Blogs | Here Comes the Wedding | The Long Engagement
January 22, 2008
The Long Engagement
I already feel married.
I’m sure many engaged couples feel this way—that deep connection, that total oneness with your fiancé…the annoyance when they don’t pick up their socks.
Still the feeling could have come from our very long engagement—and our even longer history. To understand this, I should take you back to when we met. In 1995.
Yeah, that’s not a typo. I met my beloved Alberto when we both worked at a movie theatre near my hometown. We immediately connected—he was funny and dry and clever and understood my sarcasm right away. He spoke the same language in that incredible way you long for.
While I thought he was cute and that it could be a romantic thing, I was blindingly fearful of rejection and sure he wouldn’t like me in that way. So we became very good friends. Friends who, over the course of eight years would go to dinner, have drinks, watch movies, and go to parties together, but who would never cross that friend/more-than friends line.
Until one New Year’s Eve… It was New Year’s Eve when he finally got the courage, after a few ales of course, to tell me he had feelings for me. Had them for a long time. Wants to date me. Had been paralyzed by his own fear of rejection that he never dared tell me—he thought I wouldn’t feel the same.
I didn’t know what to do—I liked him, in that way too, but that stupid fearful girl inside was like: “If it doesn’t work out, you won’t be friends anymore. Don’t ruin the friendship!” I thought it over for a few days and of course made the best decision of my life when I said yes. And when we started dating—it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like, “Why haven’t we been doing this all along??”
Strangely a similar scenario marked our engagement too. We’d been dating for about 3 years and we knew, we just knew we were going to be married. We just had to make it official. We went on an Alaskan cruise in May of 2006. We arrived in Seattle the night before and stayed in a hotel, just relaxing and enjoying being on vacation. Suddenly, he got quiet. I asked him what was up.
He started trembling and said: “I want to make it official. I want to marry you.”
And I said (don’t laugh): Yes—but tell me why you want to marry me.
What? I’m a reporter! I need details, information, words!! Really, though I wanted my guy, who can be shy and is a more show-but-not-tell kind of man, to say the words out loud so we could both hear them.
He said: I want to marry you because I love you. I want to take care of you for the rest of our lives. I want to be a good dad to our kids. I love you. Will you marry me?
And through, sobbing tears, I said YES!!
What I love most is that he said later that he’d been planning all along to ask me on our trip. He didn’t know where in Alaska he would do it—and he was nervous thinking about it. Should I ask her on the boat? By a glacier? In Juneau? All of which would’ve been romantic, I’m sure. But he said he couldn’t wait—the words came out of him—right there in our hotel room!
So now, after 8 years of friendship, 3 and a half years of dating and nearly over a year and a half engagement, we’re finally tying the knot.
Now do you see why I already feel married?
Posted by Nichole at 10:01 a.m.
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