"Not sure if I love you enough"

[4givrnt4gtr]

Thats the line I got today from my fiancé.

 

We had a hell of a weekend. Mostly my fault. Long story short, I made us late to one of his friend's wedding, making us miss the ceremony.

Initially he said he wasn't mad, and I apologized continuously (although aside from me coming out 10 minutes late, there was this crazy closing of streets. had he planned better, we could have taken another route too).

In any case, today he felt distant and I asked him if he was ok. He said he was still sad about having missed the wedding and that made some thoughts enter his mind. I asked what they were and he said the he was wondering if marrying me was a good idea, as what I do, from now on, reflects on him, and is afraid of missing other important things because of me.

We talked about it, and eventually he confessed that he rushed to ask me to marry him (he asked me back in November), and that he had been plagued with doubts for the first couple of months. He said that the doubts went away, but that they came back today, and made him feel overwhelmed. That he knew he loved me, that he didn't want to lose me, but was not sure he loved me enough to marry me.

 

I was taken aback. Never did I imagine this could happen. We have what I thought was an awesome relationship. We agree in a lot of important things, have a great time together. He constantly said he felt lucky to have me and I feel the same way. Now I feel like everything was an act.

 

So when all this happened I gave him back the ring and told him he has to figure it out. That he needs to think about it and only when he is sure either way he can give me back the ring or we can call off the wedding.

 

He agreed and I left. (We live together).

I was gonna spend the night at a friend's house but I couldn't sleep. I drove back and found him looking at my albums. We talked for a bit again and he said that so far what he's thought is that he loves me, wants to be with me for life, but is not sure whether he loves me enough to deserve me.

I don't know what that means.

He also said he is afraid of failing to love me enough...

Ive been wandering around, trying to find some peace but I can't

Part of me wants to give him time to figure out what is going on, what he feels. Part of me feels that if after two years, and an engagement he is still not sure what he feels for me, he won't figure it out any time soon. Or worse, he will convince himself he loves me enough to marry me and that I will not have.

I also feel that even if he says he wants to marry me after all, I don't know how I will be able to move forward from this. I feel betrayed, lied to, and now someone else is holding my life in their hands, trying to make up his mind whether I am good enough for him or not.

 

God I feel so distraught I don't know what to do.

 

Please help. Any advice, directions, something, anything.

 

Please help

[HeartbrokenNewbie]

I think u need to stay away for a bit and let him realise what u mean to him x

[amaysngrace]

You need to talk about this and start by saying that you're sorry for making him miss the ceremony.

 

None of this blaming him for not taking a different route crap. You messed up so own it completely.

 

The nicest married couples I know are the ones who are easy on each other.

 

But you do need to talk to him. This is your life too. I would not wait.

 

And start by saying that you're sorry for running late and for shifting the blame onto him.

 

Conflict is going to happen. It's inevitable. But the way you both resolve that conflict is critical to the health of your relationship.

[iiiii]

Sounds like this has been bugging him for a while, and for whatever reason, he wasn't communicating it with you.

 

Bigger issues than just missing a wedding, I think.

 

Give him a while to make up his mind, but if he's still undecided, you might be best to leave.

[oldshirt]

Love is a feeling.

 

 

Marriage is a legal instrument that binds people together legally and socially. Married people share legal obligation as well as financial obligation and credit rating, liability etc etc.

 

 

He may love you and have those warm and passionate feelings for you but if you are a fck up he has just cause to hesitate to bind himself legally and socially to you.

 

 

he may love you and have feelings for you but if you are irresponsible, destructive, not trustworthy etc he would be irresponsible and it would be to his detriment to sign on the dotted line with you.

 

 

If this whole wedding fiasco was due to your irresponsibility and negligence and it may have been the straw that broke the camels back and was the wake up call that made him realize that you may not be good for him in the long run.

 

 

I can't help but wonder if when he says, "I don't know if I love you enough"? if what that really means is that his feelings of warmth and love and desire for you, isn't enough to make up for the risk he is going to undertake to be legally bound to you.

