Should I Wait Until He's Ready to Commit Again?

This week, our email comes from gorgeous Laurene, who recently got engaged, bought a house and moved in with her fiancé. The problem is, now he's feels like he's not ready and doesn't know if he still wants to get married.

Here's her story:

Hello Jane,

I have been with my boyfriend for one year before we got engaged. Prior to that, we have been very good friends for a couple of years. Our first year was full of bliss and romance. We have our own world and I am confident that he is the one for me.

After he popped the question, we bought our own house and have chosen our wedding date, sent our save the dates to family and friends, and paid off almost half of our wedding suppliers.

Slowly, the honeymoon phase faded away.

I would always feel unappreciated and unloved. He is always preoccupied with a lot of things. There were so many fights and arguments. However, I would always find ourselves going back to our "happy bubble" after every big fight (that would always leave us emotionally drained.)

Despite all of these, I am resolved that we are meant to be together and we are made for each other. I see the arguments and misunderstandings as an opportunity to help us grow better as a couple and that we are just having a "rough patch" because of the pressure of the wedding planning.

Six months before our wedding, he lost his job. I have to pay for our house mortgage. He then expressed that he is not financially stable to get married so I agreed to pushing back our wedding date to another year. After a few weeks, he then told me that he is not ready to get married and he doesn't know if he still wants to get married.

I am so shocked. I am devastated. I am heart broken.

After being so in-love, and asking me that he wants spend the rest of his life with me and me saying yes to a lifetime commitment. How can he say this?

I don't know if I should wait for the time that he is ready to commit again. Or should I just pack my bag and leave?

- Laurene

My Response:

Oh Laurene, I'm so sorry. I'm sure this is devastating for you!

And yet what I'm struggling with the most here, is how much of this was a fantasy of what you both thought you had and what it actually was (and is.)

The fact that you began to feel unappreciated and unloved. The fact that he became always so preoccupied with a lot of things. The fights, the arguments - I'm assuming over how you felt and how he couldn't or didn't understand how you felt, and then back to the "happy bubble" again.

I think there's hope here, Laurene, if you can take all this pressure off of both of you.

Keep in mind, getting married, moving into a new house and losing a job are all among the most stressful situations in life, and you have all three at once! Not to mention everything going on in the news cycle right now.

That's a lot of pressure that creates a lot of stress and puts a lot of strain on a relationship, which can make the best of relationships fall apart.

That said, regarding losing his job, I don't think it's as much about his loss of income as it is what that change in his status from ample financial provider - capable of living up to his equal partnership role - has to do with the feeling that he's lost a huge part of his identity.

He doesn't know who he is now.

And if he doesn't know who he is right now, then he also doesn't know who he is in relation to you either, and he especially can't know how to pick up the pieces from the image of your life together as an engaged couple before this change for him.

Don't wait helplessly for him to decide what he wants to do. That only reinforces your feelings of powerlessness.

I hate to burst your bubble on this one, too, Laurene, but "meant to be together" and "made for each other" are illusions that keep us brushing over real issues so we can run back into the comfort of clichés that make us feel good.

In my experience, it's precisely these phrases that contribute to the downfall of relationships because they require both people to keep subscribing to an idea of a relationship instead of putting in the real work of looking at what is and isn't working for both people.

I don't know if he's open to having a conversation with you about this. I don't know where he's at or where you've left things with him or how much he isn't going to be capable of even looking at yet another thing that's wrong with a relationship that you both have believed in.

But if he's willing to be real and if he actually loves and cares about you, and not just the idea of who you are and the idea of what your relationship is, there's always hope that the two of you can find your way back to each other.

First of all, you need to make sure he's your guy. Just as he is. Without anything being different. Without him changing.

Because all you know for sure right now is who he's showing you he is.

And that means you have to take a closer look at these feelings of being unloved and unappreciated by him. I'm assuming he wasn't able to show you enough love and appreciation even after you told him how and why you felt this way.

