Dear Carolyn: My fiancé and I got engaged on Jan. 1, 2024 — so, almost two years ago — and then my sister and her fiancé got engaged this past summer. For a whole host of reasons, my fiancé and I have not gotten far at all in the wedding planning, but my sister and hers set a date and booked a venue pretty quickly — for the first weekend in July.
Recently, my fiancé sighted a local, family-owned venue and has started saying he wants to get married there in mid-June, around our anniversary and after school lets out because there are kids in our families we want to be there.
If we did that, then it would be back-to-back weddings, which I — I cannot stress this enough — do NOT think is a great idea.
My sister and I have very overlapping guest lists, for one thing. Plus, I will be in her wedding (and hopefully she in mine), and I think we would each like to be able to focus on that without worrying about the details of another big event around the same time. Also, we are from a close family, and it just feels like squeezing too much juice out of one summer. Our mom is not super healthy, and I know she wants to be there for both of us.
I would strongly prefer to postpone our wedding until perhaps next spring, and honestly since we (especially my fiancé) have dragged our feet this much so far, there doesn’t feel like much of a hurry anymore.
My fiancé is upset by this and says it feels like I’m letting my sister delay our marriage.
Am I being obtuse by thinking we should get married a few months later than he wants to? We have been together for almost eight years, if it matters!
— Sister
Sister: When waiting eight years to get married, two of them in earnest, suddenly became your fault via your sister, and your response wasn’t an immediate deadpan “Really?,” that was two indicator lights on your dashboard.
The first says his denial is in the red. Whoo. It’s not you, it’s not your sister, it’s not the venue/kids/anniversary/who owns what. K? For whatever reason, your fiancé was on track to be your fiancé indefinitely — but then the other couple squared up and kicked him right in the inertia.
Okay, then, whatever it takes, right? Clearly, you’re no fairy-tale purist — a good thing not to be, since all of us have our frailties.
It is a problem, though, when one of the frailties you’re engaged to is an unwillingness to own his own stuff and its consequences.
All your fiancé had to express, when you brought up the date conflict (maybe, maybe with a chuckle about the sudden all-fired hurry he’s in? a cocked eyebrow? a Mona Lisa?) was disappointment plus something in the we-snooze-we-lose cliché family. Not even a full “my bad!”
Instead, he’s blaming you, when his being the primary footdragger says your various delays trace largely to something he’s wrestling with himself. So he’s not merely not facing his stuff — or undertaking any self-improvement work on it, obviously — but making you carry it? That’s a warning light you don’t try to drive around with — you take it to the shop.
Which brings us to the second light: that you didn’t react to the first one.
He basically pointed and said, “Look over there!” and you did. Meaning, you’re still talking in terms of the validity of your reasons to postpone, da di da, and not the fact that he blamed you. I suspect this is no maiden voyage for either of you on this route. Years make patterns.
So I am not going to call anyone obtuse. I am also not going to talk about wedding dates. I am going to urge you to look right at this: at what he’s denying-avoiding-deflecting, at his unbothered blame-shifting on you and your ready acquiescence to it. Whatever it is, facing it together with strength, love, patience and humility now is so much better than letting it come find you later.
And it will find you — something I cannot stress enough.
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