 

 

It's real easy for a guy to have warm, sexy feelings for a gal. It's a whole other reality to have her name on your mortgage, credit cards and have her name on your car and on your insurance.

 

 

A gal may be a great dancer and give a good blow job and may make your heart skip ten beats when she bats her baby-blue eyes at you, but that allure fades real fast when she wrecks your car and totals out someone else's Mercedes and puts them in the hospital and then runs 10s of thousands of dollars up on your credit cards and blows your credit rating and you are on the hook for all her legal damages.

 

 

If you are irresponsible, negligent and reckless, he may be realizing that being in love isn't enough to take on the risks that he may incure by being married to you.

 

 

Falling in love is real easy. Falling in love with someone that will be a good life partner and will improve your life and not make it a disaster is a whole other story.

[JamesM]

How did you respond to being late? Did you blame him and say he could have taken a different route?

 

Or did you take the blame?

 

Was this the result of the "fight" or was it more than that?

 

IMO you should apologize for the lateness and take ALL of the blame. Unfortunately, now it will look like you are trying to get him back.

 

I think you had better let him have his space and move out. Time will be the best decider. If you push him into marriage or rather if he feels you pushed him into marriage, then down the road he will not take responsibility for his choice.

 

I know. I was there. I felt pushed into marriage and broke the engagement. We did get back together and have married for twenty some years. While there have been some rough times...quite a few it seems sometimes, I know that I made the decision to marry and was not forced.

 

I will disagree with oldshirt.....

 

Love is NOT just a feeling. It is much more than that. It is a commitment and an action. If it were just a feeling, then we would all run from any relationship when it seems to disappear. In fact, that is what many do. No, love is a commitment. And to choose that commitment, one must decide that there is enough desire to be with that person for a lifetime.

 

He must decide for himself that he will accept and love you with all of your strengths and all of your weaknesses. He cannot be persuaded or he will not feel ownership of that decision.

 

Marriage starts with a feeling but is sustained by an action: commitment.

[Arieswoman]

but was not sure he loved me enough to marry me.

 

he rushed to ask me to marry him (he asked me back in November), and that he had been plagued with doubts for the first couple of months. He said that the doubts went away, but that they came back today, and made him feel overwhelmed.

wants to be with me for life, but is not sure whether he loves me enough to deserve me.

 

Sorry 4givrnt4gtr,

but these are big red flags.

 

I would move out and spend some time apart.

 

Then later, you can choose a time to talk rationally about this.

 

Good |Luck.

[EverLastluv]

sorry to hear about the mix feelings. I was advise to get a wedding date planned before moving in together. I know its harder to deal with this when the both of you already living together. My advise is DO NOT live together without being married or a wedding date planned. Good luck resolving this matter... my heart would be broken If my fiance told me that. Sorry!

[4givrnt4gtr]

Thank you all for your input

 

let me first address the being late issue. I took 100% responsibility for it. When we arrived i almost burst into tears bc i knew i screwed it up for him (i didnt ofcourse, that would have made it a million times worst) . i kept apologizing all night and kept asking him why he wasn't mad. that i would have been furious in his place. i never mentioned how he should have taken another route at all. that was just a thought i had and someone else at the wedding pointed out. but i didn't shifted blame on him at all.

 

Now, i agree being late is inexcusable particularly for a wedding. Its unfortunately something i battle with particularly in social situations. However i don't think i am irresponsible in any way. I am a doctoral student that works part time to make sure all bills are taken cared of. If anything I try to help him make responsible choices (ie. not quit his job before he gets something lined up... though i think i lost that battle too) . I have better credit than he does and although right now he is the main bread winner eventually I will be taking care of most of the house expenses with a job i have already lined up for after graduation. in short. i dont think he is (or should be) concerned about our financial stability.

 

i moved out for at least the week. Before i did we had a talk where he assured me he loved me and wants to make me happy for the rest of his life and wishes to see me grow old with him. However he says he wants to make sure he loves me 100%, without any doubts or fears. that he can open up completely to me without reservations. i told him having some doubts are normal so i asked what he was nervous or afraid of. He said he was afraid of failing at loving me and his doubts were about his ability to be vulnerable with me.

