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| Thu, 09-01-2005 - 3:33am |
Hi, everyone. I'm really not sure if this is the right board to post this on, but it seems right.
Monday night a friend of mine introduced me to a friend of his and we hit if off great. We began seeing each other and spending time together. We spent hours talking that night (and Tuesday night). We have a lot in common. We get along great. Another friend of mine says that it's a "match made in Heaven". I can see myself waking up next to this guy for the next 60 or 70 years. I love being with him. Most anyone that sees us together says that we're "meant to be". He and I have discussed kids and marriage and such things. I know that most people are going to read this and tell me to slow down, that he and I don't know one another well enough to decide right now whether or not we want to spend the rest of our lives together. But it feels right. It truly does feel like I could spend the rest of my life with this man. In 40 years I want to be sitting on the same front porch with him, in our rocking chairs, watching our grandchildren play. And I'm fairly certain that he wants the same thing. I've been told to take it slow enough that I'm comfortable and not to dive in head first into anything really major just yet. "Give it a little time." "Be certain that he's really The One." "Make sure that you're not making the decision too soon." I've heard it all and I've only talked to a couple of friends about this. (Mind you, most of my friends are guys, but that's because I get along with guys better.) It's not that I'm not certain that I want to be with him forever, it's more that I don't know how our families and friends are going to react when they find out that we've made such a huge decision in such a short amount of time.
What do ya'll think?

Has he proposed or something? Assuming he hasn't, then why do you have to decide now? What is wrong with giving it some time before you decide?
Having the feelings you have is great and just because they happened fast doesn't make them not real and 100% true and right. But the truth is it would be SMART to slow down and wait to decide the rest of your life for, I don't know, a few more weeks, maybe a month or two. I know just how you feel things with my fiance went fast, though not as fast as you're going; you're going at the spped of one of those supersonic trains. :)
So don't put a kabosh on your feelings, enjoy them, but don't push yourself and don't let him push you into making a choice that effects the rest of your life in a week. Heck I've needed more time to think about buying suit then you're taking to think about making a choice that is going to effect you for the next say... 60-70 YEARS.
Don't slow down what you are FEELING, enjoy it, embrace it, but don't let all that headniness cloud your judgement and allow you to rush into such an important and life altering choice. Not leaping to that next step immediately shouldn't lessen those feelings, it should just give them time to grow and give you more to time to explore them and enjoy them and if it DOESN'T then you've probably just avoided a HUGE mistake.
I know it seems so romantic and spontaneous and reckless and fun and wonderful to think of running off someplace and just going with you're feelings and going with the moment. And I know you don't want anyone raining on your parade and telling you to slow down and THINK about what might happen AFTER you do the deed and the possible downside of just going with those feelings and being reckless and throwing caution to the wind.
But if all it takes to rain on the parade and to make you come down from that high you're on is the people who love you and care about you and only want what is best for you telling you what you already know, meaning that it would be smart to think this through some more, get to know each other a little more... If your "love" is that fragile, if it isn't strong enough to withstand a bit more thought, consideration, time... well, then...
You tell me, do YOU really think it is SMART to decide you want to spend the rest of your life with a guy you've only known four days? And I know it's horribly unromantic and contradictory to all the feel good chemicals floating through your brain right now to actually THINK and try to be SMART. I know becasue I've experienced it and I'm sure a lot of the divorced people at this board have too. Which is why I'm saying do yourself a favor and be SMART about choosing the person you spend the rest of your life with. Marriage is NOT a choice you should base on going with your feelings ALONE.
Love is great, but love is not always enough to make a marriage last and when it isn't it can be pretty devasting. So be SMART. Being smart wont lessen your love or at least it shouldn't, like I said if it does that doesn't speak very well to how strong that love really is.
To be quite honest, I agree with your friends and family that you are rushing into this decision way too quickly. I could share some pretty scary stories and some pretty scary statistics with you. Since that's not what you're asking about though, let's assume that you're completely right. Let's assume that I could glance into a crystal ball decades into the future and know for an absolute fact that you guys are going to get married and live happily ever after together until you're dying day, and that there's no reason to worry about being cautious.
