PES: Pre Engagement Stress

I really, really wish I had found this series of blog-posts over at A Practical Wedding a year ago. Being 'pre-engaged' can be a hellish, hellish time. I was an insufferable whinger that went completely crazy - you can tell this because I started this blog about two months before we got engaged!

When I talk about the pre-engaged state, people can look at you oddly and query 'you mean dating?'. No. no, I do not mean dating. There was a good year and a half, two years of 'dating' in our history and I wouldn't call that pre-engaged. I mean the state where you have had The Talk, the one about your future and how you would like to marry each other and who wants kids and where will you live and all the other things that make up your life as you wish it. You squeeze each other's hands when someone says something lovely at a wedding and grin at each other when people say 'you two next, eh?'.

Well, you do those things the first couple of months. Then it starts getting a bit more serious. I mean, you need to know about his family medical history and what he thinks makes a good proposal. You start looking at your friend's wedding pictures again, and hanging on to their every word about the proposal. Then, you have your first hissy fit. It might not be over something big. It might be he said he can't envision it this year, or he hasn't really thought about it that much, or he didn't look at the handy list of ring ideas you gave him that one night you were all loved up.

This is when it starts biting you in the ass. Because if you are anything like me, you are in control of your life. You make decisions on things that impact your life, with and without your partner. The very idea that someone else is the gatekeeper, and therefore in control of your future happiness, makes you want to scream.

So you scream. The first fight was solved easily enough by you blaming low blood sugar and him hugging you and telling you he loved you. The second fight is uglier; it involves sentences like 'They are getting married and they've only been togther 18 months!' and 'Everyone but me is getting married and they all pity me!' and 'Maybe you don't really love me.' It's a bit of a train wreck.

My best tantrum came after a trip to Hatton Garden (London jewellery district) to fix a bracelet and we then had a look at rings through the windows. I was thrilled. I wanted to try them on, just to see what suited me. Just to feel like maybe we were getting to that place. Plus, shiny diamonds. Who wouldn't? He didn't want me to try any on. 'What's the point?' he asked. 'We're not buying anything.'

We walked to the Tube station in silence and then I had a crying fit of epic proportions. I felt like he wasn't serious, and although I didn't want him to buy anything just yet, I just wanted us to take one more step down that road. I felt guilty for pressuring him and frustrated that he couldn't see how important it was to me. It turned into a horrible, horrible day.

I wish that I had known that other people were doing the same thing. That there were others who were just as impatient, just as 'in the marriage place' to be behaving as I was. I don't really wish I had done anything differently, because that wouldn't be me (plus, I think the fit got through to him how much I wanted some form of nod towards commitment). My friends appeared to take the whole 'your future happiness is in his hands and his decision alone' with grace, but now I'm not so sure. I think I might ask them to see if they too had massive fits and crying tantrums. I bet it's more common that I thought.

So if you are in the pre-engaged state, for the love of god, don't worry about any of these thoughts. This is normal, and what happens when we continue to let a patriarchal custom dictate our lives :) It is also shorter than you think, because your partner is genuinely waiting for the right time to do it his way. So hold tight, search the web, join in the frustration and have a wee laugh at yourself. You'll need it to get through the months.

Please, please back away from the chicken

I'm going to talk a bit about being engaged. This is mainly because I and my future husband have just entered this state after a long, long year of that 'pre-engaged' state where everyone looks at you expectantly when you come back from holiday.

I'm also going to talk about being engaged, or at least, waiting to be engaged, because of this link to the Engagement Chicken. I'm not joking. According to Glamour, if you cook this chicken for your boyfriend, you will get engaged.

Now, maybe this works if you have never cooked for your boyfriend in your whole life, and he's so overcome by the flavours of garlic and lemon he realises he can never let you go. But most people have been cooking for a while. I myself have made, oooh, at least 10 or so chickens like this since my fiance and I started dating. Strangely enough, it wasn't the chicken that made him propose.

If you want to marry your current boyfriend, at some point, you need to swing the conversation around to whether he wants to get married and how he sees his future. It should match to yours, or at least not deviate a huge amount (liking wanting kids when you don't). This should be called the Engagement Conversation. It is not a chicken. It is what adults do instead of playing games with food (alright, we play games with food too, but actual games, ok?).

If the Engagement Conversation goes well, you can maybe start the Ring Conversation. This can lead to Ring Research Trips or Ring Research Web Searches. These also are not chickens.  These are called sharing and envisioning a life together.

If the Enagement Conversation doesn't go well (if you have brought it up on the first date, for example, or if he wants to become a monk), then you can make a chicken. But not for him. Make the chicken for you. The chicken is comforting and warm, and you can make chicken soup with the bones. You can eat the soup while internet dating for your next boyfriend, who doesn't want to become a monk, or who isn't so weirdly fixated on his culinary future that he pins it all on a chicken.