 

i told him to take his time that i was leaving for the week. he didnt like that very much and offer to leave instead. i said no that i wanted to and left with my pets

 

so now I'm in a motel trying to get work done and praying for the best, whatever that might be.

 

oh and yeah Everlast, we have a wedding date. in 4 months. everything is planned and almost all paid for. But thats quite inconsequential. Clearly being engaged for almost 6 months and living together for over a year didn't help prevent any of this. Actually made it more bewildering as we haven't had many problems until now. I guess that should have been my biggest red flag. if its too good to be true, it probably is.

Edited April 8, 2014 by 4givrnt4gtr

[Mascara]

I think you should tell him that you've thought things over and that you no longer want to be engaged. You're not mad, you want to stay together, but you are taking the decision out of his hands. When he's ready, he can ask you again - and if you're ready, you'll say yes.

 

Then you smile, talk about what you'll do for dinner and not mention it again. You act like he never proposed in the first place, because then he'll get to thinking "hold on... she's just shrugged her shoulders and is letting me off the hook? SHE doesn't want to marry ME? Not sure I want that..."

[4givrnt4gtr]

Mascara, you have no idea how much I love your advice!!!

 

I think its the most logical and most importantly empowering advice I've heard.

 

Thank you so much!

 

I called my boyfriend and basically said exactly what you posted. He was kind of shocked into silence and then said that although he had thought about that option he hadn't made up his mind that thats what he wanted to do. I told him I thought it was the best we could do at this point, that all this left me very jarred and that even if he said he wanted to marry me right now I was not sure I felt safe enough to say yes. That I thought this was a very important decision and it couldn't be made up in a couple of days. I said that at this point it was the only option I saw, unless he wanted to break up for good, as I don't want to be engaged after this. He said he understood.

I said that as far as I knew we both were sure we wanted to be together that we enjoyed each other and our relationship, so the logical thing to do is to go back to the point of our relationship we are sure of. That in that space we could try to heal this rupture and continue building the relationship. That if down the road he felt I was the woman he wanted to marry and I felt he is the man I want to marry then we could take that step, but right now thats not where we are and we need to honor that.

 

He was very reticent about it, but finally he said that it was probably the most fair thing to do.

 

So thank you, thank you so much for helping me regain back the control of my life and helping me ensure he and I make the right decision without rushing or pressure. If I could give you a hug I totally would!!

Edited April 9, 2014 by 4givrnt4gtr

[pink_sugar]

So sorry you are going through this. May I ask exactly how you made him late? I may be alone on this, but is there any reason he didn't leave on his own if you weren't ready to go? Has this "making him late" been an ongoing issue? If it was a one time deal, I don't think this is the reason he is upset with you. There must be more.

[4givrnt4gtr]

So sorry you are going through this. May I ask exactly how you made him late? I may be alone on this, but is there any reason he didn't leave on his own if you weren't ready to go? Has this "making him late" been an ongoing issue? If it was a one time deal, I don't think this is the reason he is upset with you. There must be more.

 

Thank you for your sympathy. So what happened was that the wedding was at 330pm. I had a meeting for my dissertation at 9 am and it ran all the way until almost 11 though I thought it was going to be til 10 only. While I was in the meeting he went to get a hair cut and told me he would be back by 1pm. After the meeting I also had to call his mom to tell her the date of my bridal shower so she could schedule her flight. That took another hour

Long story short, it was all bad planning on my part. I knew i had to do things to get ready and I should have done it either the day before or not call his mom, or something.

In any case, by the time I got back to our place it was 130 and he was already ready. I asked him what time we needed to leave and he said 230 so I rushed to get ready. By the time we were in the car was 245.

 

We would have made it on time, with time to spare had it not been for the street closure. But then later he told me he had actually wanted to leave at 2 not a 230, but because I had arrived late he knew I wouldn't be ready by 2.

