Woman ends engagement when school crush says he thought of proposing. UPDATED 4X
Young love is hard to let go.
When we are young, everything seems new and magical. It can be easy to feel nostalgic for those days. One woman was struggling with just that. She had been with her fiance for 2 years and they were getting ready to set the date. She ran into an old friend from high school she had always had a crush on. He mentioned off hand that he had thought of proposing to her. The single comment created a snowball effect that changed her life plans forever.
I (29F) am considering ending my engagement to my fiancé (32M) over something that my friend (31M) told me but I’m not sure if I’d be making a mistake.
So I have a friend “Clark” who I’ve known forever, we grew up together. Clark’s dad died recently and I’ve been helping him to clean out the house, and this weekend we found an engagement ring in his dad’s stuff.
Clark told me that it was a ring he bought for me back when he was in college and was going to give me when I graduated high school, but his dad found out and forbid him and took the ring away from him, and so he never asked me to marry him and never told me about it at all until now.
So the thing is that I did used to have a pretty big crush on Clark when we were kids, but I got over it since I never thought I had a shot with him. Since he told me that he almost proposed to me, all I’ve been able to think about is how my life would’ve turned out if that had happened.
I can’t stop wondering if Clark is still interested in me now, and I feel like he might be because he said that he’s always regretted not asking me to marry him because he was too scared of getting cut off to stand up to his dad, and he did also tell me that I could keep the ring now if I wanted it.
But I feel like doing anything anywhere close to pursuing anything with Clark, even just talking to him about how he feels, is basically cheating on my fiancé and the only ethical thing to do is to end things with him first.
But until this happened, I’ve been happy with my fiancé and I’m not sure if I’m just tempted to act rashly because lately things have been stressful. We’ve been together for 2 years and we got engaged last October, so we just started wedding planning which has frankly been pretty awful and I’m not sure how much that’s been influencing my feelings.
But on the other hand, I’m wondering if the fact that I’m having cold feet in any sense maybe means it’s a good idea to take a step back. What should I do?
Here are the top comments from readers after the initial post:
I’m hung up on the fact that he was gonna ask you to marry him without ever dating you first?
Because your friend comes with out of the blue you are thinking about ending with your fiance are you sure you love him? How long have you been with him?
Yikes. I don’t think it’s fair to your fiancé if an old flame has you re-thinking your entire future with him. I’d definitely call off the engagement and you need to do some serious, long-term reflection on what you want for your future, and who you want to spend it with.
The OP returned the next day with an update:
So my post got removed and I don't think there's really any point trying to post to the subreddit again anyway, so I'm just going to make an update here like the sidebar suggested since people have been sending me messages about it.
But basically all that's happened so far is that I wasn't sure what I wanted to say to my fiancé so I went to my parents' house so that I could think about it for a while longer.
My mom at one point started asking me wedding planning questions which led to a conversation where I ended up telling her that I don't want to get married anymore. She's actually being really supportive of this because she agrees that I shouldn't marry my fiancé, but because of issues that she said she's been noticing about his family.
So right now I'm staying at my parents' house, my mom told my fiancé that I'm sick so that he wouldn't try to come see me until I'm ready to tell him that I'm calling off the wedding. I do know I just need to rip the band-aid off and tell him but I'm just trying to think about what exactly I want to say.
A few hours later, the OP felt they had more to explain:
So I know this is probably a better question for the relationship subreddits, but the general tone over here looked a little bit kinder.
The situation is that my fiancé and I have been together for 2 years and engaged for 6 months, but a few things have happened recently to make me take a step back and realize that this relationship isn't actually what I want.
I've been thinking about this for a while now but I'm still not sure how to explain this to my fiancé. I can write out how I'm feeling pretty easily, but I feel like obviously he's owed a face-to-face conversation about something like this and I truly don't know how I'm supposed to look someone in the eye and tell them that I don't want to marry them.
Right now I'm avoiding him instead of talking to him and I can't keep doing that, so I really need some advice.
