Q. Dear Goddess: I’ve been engaged to a nice guy-and I know how you feel about nice guys–and a guy I’m comfortable with and sexually compatible with–for over a year. (We’ve been together over five years.) I’m horrified to say it but I’m not ready to get married and I don’t know why. He’s not pushing me (he’s too nice to) but everyone else is. I feel like a mess. Should I just plunge in? –Stuck
A. Dear Stuck: Ah, we’re so used to hearing about men’s ambivalence that when we’re confronted with our own, we think we’re weird!
I don’t think you’re a mess (but pressure and guilt may be making you feel that way) and I don’t think you should “just plunge in.” My sense is that you might consider taking the idea of marriage off the table for a year. Yes, enlist your fiance, who seems not to be pressuring you, and tell everyone that neither of you is up to marrying, at this difficult moment in the economy (or at this terrible time in Afghanistan, or whatever). That you’re very happy together but have decided to postpone marriage until,oh, I don’t know, until the economy improves, or all wars end. I mean really: Who cares whether you’re engaged a year or two or three?
And then, since you’re the one who cares, I want you look carefully at your oldest ideas and fantasies about the Ideal husband and the Ideal marriage. Really look at them. Have you long dreamed of a certain kind of passionate love–one that has always eluded you? Or a certain kind of marital dynamic (“When I’m married, he’ll be like this and I’ll be like that“)? We’re brought up on a lot of idealized images, and it occurs to me that what you may be confronting right now is the fact that you’re preparing to marry someone who simply doesn’t fit that image, and are ina dynamic that doesn’t match the one in your dreams, and you feel cheated of all the things you’ve imagined Mr. Right would be (dashing, compelling, prosperous…..but not necessarily nice).
If that’s the case, I want to remind you of a book I wrote many years ago, called “The Erotic Silence of the American Wife,” in which married women spoke to me about their extramarital affairs. Whatever you think of their decision, this part–the part about what kind of man they chose– is important: They didn’t choose dashing, prosperous, compelling men to have affairs with. They chose nice men who paid attention to them; who listened to what they had to say; men who felt like good, good friends.
If that’s the kind of guy they needed outside their marriages, perhaps it’s just the kind of guy they needed inside their marriages, too. And perhaps that’s why, as you’ve noticed, I’m so much in favor of marrying really nice guys.
No pressure, dearest Stuck. Just something to add to the equation…..
Let me know how you decide (even if it’s a year from now)!