 

In any case, unfortunately timeliness is a weakness for me. I don't know why and how I can fix it, which scares me and angers me that I can't manage something so simple. However, I don't recall making him late for anything before this. I have, however picked him up from work 10 minutes or so late for a date. Aside from that, I don't think I have made him late.

 

I don't know if there is anything else aside from this. He said there isn't and that its not even about being late but that somehow that awoken past doubts he had.

 

From my part I think perhaps seeing me stressed out, running around like I did that weekend is getting to him. I am going to school working and doing an internship, none of which is easy and its stressing me out a lot. I wonder if he feels Im so overwhelmed I can't even make it on time to an important event and is wondering if this is going to be the rest of his life.

I wouldn't blame him if this is his train of thought. However there is nothing I can do to change my current circumstance and I hope, actually I KNOW i can't live like this forever, so I know I will not be this stressed out.

 

I don't know....

 

In regards to why he didn't leave without me he said he felt bad. I told him to please do so If i ever make him late again which I will do everything I can to not do.

[pink_sugar]

Thank you for your sympathy. So what happened was that the wedding was at 330pm. I had a meeting for my dissertation at 9 am and it ran all the way until almost 11 though I thought it was going to be til 10 only. While I was in the meeting he went to get a hair cut and told me he would be back by 1pm. After the meeting I also had to call his mom to tell her the date of my bridal shower so she could schedule her flight. That took another hour

Long story short, it was all bad planning on my part. I knew i had to do things to get ready and I should have done it either the day before or not call his mom, or something.

In any case, by the time I got back to our place it was 130 and he was already ready. I asked him what time we needed to leave and he said 230 so I rushed to get ready. By the time we were in the car was 245.

 

We would have made it on time, with time to spare had it not been for the street closure. But then later he told me he had actually wanted to leave at 2 not a 230, but because I had arrived late he knew I wouldn't be ready by 2.

 

In any case, unfortunately timeliness is a weakness for me. I don't know why and how I can fix it, which scares me and angers me that I can't manage something so simple. However, I don't recall making him late for anything before this. I have, however picked him up from work 10 minutes or so late for a date. Aside from that, I don't think I have made him late.

 

I don't know if there is anything else aside from this. He said there isn't and that its not even about being late but that somehow that awoken past doubts he had.

 

From my part I think perhaps seeing me stressed out, running around like I did that weekend is getting to him. I am going to school working and doing an internship, none of which is easy and its stressing me out a lot. I wonder if he feels Im so overwhelmed I can't even make it on time to an important event and is wondering if this is going to be the rest of his life.

I wouldn't blame him if this is his train of thought. However there is nothing I can do to change my current circumstance and I hope, actually I KNOW i can't live like this forever, so I know I will not be this stressed out.

 

I don't know....

 

In regards to why he didn't leave without me he said he felt bad. I told him to please do so If i ever make him late again which I will do everything I can to not do.

 

While it sounds like you could have had better time management, I also do not think you should take 100% of the blame here. For one, a dissertation is a big deal and you didn't expect it to run that long. He also could have left his haircut for another time and communicated better with you and said something like "Hey hon, we need to leave right after your dissertation is over so we can get ready" and also not blame you because he said 2:30, because he "figured you wouldn't be ready anyways by 2pm".

[InnocentMan]

An hour and 15 minutes to get ready? Come on. If you knew you took that long to stick a dress on, you should have probably cut short the hour long phone call to his mother. I think I speak for all men when I say ffs.

[Smilecharmer]

Not sure I would want to be with a man who is unsure of me and marriage to me if that is what you want for your life. If he is already doubting it, then when times get tough down the road he may not be the best and most reliable husband. This situation sounds horrible and I hope you are ok. If being late was a cause for the dissolution of relationships, there would be no relationships. Seems pretty silly to me to throw a wedding away for something like that.

