Engaged girl advice
Hey there, this is my first time posting, though I’ve read the stories on here for probably a year or more. I’m not actually married yet, but wanted to ask for some advice from people in mature marriages and also perhaps from any engaged or newlyweds who might have some insight into what I’m dealing with.
See, I’m engaged to a most wonderful man, who thinks I’m the sweetest, best, most beautiful thing in the world, who’s heart goes pitter-pat when we kiss, who is incredibly excited about marrying me and spending the rest of his life with me. And, up until a few weeks ago, I thought myself very much in love with him. What changed? I don’t know. But I realized that I am not ecstatic about getting married like he is, I don’t really feel anything anymore when he kisses me, and I’m more excited about going places on our honeymoon than I am about having sex with him on our wedding night.
I’m not excited about having sex for the first time. Something doesn’t seem right.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking whether or not anyone thinks I should stay with him. Love is a choice, and I’ve chosen him. I will do whatever it takes to make our marriage work, and keep the spark in our relationship. But please, I need suggestions on how to get that spark back. I want those butterflies back when he touches me. I want to want him like I used to, to be hardly able to wait until our wedding night.
If anyone here has experienced anything like this and has any suggestions, they would be most welcome. He and I have spoken about this, and we are both committed to making this work and helping me get back those few feelings.
Thank you all in advance 🙂
Hello, Paulina!
First off, when you said, “I want to want him like I used to, to be hardly able to wait until our wedding night” I think you were getting a bit ahead of yourself, because if you can “hardly wait” there is a chance you could slip up and do something you shouldn’t, but I see where you are coming from. But maybe this is a good thing, because now you have a lesser chance of making a mistake prior to marriage. That’s just my opinion.
Have you set a date for your wedding? (By the way, Congratulations! 😀 ) Maybe that could be nerves – marriage is a big step. It’s normal to be nervous.
Also, in case you’re worried about the “pain” you might feel of your wedding night, it’s different for different people. But I only felt it for a split second but got more pleasurable as he kept going inside. It was literally from pain to pleasure in a split second. Try to relax if you can, that way you’ll enjoy it more, and if it’s painful, it’ll be less so if you relax. Hope I’ve been some help.
God bless you and I wish you the very best
Girl, I want to sit down with you and have a long heart to heart over a latte or two. I feel like there might be so much more behind that post that has gone unsaid. I have so many more questions a out who you are as a person and who the two of you are as a couple.
The number one thing I love about what you wrote, though, is that you’ve already had this conversation with him. And that, right there, probably says something amazing about your relationship. It suggests to me that you have learned to be vulnerable with him…and that is a big step. And an important one….for successful sex and for successful relationship.
So, the first thing that comes to mind for me is that you might be a responsive desire person. Generally speaking, when we think of arousal, we think of it in terms of spontaneous desire…that horny, random urge to have sex at random times or just at the sight or touch of your partner. The problem is….only roughly half of the population actually experiences spontaneous desire and most of them are men. So, for the rest of us, mostly women, we experience responsive desire instead. And this responsive desire doesn’t kick in until after sexy things start to happen. Sometimes not even until sexy things have been going on for quite awhile. I personally went through a phase after my kids were born where my husband literally had to have his cock inside me and be pumping away before i even got mildly interested in what was going in. But then, at least for me, the arousal came in waves of thunder, and I would be so turned on by the time he finished that he’d have to get me off 3 or more times before I could fall asleep.
Dr. Emily Nagoski has written a book on responsive desire called Come As You Are. She also has a website called The Dirty Normal. So, if what I have described sounds at all familiar to you, you might want to check out her work.
But now, I feel like I really need to ask the hard questions.
From the way you talk, it sounds like there was a time in your relationship when when you were getting aroused by his touch or presence, is this correct? And now, is it true that all other aspects of your relationship are still moving along well? Do you still find him attractive? Are you still proud of him? Do you still find it easy, enjoyable, and relaxing to spend long stretches if time together, be it in public, with family, or in whatever amount of privacy you have agreed is healthy for this stage of your relationship?
