Before people make assumptions, I consider myself a pretty good planner. I do project management for a living, and in general am on top of things. I do know the stereotype of the lackadaisical guy driving the detail oriented girl crazy, but I really don’t think that’s the case here. However, I’m probably the worst person to judge that, so still happy for feedback.
The reason I would call my fiancé an anxious planner is because she will feel compelled to plan something, and looping in others, the moment it gets brought up rather than dealing with things in the proper time. This often leads to having a need to deal with things way before it’s necessary. Based on what I’ve gathered it’s a family trait. It can lead to some light friction, where she feels like I’m putting things off, while I think it’s sometimes genuinely unnecessary.
So, as an example, we are planning our wedding which is happening in spring 2024. We were discussing brunch locations for the morning of, and had picked a spot. She wants to make reservations this week, which I think is a bit early, but would keep that to myself. Where we had a problem, was that she wanted me to call all my family members to make sure they knew the place, and to get confirmations from them that they can make it, which is like…come on.
I felt like it was unnecessary to do that. It’s over a year away. We might change plans. None of my family members are planning their brunch schedule that far out. My brother and SIL are expecting their first kid in a month. And most importantly, they’ll be there. There’s no history of my family being late or missing things, in fact they’re crazy reliable. I could tell them the night before (not that I’d do that l) and they’d find a way to make it work.
It just feels unnecessary, and it feels like nagging. I want to be considerate of my fiancés feelings, but do I also have grounds for wanting her to be considerate of mine? It feels like she doesn’t trust me/us, and I don’t think we’ve done anything to warrant that.
It’s also not always directed at me, it’s more of a general trait. Have many more examples but can save those for below
tl;dr – my fiancé often “needs” things to be planned out immediately, which I think is unproductive. I don’t think I’ve been unreliable to warrant this. Not a big fight or anything, but you know…
4 comments
Can you meet in the middle?
You do actually have to book venues for wedding stuff a year out. Where there is no deposit, it’s better to have a reservation you don’t need than not have one you do. But there’s no need to get rsvps right now for the brunch. It can be included in your invitation or save the date, which does need to go out as early as possible.
Perhaps what you can aim for in these planning conflicts is a solution that provides the most amount of security with the least amount of cost/effort, that can be changed if necessary.
Sounds like she’s a precrastinator, which is rooted in anxiety. People tend to learn about procrastination, but not its opposite, precrastination. I would aim for compromises like she gets to plan various things early, but if she wants you to do things, then you get to give her assurances you will handle it, but she doesn’t get to choose how. So, if you can truly reliably vouch for your family, and you feel you don’t need to inform them yet, then you can vouch for them and inform them later. I really don’t see the harm though in informing people early. Either they can give RSVPs now, in which case, where is the harm? Or they can’t yet, in which case, that is useful to know if you are starting to make plans. But I would discuss a compromise as a more general thing, where you get to not plan your parts beyond the extent she needs to plan her parts. If she truly wants to have things planned early and feels unhappy and anxious if she does not, this is probably a trait in her you need to accept and learn to live with if you are going to be with her.
I think it’s pretty reasonable to shoot a message to the people who you absolutely want at your wedding and give them a heads up about the date this far in advance. It would be very unlikely that they have plans already, but if for instance that’s likely to be the weekend of a graduation for a close family member’s kid, you might want to know that and consider bumping a couple weeks in either direction.
It does seem like this specific issue is part of a broader tension the two of you may have though. Now would be a perfect time to get some premarital counseling together.
How does her wanting to plan in advance impact you? With the exception of asking and contacting your family?