[pink_sugar]

I honestly think your fiance is as much to blame as you. Your dissertation meeting was over at 11am and he was off getting his haircut until 1pm? The wedding must have not been that big of a deal to him if he also said 2:30 was an okay time to leave. It's not as if he was like "Honey, we need to leave right now" and you were like "Just give me another 30 minutes!". It doesn't seem as if he made much effort either to get to this wedding on time, so give yourself a break.

Edited April 10, 2014 by pink_sugar

[atlg8r]

I'm really disturbed by some of the "advice" I read on this post so far. IMO this has nothing to do with missing the wedding. He has been having issues with this for some time, and maybe just got mad enough now to bring it up.

 

I would never marry a man who "isn't sure" if he loves me enough or if he "deserves" me. You are better off alone than with some wishy-washy douche.

 

It is one thing to apologize for being late, but sounds like there were multiple reasons you missed the ceremony. If being 10 minutes late out the door was enough to make you miss it, you both probably didn't plan very well.

 

My ex was wishy-washy like this, and that relationships was nothing but chaos and hell. Find someone who knows how much he loves you and values you and doesn't waver.

[4givrnt4gtr]

So I came home last night after spending two days at the crappy hotel. Before I did I talked to my boyfriend on the phone about everything that has been happening. He said he agrees we should postpone the wedding as he is in no position to figure his feeling out right now.

 

I talked to some of my friends that know him and our relationship. They all say that it sounds like he is panicking and probably has not been voicing all his concerns throughout the relationship so they all just came rushing out after this one incident (I agree atlg8r, this isn't about the wedding), and the intensity of it all is making him feel unsure.

 

While discussing this, one of them asked me if I loved him. I said of course, she then asked me if I loved him enough to hold him in this uncertainty. This cleared up a lot for me, as I wasn't sure how I could get past this point and I realized I do love him enough to hold on, and I have so much faith in what we have had up to this point that I am willing to take a gamble on this (Extremely again my MO, but I think it's worth the chance).

 

My friend pointed out that he has never said he doesn't love me, he just isn't sure how much. She said that love and marriage is a gamble, and sounds like he wants absolute certainty on something that will never have absolute certainty. She, as well as my mom, and my other two friends that know what is going on told me that from their point of view this man loves me very deeply. They have been present for all the things he has done for me, they all have seen how he treats me, talks to me etc. They all agree that although surprising he is freaking out now, it isn't a reflection of how much he loves me. They have very strong belief that in the end everything will work out for us.

 

So I came home last night, and I walked in to an apartment lit with my favorite scented candle he went out to get. We hugged and cried together for a while by the door. Then I went into our bedroom and found that he had taken some of our photos, blown them up and put them in beautiful frames. He took our engagement photo blew it up into a gorgeous canvas. He developed some more photos and put them into an album, with encryptions in each of the pages, talking about our history, what he hopes for us, what I mean to him, etc .

 

Seeing all this made me break down and cry. It was all so confusing. He goes out, spends all this time effort and money to create this beautiful thing, reflects upon our relationship, tells me these past two years have been the happiest of his life and that if he had to live without me he would regret it for the rest of his life and then turns around and tells me he still isn't sure he loves me enough.

 

So we talked some more, he tells me he is very scared, his mind is racing with contradicting thoughts and feelings. He goes from Im not sure I want to be with you to I love you and don't want to lose you. At first my own insecurities kept me at a place where I told him I needed him to give me something to hold onto, as I was doing everything in my power to not run for the hills. He just kept crying and saying he was scared. I took a deep breath, I pointed out what he had just done (the pictures etc) and said that a man who doesn't love someone, in this situation wouldn't be doing that, he would be planning his exit strategy. He chuckled and said he was crazy.

 

So I thought about what my friend said, about holding him in this space of uncertainty, and instead of pressuring, to just let him feel whatever he feels. I put my insecurities aside, and I literally held him. He broke down sobbing, and I just reassured him everything would be ok. He cried for a good while and after he calmed down a bit we talked a little more. This time I just told him to allow himself to feel whatever comes up. I told him that from where I was standing I just could not believe he didn't love me but to me it looks like he is incredibly afraid (to what he nodded). I told him it was ok to be afraid, and that the harder he tries to push those feelings away the stronger they would become, so to just let them come up. He cried some more, we talked some more. He relaxed and for the first time all week I felt him settled down.

