Confessional: It’s 1 Year Later and We’re Still Not Engaged

It’s been just over a year since I wrote and published my confessional on why my boyfriend and I are waiting to get married, and let me tell you: a lot can happen in one year.

At the time of writing that post, COVID hadn’t fully hit the United States yet, and I’m 99.999% sure no one saw what would happen in the next month—no, scratch that, the next year—coming. The entire world got turned upside down. Life as we all knew it changed drastically, and for better or for worse, nothing’s been the same since. So many people I know had to push their own weddings, honeymoons, and vacations back a year because of COVID, while others had to change their wedding plans completely and opt for smaller, more intimate, and simple gatherings. COVID rocked the entire wedding business as a whole. It feels like the saying “When you make plans, God laughs” is fitting here.

But COVID isn’t the reason my boyfriend and I still aren’t engaged.

In October 2020 we were attending the wedding of my boyfriends sister, and at it we were talking to her husband about our future plans for marriage. We’ve made it no secret that we plan to get married one day, and we’ve also made it no secret that we’re going to do it on our own terms and in our own time. The conversation was a casual one—it didn’t feel forced or invasive whatsoever—and my boyfriends brand-new brother-in-law said he could realistically picture us getting married in 2022. At the time, my boyfriend and I agreed. It sounded reasonable enough: get engaged in probably about a year or so, and take one year to plan the wedding. It sounded like a very realistic assumption. My boyfriend and I didn’t discuss it any further because we didn’t need to. We both knew then like we know now that when the right time comes for us and we’re able to put our full focus and positive energy into the wedding, we’ll both know it. Again, it was a very loose but realistic assumption.

Now, fast-forward to today, and we’re nearing the end of March 2021, and that assumption doesn’t seem so realistic anymore. Even if we were to get engaged, the wedding we both want simply wouldn’t be doable within the time frame of June 25, 2022 (my boyfriend wants to get married on the day of our anniversary). But even still, it’s not so much the time frame as it is the fact that a lot can happen in a year—and a lot has.

Since writing that confessional, not only did the entire world get flipped upside down, my boyfriend and I also went through and are still going through major life changes as individuals as well. In the span of one year I finally managed to see a neurosurgeon regarding my neck injury, and during said appointment with neurosurgeon was let down in a completely immense way; we both lost our grandmothers; we both began embarking on new paths in life between career changes and vigorous self-work; my boyfriend tore his pec and gave us both COVID, and most recently, I saw the neurosurgeon again and tried out facet joint injections which sadly didn’t take, which means that I now have an upcoming EMG test to find out if I have any pinched nerves in my neck that they’re unable to see from the MRI, and afterward, I will again see the neurosurgeon and discuss my options from there.

I’ve been very vocal about the fact that I strongly believe you can’t always plan for life. Sure, it’s nice to have some plan laid out, but all of that can be taken away and changed in an instant. I learned that firsthand when I was rear ended by a drunk driver and lost my dream of becoming a professional wrestler for good. Sometimes things happen that are outside of our control, and our only option is to then react to and adjust our life accordingly. I heard someone once say that in order for a crisis to happen, there has to be something that no one saw coming. COVID was definitely a crisis worldwide, and I’m not saying that all of the other things I just listed that have happened in a year (those only just scratch the surface) are crises as well, what I am saying is that there will always be events in life we don’t see coming, things we can’t plan for. Sometimes we’ll be blindsided by them, and others not so much. The truth is, things don’t always go according to plan. When that happens, you can choose to either surrender completely and let it go, or hold onto it and allow your bitterness to fester inside of you while the course of events cannot be changed. The choice is yours. After this last year, I’ve learned to choose surrendering every time.

In my confessional on why my boyfriend and I are waiting to get married, I wrote very honestly about the fact that my neck injury has played a huge part in our decision to wait. The idea of trying to plan a wedding while not feeling good 24/7, living in constant pain, going from doctor to doctor to try and find some help while planning a wedding didn’t sound like a fairytale, it sounded like a nightmare. That’s still the case today, but we’re hopeful that we will be able to get some answers and insight soon from my upcoming neck appointments, and from there, be able to figure out what to do next.

Now our 8 year anniversary is quickly approaching, and I believe that the two of us feel more content than ever. Gone are the notions of societal pressure to conform and get married in what society perceives as the “right time.” Gone are the nagging trolls online and in real life who ask us when we’re going to get married and then look at us like we’re crazy, deranged fools when we tell them that marriage isn’t our #1 priority. In fact, I think everyone’s laid off completely. I think my boyfriend and I have done a pretty good job of establishing that our relationship is our business and our business alone. We do good teamwork when it comes to shutting people down who try to question it.

If I’m being honest, with all of the changes that have happened in the last year, the ones that we’re both still going through as individuals, and my neck injury, I think engagement and marriage is the last thing on our either of our brains. Neither one of us were ever the type of people who obsessed over marriage and kids. Speaking for myself, growing up, I never ever dreamed or fantasized about settling down, getting married, and raising a family with the white picket fence. I knew at 6 years old that I didn’t want to grow up and play house with someone else. I knew at 6 years old that I wanted to have a successful career and do everything on my own. I didn’t fantasize about the picture perfect all-American family, I fantasized about walking on red carpets all on my own with cameras flashing everywhere and people calling my name; I thought maybe, if someone was lucky, they’d get to stand beside me on that red carpet. As I got older, I thought I was going to be successful in whatever career path I chose, grow old alone, maybe adopt a kid or two if I got really bored, and buy my own diamonds with my own money. My boyfriend was the first person that ever made me stop and think about the idea of marriage and all the good that it could entail. I started reinventing the idea of a domesticated woman trapped in a glass house while her husband leaves Monday through Friday to go to work and spends weekends golfing and drinking with his friends. I began to wonder if marriage could mean something else completely. I began imagining it as my boyfriend and I, equals, side-by-side, standing on that red carpet, together.I know my boyfriend grew up having similar thoughts as well, and maybe that’s why we’re so perfect for each other.

We both want to get married, but are in no rush to do it with everything else we have going on. We both know that marriage won’t change our relationship, that our bond is unbreakable and will stay the same no matter what. We don’t need a piece of paper or rings to let the world know that we are tied to each other infinitely. I don’t say this out of rebellion for the patriarchy and societal standards, I say this out of pure contentment and bliss: my boyfriend and I are perfectly fine and happy, and when the right time comes, we will tie the knot. Until then, we’re going to continue working on ourselves and our career endeavors, enjoy some rosé and wine on Saturdays, spend our summer days at the beach, and go to bed together every night. We’re going to continue making our own rules and doing what makes us happy.