What were some of your cold feet thoughts before marriage ?

8 comments

1. I’ve been proposed to twice and I accepted neither. Not sure if that’s the kind of account you wanted but personally, I think if you’re having doubts you need to give them some real thought. It’s there for a reason.

2. I was more nervous about the ceremony part than actually being married

3. Do I want subscribe to a lifetime commitment?
   Is this the right person?
   Am I making the right choice?

   It’s super natural to wonder and question these things. I’d be worried if you didn’t have these thoughts to be honest.

   I don’t regret either marriage – two total. Even the one that didn’t work out ended amicably, and I think I learned too much from that experience to feel regretful about it. I feel it illuminated a lot of critical details about myself that I’d not recognized or considered. I think the saying is true about it being better to have loved, and lost vs. never having experienced love at all

4. We worked at the same place. He had been there for maybe 5 years when I started. He had been in a relationship with a married woman (coworker) when he decided it was too dangerous and got with me. I had wondered if a relationship that had started this way could really be genuine, as he told me it was. I wanted to believe him and got married.

   10 years later, he confessed he was cheating and was leaving to be with her.

   5 years after our divorce, he’s currently fucking a married woman, who is his ex girlfriend’s best friend. (He cheated on that ex too). Some things never change.

5. [removed]

6. Doubts about relationship, nervousness about transition, some incomplete work of self or about relationship that needs to be completed before this step, own self-introspection about where you want to lead your life

7. I don’t remember being hesitant when I got married (five years ago, after sevenish years). I don’t regret it, either, though I suppose ask me again in twenty years.

   I think a key input here was that it consistently feels like something that makes my life better? If at some point this relationship stopped working for me in some clearly irrecoverable way, I could divorce him and sell all my possessions and hand over his share of the retirement savings and swan off into the sunset and that would be, you know, fine, it’s not like a worst case disaster scenario or anything. I *choose* not to do that, not because I have to, but because being married is great and is nicer than even the perfectly nice life I would have if I was single. I imagine I’d feel very differently if it was worse.

   So… while I would not want to tell someone that they should throw away something they value just because they’re nervous about a big nerve-wracking public event (valid! reasonable! scary even if marriage itself is great!), I would counsel you to pay careful attention to anything in your brain that is suggesting to you, even very quietly and hesitantly, that maybe you *do* feel like marriage would make your life worse, instead of better.

8. I didn’t have any cold feet thoughts, I think it’s normal to be nervous but you should go into a marriage with no doubts about that person. I knew that that’s my person I’m walking down the aisle to.