I'm assuming this because you talk about fights and arguments after you bring up feeling this way, and him being preoccupied with other things so obviously not focused on you. So I'm assuming you had those conversations and the response didn't change anything because you kept having the same feelings in your words that you "always" would feel this way. You didn't specifically mention talking with him about your feelings, so feel free to clarify if it changes anything.

Did you have those conversations? Did you talk about both your feelings and his?

If so, could you see each other's points of view, or was this where everything broke down into arguments and fights leaving you both emotionally drained and only too happy to retreat into your "happy bubble" again where nothing was really resolved, only left to build up more resentment the next time the same issues, the same feelings came back around?

You may be resolved that you're made for each other and meant to be together, but is he? And you may be confident that he's the one for you, but is he?

Yes, couples go through rough patches. Real couples have differences of opinions and hurt feelings that sometimes digress into arguments and fights because after all, we're all coming from our own places of being wounded and our emotional blind spots where we go on the defensive and double down in our positions instead of objectively being able to see where we're at.

Even in love.

But if the foundation of your relationship is based on an idea more than a reality of who you both are and what a relationship requires to sustain it, it won't be able to withstand times of personal identity crises, and financial crises and any other realities that inevitably come up in every long-term relationship.

So to your question; do I wait it out or do I pack my bags and leave? I'd say do something in-between.

Talk to him.

He's your fiancé, your partner, your friend as well as your lover. If you can't have a real conversation with him now about this - especially about this - what do you really have? And what assurance do you have that the two of you are going to be able to weather any other crises, or even problems of any kind that are bound to come up along the way in a marriage that lasts a long time?

Talk about pressure.

Talk about what it means to be in a real relationship that won't always feel good or perfect or live up to the image you hold of it in your mind because of what we've been told "perfect" relationships have to be. I'm almost positive he's feeling all the pressure right now and finds it easier to drop out of everything and run away than to keep going with so much pressure and so much uncertainty right now.

Talk about starting over.

Talk about redefining your relationship if it was light and easy and had room for both of you to be yourselves instead of trying so hard to live up to ideas of perfection for each other, even if no one said the perfection part out loud.

Ask him what he needs to feel ready again, to be ready again, and if he doesn't know, ask him what he thinks that might be if he had to guess. If he can't give you that, if he doesn't know himself, you may have to accept that right now he can't give you any reassurance and accept that it's up to you to decide what you want to do with that.

You may both be used to perfectionism being a part of who you are. You may both be so used to it, neither of you can name it, but I'll tell you that the majority of the relationships I help to put back together have a little unknown belief system one or both are subconsciously subscribed to called "I have to be perfect." Often they don't even realize it.

I don't know how open he'll be to having that conversation you need to have, Laurene. I don't know if he'll understand any of what you're trying to say to him. But someone needs to see if there's something left here to salvage, and right now, it sounds like that person is you.

If he isn't open yet, give him some time and space to have that conversation. A week or two or something that you're truthfully okay with, but not much more than that because then you're going to become resentful.

If he won't talk, or if nothing changes when you do talk, set a timeline that you can both agree on that's as long as you're willing to wait for him to make a decision. I don't want him in a position of power over you or you feeling such a lack of your own power, so you have to have a date that you can actually wait for. Again, not the idea of how long you could wait, but the actual reality.

Remember this is someone you love and who loves you. You're on the same page if you are. You're compatible in all the ways that matter if you are.

And if you're not, then this is your time to think about why you're together and why you're marrying each other to begin with. It's time to separate the fantasy of an idea of marriage and living happily ever after and the reality of what that actually means to both of you.

You don't need luck to make this happen. You just need two people on the same page, grounded in reality, not easily swayed by the illusion of fantasy but with the reality of each other.

I hope I didn't burst your own "happy bubble" but honestly, Laurene, I've seen far too many women heartbroken after marriages that never lived up to the idea of what they thought it was supposed to be who regret with every part of their being that they didn't understand the difference earlier.

I never want any of us to become one of these!

I really hope this helps.

Love,

Jane

Calling on anyone who's ever been here before and everyone else who's got to something to say to Laurene. What do you think she should do? Share your words of advice or encouragement for her in the comments below.