For All The Ladies-In-Waiting: A Reprise

*We interrupt this wedding planning extravaganza to bring you this heartfelt message*

As I have posted before, I have been personally struggling with my own relationship for quite some time now, feeling the frustrations many a hopeful girlfriend has felt, waiting for the love of their lives to tell them they are their one-and-only as well.

With such a prolonged troubled state, I wasn't sure if everything was going to go alright, and it looked like for a while my sanity and patience would run out before my boyfriend would be given the chance to feel comfortable proposing.

Well on the millionth night I was thinking about the matter, lying awake in bed, I was yearning for the relationship we once had a couple years ago, happy, relaxed, wandering our way through college...

I thought about the possible mistake of moving in with him, thinking that it gave me so much stress because I thought it was such a BIG DEAL. Because in a sense, yes, it was a BIG DEAL, but not as much as I made it out to be.

Suddenly I felt pressures to be a "wife", a strong and put-together woman that would be worth marrying, partly because I thought that was the logical progression of things, partly in order to try to persuade him to see that proposing "made sense" and was the proper path for us.

The problem is, I was more of a mess at that time than I have EVER been, and failure to live up to my high standards was everywhere. As time went on and no ring came, I felt more uneasy about trying to fill a wife's shoes without any promise that I would ever truly be one.

Basically I couldn't relax around him anymore, which lead to daily stress and tension between us, which I have no idea how he put with...

But suddenly a thought came to me..."Why does it have to be husband and wife living together? Why can't he just be my roommate that happens to be my boyfriend?"

*pause*

My heartrate lowered, my mind stopped racing, and a large weight was lifted from my shoulders.


I realized I missed just being his girlfriend.


It all seemed so easy now, I thought "I can do this, I was good at the girlfriend thing." XD And now, even though it will still take time to truly be comfortable and happy again, I can enjoy my boyfriend more and more instead of fearing his rejection 24/7. And things are good.

I don't know if I'll have him as a husband, but I'm 100% sure I have his heart 100% as a boyfriend.

I figure all the stress that it has caused me has made me WANT to wait for marriage, made me realize I am more scared about the responsibilities of being a wife than I thought, and made me realize I do trust my boyfriend's judgement for when a "right" time would be. (He's pretty smart, he'll figure it out. :) )

Will the fears of measuring up to "wife standards" still be with me if he proposes? Yes.

But if one day he thinks I can do it, then I can give it a try. <3

For All The Ladies-In-Waiting

Okay, for once I'm going to get personal here.

Sure I talk about all the pretty, touchable stuff that is involved with a wedding, but rarely do I talk about what it's all about, what it all revolves around...two people declaring their love and their lives for one another.

Why? It's simply because my relationship has not reached that level yet.

But now I'm going to write about what I do know: what it's like to be a lady-in-waiting, as those in the wedding blogosphere call us.

We are the hopefuls lurking on the forums and blogs, hoping that the information and prettiness we absorb will soon be needed.

We are the ones who may be distracting ourselves from our annoyances with the waiting stage.

We are the ones horribly bashing into the brains of hinting to our boyfriends that we want something more in our lives.

But why are we so determined to get to the married stage?

It's different for every couple, but for me, I think a lot of it may be peer pressure.

It can be hard to be in a long term relationship these days. Traditional views are still very widely accepted, so you're probably hearing from your mother, your siblings, any other female in your family, and maybe some of your friends, that they can't believe you don't have a ring on your finger already!

At times when I'm comfortable with my relationship, the constant comments get to me, and I start doubting myself and my decisions. Then I start over-analyzing my relationship and wonder if I should cut my losses and get out of this dead-end relationship with no proposal while I can! (Yeah, I get kinda crazy sometimes.)

Moving in with your significant other doesn't help matters. For one who doesn't have a thick skin, moving in with your significant other can be quite embarrassing. Suddenly your entire family knows your shacking up with your boyfriend, sans ring. XP

It's hard. Speaking to your grandmother about your relationship suddenly seems very daunting, and I kinda avoid the subject as much as I can with them.

But it is a smart thing to do these days, just because if you can't live with your boyfriend, how are you going to handle marriage?! It's almost a necessary evil with relationships these days. On a positive note, usually this type of situation is financially beneficial for both parties, which is one of the big reasons why I moved in and why I'm not planning on moving out.

While talking to my boyfriend, (yet again,) about the proposal thing, he brought up a good point about why we should wait, (as much as I didn't want to admit that he was right XD).

Right now I just got out of school, just started my first full time job, and to be honest, I'm kinda picking up the pieces of my life left behind by the earthquake called a Master's program.

In other words, personally, I'm a mess. I don't like who I am right now, and for a while I just felt too overwhelmed to do anything about it.

This blog has been the only hobby I've had just because it is based on the Internet, which could go with me no matter what I was doing in my crazy life. It was so easy to work on and invest time in. It was free to do as well. And I have greatly enjoyed it.

But I realize now I need to focus a little more on my real, offline life and a little less on wedding-fantasy-land.

So yeah, I spilled out my guts on the Internet, oh no, let the regrets start flowing! Just kidding.

I may ease up on the wedding stuff for a little while...but I'll be waiting for one of my friends to get officially engaged *cough,cough*Anne*cough,cough* so I can start the mayhem all over again ;)

<3