 

He asked me why I stayed, and I told him because I love him that much, and I believed in what we have. He smiled and hugged me. He told me he was glad I came home, and that he felt so much better, that he didn't want to lose me, that the thought of me being gone hurt and he just couldn't see his life without me, though he was still scared. I said I loved him, and he said he did too, then hid his head and said that he was so afraid to say that because he was afraid he didn't mean it. I said that in that case don't say it. Later on he started saying he loved me again, held up for a moment and then decided to say it.

 

In any case, we stayed up until 4am talking and just holding each other in this really crazy topsy turvy place we landed somehow. We fell asleep holding hands.

 

This morning we woke up and said he loves me, that he is happy I am home and that he is very very sorry for putting me through this. I told him that despite the horrible pain, I was glad this happened because at least for me, it clarify my feelings for him, even at the worst moments, and that I felt like we learned so much about each other in the last week, probably more than in the past two years. He agreed and thanked me for loving him so much that I could allow him to feel this way without running away. I said that I am holding on because I believed that if we make it through this we will be that much stronger. He said he really really wanted us to make it through this too.

 

Later he said that he thought perhaps he could hold off on calling the wedding off (I said that if we are calling off the wedding then I ask that he does it as I don't think I can handle that) for at least a week or so. I agreed, and said we don't have to rush into anything, either calling off the wedding or deciding right away if we are going to go through with it. We have to just be for now.

 

So that's where we are. Its been such a crazy roller coaster but I have a ton of hope and faith right now. I love this man with all my heart and I do have faith on us. I pray this goes well and we come out stronger for it.

[TintedChrome]

Wow. I'm going through a similar situation, except I'm playing the role of your fiancé. Like him I have this overriding feeling of fear. Let us know how things are going.

[4givrnt4gtr]

HI Tinted...

 

Well, since you asked. Since I wrote last, we have been on the road to repair the relationship. He came down with me to see my family and we both were very reluctant to tell them we postponed the wedding. We went through each day like nothing was wrong, holding and squeezing each other's hand when the topic of the wedding came up.

 

At night we talked and talked some more. By the end of the weekend he said he felt he was being really stupid and though he was still nervous he felt more confident about us and his feelings for me.

 

I just kept trying to be patient and listening, allowing him space and time to sort through his thoughts and feelings. By the end of the weekend we drove back and stop at a beach, we talked some more and we decided not to postpone the wedding after all. However, I said we should do pre-marital counseling, as during our chats, a lot of misconceptions about marriage seemed to come up for him.

 

So as of right now, things are slowly getting back to normal. However I must warn you, for me, that "no doubt, full throttle ahead" feeling I had about our wedding has kind of changed. I don't feel as excited as I used to about our wedding and all the festivities, though when I question myself about whether I still want to go through with it, undoubtedly I feel a resounding yes. So I am hoping it changes as time goes by, and I feel this way because its hard to hear the person you love saying he isn't sure. I am being very honest about my reservation with my fiancé and he is fully aware that although I am glad he spoke up, I am hurt and my trust has been shaken so there is some work for both of us to do.

We had our first counseling session yesterday and so far so good. I think we both want this to work and we are literally doing everything we can to make sure we take this step with eyes open wide.

 

Good luck to you! I can tell you from my experience that although its painful for the person who doesn't have doubts, from what I saw, its worse for the one who does. What I saw helped my fiancé was to talk to a trusted friend, and if you can talk to your fiancé about your feelings (if she is able to not being defensive), then even better. The way I saw it is that I am his fiancé, but I am also his friend, and I want the best for him, so when he needed me to be his friend, I took off the fiancé hat, put on the friend hat, and walk him through the darkest time I've ever seen him go through.

Edited April 22, 2014 by 4givrnt4gtr