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Amy Sage Webb

Dear Life., Guest Posts, Marriage

Dear Life: I Have Cold Feet. I’m Not Sure If I Should Get Married!

April 1, 2015

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Welcome to Dear Life: An Unconventional Advice Column.

Your questions get sent to various authors from around the world to answer (and please keep sending because I have like 567 writers that want to answer your burning questions. To submit a letter, email dearlife@jenniferpastiloff.com and please be as detailed as you can.) Different writers offer their input when it comes to navigating through life’s messiness. We are “making messy okay.” Today’s letter is answered by the brilliant Amy Sage Webb.

Send us your questions because there loads of crazy authors waiting to answer ‘em. Just kidding, they aren’t crazy.

(Well okay, maybe a little.) Aren’t we all? xo, Jen Pastiloff, Crazy Beauty Hunter. ps, I will see you at one of my workshops soon! xo

 

Dear Life,

I have cold feet. They’re not so much cold as “frozen in a block of ice” and when archaeologists discover them a million years from now, I’ll be the 21st Century version of Lucy.

My wedding is three months away.

The dress is fitted, the flowers are chosen, the photographer’s adjusting his camera. Everyone is ready to dance and smile the night away. Everyone is texting me about how “excited” they are. How they just can’t wait to catch my bouquet, sing along with the DJ, watch us ride off into the proverbial sunset. (We live in the Midwest, we could be riding off into a snowstorm, even in June.)

Everyone is on Cloud Nine. Everyone but me. I’m stuck in some mental dungeon basement, where one day I want to run out of my bedroom like Monica Gellar in FRIENDS, screaming, “I’M GETTING MARRIED TODAY!!!!!!” And the next, I’m that chick from that Disney movie, with my feet frozen to the ground and no one helping her let it all go.

And it’s not any ONE THING, which just makes it worse. And there’s all this money and time invested, and there’ll be hatred – from myself and from my family and his family – if I called it off. But sometimes I take the ring off and it feels like I can breathe.

So you see? It’s 17 things, all on top of each other, until I scream and cry and freak out, falling apart, going “No I can’t do this, not no way, not no how.”

He doesn’t hit me, or our dog. He isn’t falling down drunk every night. He doesn’t leer at other women.

But then there are days…. Where we fight and he screams so loud I get worried our landlord will come and knock on our door. Where he just gets so angry and glares for so long that I feel I have to kowtow and apologize like a small child, just to get things to be “okay.”

And the fights aren’t over anything MAJOR, per se. It’s not like, I want six kids and he wants zero. It’s more like “you spend too much at the grocery store.” Or, I’m a really big planner, so I like to organize stuff to do on the weekends, and he just wants to sit on the couch. Or instead of spending time with me when he gets home from work (Right now he works and I don’t) he’ll make a little small talk and then go straight to video games until he’s ready to go to bed. And when I say that hurts my feelings, he says I get his weekends and he has so little free time anyways, just leave him alone so he can play games. And he’s always going “talk to me, work with me, you have to work with me.” But sometimes the words catch in my throat. Or I start to say I’m unsure, and he’ll say, “This? Again?” And it turns into a fight. So I scuttle around the house and leave him alone.

I have depression, and stopped seeing a psychologist when he (I know I’m “supposed” to say “we” here, but I don’t pay the bills, so it’s he) Anyway, I stopped when he couldn’t afford it. Which just increased my stress tenfold. (All the wedding planning has been on my shoulders because he says it’s “my” job)

As for affection, that’s been a struggle through the whole three-year relationship. I like a lot of it, he doesn’t even like holding my hand when we’re alone.

My last rough patch, which inspired me to write this letter, was when I told him after our marriage, I want to travel alone. I didn’t say often. I didn’t even say to where. Just someplace, alone. He told me to be prepared to sign divorce papers if I did it, and I completely lost it. I’m currently writing this from our bed, like some sort of near-fainting Scarlett O’Hara, which, if you knew me, you’d know I’m more “I am woman, hear me roar,” than some damsel in distress.

But then there are moments where it’s LOVELY. When he hugs me without me having to ask him for it. When he kisses me longer than two seconds. When we actually sit down and talk. When we return to the spot where we got engaged. When we spend time exploring our town. When I step out of the shower with nothing wrapped up but my hair and he just looks at me like he’s a parched man and I’m ice-cold lemonade. So don’t get me wrong, there are moments- but the closer the wedding gets, the further and further apart those moments seem.

Is that okay? Is any of this okay? Or am I just telling myself it’s all okay? Are my feet cold, like, a normal level? Are they refrigerator cold? Or is my racing heart really imploring me to run away from the lava that’s coming, that’ll bury me in years upon years of an unhappy union?

Dear Life, you tell me.

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