And advice is exactly what readers had to give:
This is probably one of those 'grass is always greener' type situations. On top of that you always want what you can't have and now it's become clear to you that what you couldn't have might be available.
But the biggest thing here is that it has taken something very little for you to be reconsidering your entire engagement and marriage to your fiance. That's significant. You even mentioned about ending things with him as an ethical way to approach this, meaning you've at the very least considered it.
I feel for your fiance in this situation. This is completely unfair to him. The reason you get engaged and get married is because you believe they are the one for you. Obviously you do not. Take some real time to assess your feelings here because this is a life altering decision you're going to be making.
iAmbee35 1
Here are few things I can think of: Be honest and upfront about your decision to break up. Be clear and direct when you talk to your fiancé. Focus on how you're feeling and what you need, rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame. Be prepared for a range of emotions, including sadness, anger, and confusion. Give your fiancé the space to process his feelings. Be understanding and compassionate.
I think he is using the fact that she is overwhelmed by her wedding. She should stay away from him and try to work out her relationship.
Two days later, the OP returned to update on her situation:
I wasn't able to post this to the subreddit for whatever reason, someone suggest I post to my profile instead.
So I decided to break up with my fiancé, after thinking everything over I realized that even aside from anything to do with Clark it would’ve been the wrong decision to marry him.
And I had a conversation with my mom when I told her what I decided where she agreed that I shouldn’t marry my fiancé for reasons I hadn’t really considered that also convinced me I was making the right choice by ending things.
I told him that it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t about anything that he did, but that I’d been doing a lot of thinking and realized that our relationship wasn’t what I wanted and that I thought it would be best if we ended things, and that I was sorry and I wished him the best in life but that I just couldn’t be part of it.
He didn’t get upset like I was afraid he would and it didn’t turn into a fight or anything, he basically first said that he didn’t understand where this was coming from, and then asked me if it was because of something that my parents were saying and if I was sure.
But then he didn’t really have anything else to say about it and just agreed that we’d talk later to figure out getting the rest of my stuff out of his apartment.
I do think this was the right decision because I’ve been feeling really relieved since it happened. I’ve had a lot of conversations over the past few days that have made me realize that I don’t think I ever actually loved my fiancé, I was just comfortable with him and thought that was good enough.
There was one last mini update of interest that the OP provided in the comments:
Hey, since you asked I figured I'd give you an update now that I have one.
So I talked to Clark about everything last night, and basically what happened is that he told me that he wasn't trying to come between me and my fiancé or confess to having feelings for me when he told me about how he had almost proposed to me back when, he just told me that story without thinking that it would affect anything.
But when I asked he admitted that while he hasn't secretly been in love with me all these years or anything like that, he has always still thought that we'd make a good couple but just felt like he missed his window for anything to happen between us.
So I told him that I felt the same way and we ended up kissing, but we decided that we don't want to jump into anything right now because I'm still trying to figure out a lot of things. So for now I guess we've just both acknowledged that we do have feelings for each other but we're trying to be smart and take things slow.
The OP then deleted her account but here are the top comments people had to share at the end of this saga:
Wtf they weren't even dating and he just bought and engagement ring snd was going to propose out of the blue while they were friends? Did I read that wrong? I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on this.
Wait she made all of these decision and changes within the time frame of April 5th to April 8th?!?
Fiancé just dodged a heatseeking missile. This read like 16 year old romantic fever dream
Why not see a therapist or something first instead of Clark or your mom validate what you were already feeling? Tbh, I’m really suprised by your ex-fiancé reaction. Real mature. Hopefully you guys can still be friends.
It’s terrifying to think that there are people who make it to their late 20’s and early 30’s without doing even the most basic level of introspection about their lives.
Without any indication of why she suddenly went from happy in her relationship to ending her engagement, this story really doesn't provide much. At no point does she mention trying to fix the relationship, she is simultaneously 'happy' and also so over it there's nothing to salvage.