Sometimes my life feels like it’s going a mile a minute and I don’t get any real time to stop.
I don’t mind the pace of it all. I have morning carpool with the kids, work, visiting my mom in long term care, maintaining a home, and (in theory) planning a wedding. The last one is mainly either procrastinating or crying. I’m the best.
My fiancé and I divided up wedding planning accordingly. He picks the venue, the food, and keeps me from going insane, and I…plan the wedding. Trust me folks, he has a MUCH harder job. So far he has picked a venue and looked at the menu and I half ass built this website and went dress shopping and possibly had some kind of nervous breakdown. So we’ve both accomplished a lot.
Planning a wedding triggers all kinds of emotions. I’ve always been afraid of commitment, even in my youth. My fiancé told me he was going to marry me when we were teens and I LITERALLY LAUGHED AT THIS MAN. My first marriage was a disaster of epic proportions. He didn’t want to get help for his depression; I didn’t want to be there at all. I’m so scared of being trapped in a situation where things just escalate and become violent again. There’s also the income deficit; my partner out earns me by a considerable margin. I’ve always prided myself on being an equal. I spent eight years with a man who made less than me but also made me account for every dollar I spent. I don’t want to be a drain or someone that can’t contribute to her home and family. There’s also ageism and the body image issues. Am I too old for this and should we have just gone to the courthouse? Because of this, I hyper analyze every detail and ask my fiancé if he’s mad at me eleventy thousand times a day.
(Fortunately, my fiancé is a very patient man, because otherwise he’d be driven nuts by now)
Basically, much like everything else in my life, this change has made me an anxious ball of anxiety! However, the one thing that doesn’t scare me is the person I’ve chosen to spend my life with. He is the part that makes sense. I try not to talk about my personal life too much, but everything is easy with him. We communicate well, I trust him implicitly, he’s compassionate and kind, he loves my kids and is excited to blend our families. The idea of spending my life with him is easy; it’s the smartest decision I’ve ever made. It’s not him that makes me fear commitment. It doesn’t even feel like commitment; instead it feels like it’s supposed to be this way. My fear of commitment has nothing to do with him; he’s perfect. My therapist and I have been working on this and we are realizing that my fear of commitment has nothing to do with my partners and everything to do with me.
I have a confession folks; my name is MHC and I have control issues…and abandonment issues…and body image issues…
I grew up believing I would never be able to count on anyone. My mom let me down, my family was dysfunctional, so I decided if I just did everything on my own, then no one could ever hurt me ever again! Also, no one could reject me, or tell me I’m not good enough for them. If I kept to myself, then I couldn’t let them down. If I just accepted that I’m not traditional wife material, then no one would want me to be their wife! Self sabotage; WHAT A BRILLIANT IDEA! I’ve always struggled with gender roles and norms. I never wanted to be the white picket fence wife who made cookies and stayed home to raise a family. I wanted to raise kids, but the rest seemed terrifying. I wanted to have my own career, earn my own money, be an equal. But I grew up with people who made me feel like wanting to be more than that made me somehow less.
This feeling of being less has been growing since I was 19 and a boy told me he was going to marry me someday (kudos to him; he played the long game). Ever since I’ve always worried about disappointing people when they realize I’m not good at traditional wife things, I’m stubborn, I struggle to open up about my feelings, and I’m pretty much neurotic every second. So, I’d pack up my shit and run away again. New town, new adventures, new life where I can just be on my own. However, once you find yourself settled, you start to look introspectively. It was never about how anyone else saw me. It was that I always saw me as a broken toy; damaged by trauma, product of the system, dysfunctional family. I looked at the highlight reels and surface levels and compared it to my own experiences and felt like a stray cat you need to coax inside. Why would anyone want a stray cat when you can get a fantastic Scottish Fold or Himalayan Blue?
All of my fears came from the fear of being judged too harshly for my shitty upbringing, failed marriage, or lack of real estate, but it was really just me judging my own reflection and seeing how I stack against my own demons and phantom women that may haunt my partner’s ceiling. Clever, beautiful women with talent and never talk too much and aren’t ever too loud. If they couldn’t make it work, what chance did I, the stray cat who is too loud and has never stopped talking, have?
Part of getting over my fears of commitment is actually fully accepting myself and accepting that someone is capable of loving me. It’s a slow process, with a ton of procrastinating and a fuck ton of therapy, but if I keep working at it, maybe I’ll have something planned by my wedding day, which has a date set because at least one of us knows what they’re doing.
The Misadventures of MHC 