I ask these things because sometimes relationships change in those getting to know you years/months of engagement. My husband sometimes volunteers as a premarital coach at our church. Some time ago there was a couple that was engaged to be married who he met with a few times. When the engagement started, they were madly in love. But over the course of the year leading up to the wedding, the girl discovered that she was not proud of who her fiancé was. She was not proud of his work ethic. She hadn’t known him well enough at the outset of the engagement to realize this, but it became crystal clear as time went on. But The girl felt committed to the upcoming marriage. She had given her word. She had put the deposit on the venue. She’d bought the dress. She didn’t want to hurt him by calling off the marriage. She couldn’t possibly talk to her fiancée about the doubts she was having.
I’m not sure what ever happened with that couple. But I believe that calling off or postponing that wedding would have been a genius move on her part. She needed some time to re-evaluate…to make sure she really wanted to make the lifelong commitment she was about to make.
So, I don’t want you to think that I am saying that your situation is identical to hers. But I don’t know you and I don’t know what your relationship is like….and so I feel like I just have to put that out there as something for you to think about. You might know instantly that this is a totally false rabbit trail in your case, and if so, praise God! But if it does give you a moments pause, then please, find someone you trust that you can pour your heart out to about it. And don’t feel obligated to get through the wedding just because you said yes. The marriage is binding…but in our culture, the engagement is not. If this is a bigger issue that simple hormonal/arousal urges, then please think long and hard about what you are getting yourself into.
But I hope for you that is not the case! I hope you have found a friend you can share life and intimacy with for a lifetime. And I hope you are able to figure out this little glitch you’ve run up against. God bless you!
Do you have any history of chronic anxiety? My wife had a similar experience to yours where she lost her attraction to me shortly before we got engaged. If it goes away on its own, great, but if it doesn’t, I strongly recommend counseling, because that’s the only way it got better with us. Might I also recommend posting on the forums on themarriagebed.com?
I don’t know when your wedding is, but you need to address this right now. A wedding is a ceremony, your lives together are much more, that is why you have to figure this out. You need to see a very good counselor who can probe what’s going on here. Yes it could be anxiety, but could be something more.
Bad analogy but I know many people who were going to take jobs, or buy houses, etc and at the last min, when it became close, real – not in imagining or the idea of it, but real, something in their gut said this is not right.
Nobody on this site can tell you what you’re feeling. You need to figure that out and with a good therapist. You need to be clear, committed and at peace in your heart before you go forward. You say what you say in a nice loving way and you speak of ideals of what will be, but if you don’t feel it below the shoulders, you need to take time and figure this one out.
Prayers and love to you and your spouse.
HI Paulina
There are a couple of red flags here for me. You say your fiance thinks you are the most wonderful thing whose heart goes pitter patter etc. Whats more telling to me is you dont think the same in return. You say love is a choice. I don’t agree. Commitment is a choice, The deepest level of love grows out of that commitment but there must be that initial level of romantic love, the one that does make your heart go pitter patter to start with. If that doesn’t last through your courtship then to me something is wrong. I still have it, albeit deeper and more meaningful after 28 years of marriage. To obtain that deep committed love you must also share the same goals and dreams as your spouse and you must share the same ultimate significance which for Christians is their faith in Christ. Before marrying many of us met people who we were physically attracted to initially but once we got to know them we realised that the x factor, that spark of love required just wasn’t there so you move on till you find the right person.
You say you are not asking whether or not you should marry your fiance. I suspect deep down you are. I also suspect from what you have written that you have realised you aren’t really in love with your fiance and deep down you know that too.. If that is the case then you need to make the hard choice which while painful is the right choice and that is to end your engagement. The alternative is a whole heap of heartache down the track which will be much worse.