppy.

A month or so later, Brad proposed. And I was ecstatic. We decided to have a destination beach wedding, so I started researching venues. I bought a dress and was about to sign a contract on a venue. Then…it happened. “Can we talk?” Now, I have to say…when you live with someone and you talk every. single. day. the words, “Can we talk?” are not good. From here on out, I highly recommend the phrases, “Do you have a minute?” or “Let’s chat” instead of the dreaded, “Can we talk?” I hate that phrase…Anyway, Brad started by asking if the fact that he hadn’t been that “excited” about the wedding planning had bothered me. It hadn’t. I told him that I didn’t expect him to get excited about invitation paper. Then he said that he was “not sure” about getting married. He said some other things about his indecision, and I honestly don’t remember what they were; I just remember the phrase “not sure” ringing through my brain and piercing my heart. It was awful. He didn’t call off the wedding—he just asked that we “not talk about the wedding for a while” so he could sort out his feelings.

Now, this post has been long enough already, and I won’t make you read about the pain I was going through, the sobbing that was occurring in my office cubicle, or any of that. I’ll skip ahead two weeks to say that I finally pulled myself together and came to the realization that I wasn’t going to let Brad dictate my next steps. I wasn’t going to wait around for the debt to be paid off, or a house to be built, or a puppy to be born, or for him to decide that he was sure. We had been together for seven years by that point. If he wasn’t sure after seven years, he sure as hell wasn’t ever going to be sure. I deserved to be with someone who was sure! (Disclaimer: I’m NOT in any way shape or form saying that if you have been dating someone for a long time that it’s not meant to be. I’m just saying, in this situation, it wasn’t meant to be…and being in the middle of it, it was really hard for me to see that.) A friend of mine suggested I talk to a divorce attorney (we had so much stuff together—house, furniture, appliances…dog!) just to get some sound advice on what I should be doing to protect myself. After figuring out all the financial logistics, I moved out, got my own apartment for the first time in three or four years, and started to put my life back together.

So, what does it all mean? Well, it was a horrible, horrible time in my life, but it made me the person that I am. I learned so much about the kind of person I truly want to spend my life with from that whole experience—someone who wants to commit their life to me and wants me to commit my life to them. Someone who knows that half of the adventure in life is figuring things out together and not waiting to have everything figured out before letting someone in. Someone who doesn’t make excuses and expresses how they truly feel. I could go on forever. In retrospect, I am really thankful for Brad. It’s hard to put the brakes on when a date is set, a dress is purchased, and friends and family have expectations, and I know that a ton of people get married even though they are having second thoughts. I also know a few people who have gotten divorced and have said that they actually knew deep down that they shouldn’t be getting married before they said “I do.” While I didn’t feel that way at the time, looking back on it I know that Brad and I had issues that wouldn’t have been able to stand the test of time. With King Hippo, things are different. And better. And I don’t think I would have fully understood how great he is and how great we are if I didn’t have the great heartbreak of 2002.

I know…such a long post! If you’re reading this far, you get a gold star.

And by the way, he got the refrigerator, I got the dog. I think I won.

Did you have a huge heartbreak (or broken engagement) that made you realize the kind of person you really wanted to be with?