If that's all true, why not just wait another year or so before announcing things to your family and friends? You're going to have forty years to be married to each other anyway, is one year really that long to wait for something that's going to last so long? I'm not just saying this without having had to do the same thing myself. My boyfriend and I came to the conclusion that we were certain about marrying each other a couple of years ago. We'd been dating for two years, and had been close friends for three years before that, plus we'd been saying we expected to get married for a long while before that, so we felt safe in saying that as far as we concerned we were ready to be engaged. However, I know that my family wouldn't have given us our their congratulations just yet. My sister believes that you need to live together before getting married, and since due to our situaton with my school and his job, we can't afford to live together just yet. My parents believe that marriage is for people who are ready to start a family together, and we're not ready to have kids just yet at this point in our lives. So anyway, because I wouldn't expect to get people's blessings at this point, I don't see any reason why I need to tell them our plans just yet. I know our time will come. In the meantime, as long as my boyfriend know where we stand, why does the rest of the world need to know? Sometimes my boyfriend will even be talking to me about himself and tell me, "You married a man who..." and then he catches himself that we're not married yet.
If it's really love and not just infatuation, you'll have the patience to wait. There's a quote which says, "Infatuation says, 'We must get married right away. I can't risk losing them.' Love says, 'Be patient. Don't panic. He is yours. Plan your future with confidence.'" And from everything I've witnessed and also read about, there's a whole lot of truth to that statement.
Good luck. I hope everything all works out for you.
Edited 9/1/2005 6:22 pm ET ET by rosewater99
Edited 9/1/2005 6:23 pm ET ET by rosewater99
I'm a little confused. From the way I understand your post - you met him 5 days ago? Am I right?
If so, this is classic case of "infatuation". Wait till you know him well enough to know *all* of his faults and then see how you feel.
Thank you so much for your understanding. I didn't say that we're getting married soon. We're planning on waiting until June 2006 (so that we can get married on my grandparents' anniversary). We're keeping the engagement to ourselves until March. I'm certain that this is the man that I want to be with for the rest of my life and I'll wait until June. We aren't trying to rush things, it's just that we enjoy being together so much that we decided to go from step 1 to step 3 or 4 really REALLY fast. I know that it's not "normal" to move so quickly, but when you know that you know that you know it's right, why take it slow?
Good luck... there's nothing better than fallin' in love.
hey, you really need to read this article!
http://utopia.utexas.edu/articles/alcalde/truly.html
it's hands down the best article i've ever seen about predicting marriage success. it's about a study some scientist did, where he followed the outcomes of people's relationships over a 20 year period. he mentions "whirlwind courtships" he studied (i think he calls them "hollywood romances") and how those marriages turned out 20 years later. it's a very long article, but i think it will give you some answers based on real evidence, not just people's opinions...
Edited 9/2/2005 12:36 pm ET ET by mariafullofgrace
But I guess what I don't understand is how can you honestly know that you know that you know that you know after just four days? It can FEEL absolutely certain, but feelings are just that. I mean pretty much everybody walks down the aisle feeling really confident that they'll be married forever, and 50% of couples end up getting a divorce anyway. And actually, the divorce rate for people in a whirlwind romance where people are engaged within nine months or less of knowing each other, and married within a year and a half or less of knowing each other, are much higher than that. Here are some articles on the research study which found this if you want to find out more. I hope things work out well in your case, but you should be aware that the odds are against you before you rush into anything. This is after all the most serious decision and vow that you are ever going to be making in your life.
http://www.divorcereform.org/mel/apredicsuccess.html
http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/love.html
http://utopia.utexas.edu/articles/alcalde/truly.html?sec=health%E2%8A%82=relationships
I could be wrong but I think you might be missing our points, or at least mine.
Forget "normal", I don't think anyone here (definitely not me) is saying you should wait because it's "normal".
I'm suggesting you wiat becasue it's SMART!!!! Rushing into marriage after knowing each other for five days just isn't SMART. In fact IMO it's foolish. It's foolish to believe that after five days you know a person well enough to KNOW you wnat to marry them.
That's not to say you're a fool. I'm sure you are nothing of the sort. But it is to say maybe you are letting all those happy chemicals floating in your brain get the better of your normally sound judgement. It's an easy and tempting thing to do. It's something we've probably all done at one time or another. That doens't mena it isnt a foolish thing to do.
The SMART thing to do is rein yourself in and tell yourself, "I know I'm falling in love and I know I believe this is going to be the person I spend my life with, BUT I should probably slow down for a second and make sure I'm not letting my feelings do my thinking for me. Maybe reserve judgement and enjoy what I'm feeling and let myself feel it but in a more reserved way so that I don't get carried away in the moment and miss something important."
And I'm not saying this becasue it's "normal" or because it's what I did. Heck, if you do what I did, you'll let your feelings win and let him move in with next week and spend the next year wondering why you did it and how you could have ever fell for such a line of bull. That is what I did and it was a foolish, foolish thing to do.
A smart person once said (I can't remember who), "Life is too short to make all your mistakes yourself, do yourself a favor and learn from other people's."