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Pre-Wedding Jitters Vs. Second Thoughts

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The ring has been chosen and placed on the bride-to-be’s left hand, a symbolic representation of the circle of love that will follow and is accompanied later by the glorious wedding band that tells us she is dedicated to her husband. Showers, parties, wedding plans and in law problems start to arise. Schedule conflicts, budget concerns, honeymoon dilemmas, housekeeping questions…. these seem small in comparison to the ultimate major conundrum, “do I know what I’m getting into”? Either bride OR groom may be asking themselves this very question and then wondering if it’s even OK to be wondering about the question

What Are Pre-Wedding Jitters?

For a working definition I define “jitters” as being the normal questions one has about the immediate and long-term changes in the indivual’s lifestyle that go along with the act of becoming a partnership or committed couple.

Normal questions may include:

  • Is this what I want for myself in my way of interacting with the world in ways that must include my spouse to be?
  • Is this person capable of meeting my needs and desires on a basic and reliable condition or duration?
  • Can I hold up my end of being available to my future mate’s desires and needs and be prepared to maintain the behaviors involving that with a consistency that will honor and satisfy the other person?

What Types Of Feelings Come With Pre-Wedding Jitters?

“Jitters” generally apply to feelings of anxiety or nervousness. If it’s more a sense of “dread” or “terror” you have exceeded the intensity of this merely being ‘pre-change commitments’. Find out what it is that specifically has you “over the top with your fears” and address it immediately. Seek help from experts and not family members or friends—they can’t be objective in this situation no matter how hard they may try or offer to be. If you do get their advice at least weigh it against another qualified and objective source!

What Are Examples Of Pre-Wedding Jitters?

Illustrated in previous question and often demonstrated by typical signs of anxiety…pre-occupation on the topic of concern, physiological changes such as increased heart rate, shallow breathing, and “feeling on edge”. You may find yourself having difficulty concentrating, becoming more clumsy, forgetful, and possibly even shorter temper as you are interrupted from your normal course of routine—which is often already changing due to the social events and obligations that go along with Today’s matrimonial demands. Anxiety without a clear focus and no specific behaviors you object to or traits that you worry about-this would indicate just a generalized fear in the whole idea of being married.

What Should You Do If You Have Pre-Wedding Jitters?

Practice relaxation techniques…deep breathing, meditation, yoga, or exercise. Talk to your partner and ask if he/she is having any of the same concerns. Seek reassurance from that person. If your jitters decrease as you “vent” about it, you will likely have less cause for the continued reaction. Allow for some nervousness as being a normal adaptation to change. TALK it out or use a piece of paper and write about it, just get it out! These are usually feelings that can be purged and decreased with openness and time.
What are some signs or signals that a bride/groom is having second thoughts about getting married?

Second thoughts – we’ll define here as actual true doubts that are bothersome enough to illicit the individual to actually question their fiancé’s traits, lifestyle, behaviors, and have a high level of concern about specific areas of the relationship. As compared with “jitters” where an individual is simply wondering if the idea of marriage is right for them and if this is a good choice they have made in selecting a mate.
With this as our working definition, I offer the following:

What Should The Bride/Groom Do If He/She Is Having Second Thoughts?

Second thoughts, in this perspective, need to have actual answers. Professional advice may be warranted. Marital or pre-marital therapy could help in an assessment of the state of the relationship and how it is meeting the needs of BOTH the bride and groom.
Asking one’s best friend is often harmful and benign at best…a friend that has known only one of the partners is going to have a subjective viewpoint and can’t be impartial. It may also damage future relationship between the friend and the other spouse-to-be in the future since this could create the opposite an otherwise positive support system for the couple.

Should The Bride/Groom Who Is Having Second Thoughts Share His/Her Feelings With Their Future Spouse?

Absolutely! If there are behaviors or attitudes that the fiancee in doubt is having, the only way to find out if this is “open to change” is to discuss it with the partner.
Ask for what you want if you truly plan on getting it, or even part of it. If you don’t ask, you expect mind reading and mere luck for it to work out! If changes are amenable on both sides, ask for a PLAN on how to change it and don’t accept “I’ll try to do better”… this can be passing off the request at best and ignoring it to disguise the fact that the partner really has no intention to change OR that they might not know HOW to change.

Measure the success of changes with a definite measuring stick…be certain you are clear what you need and know how and when you will be expecting to see change. If this part is missing, you may be waiting for efforts a long time or you could even miss the efforts that might be taking place on the other’s part.

For example, if it important to you that your fiancé change the amount of available time for you vs. how much time is spent in doing other activities—albeit work or time spent with buddies/girlfriends, or other events and dedications. Be clear that you have a need to have more quality time together and that this seems to be missing in the relationship. Define how much time you need, what your expectations are for change, and create a target for expected or wished for availability to you. You may have to compromise and agree to a smaller amount of time but look for at least SOME increased time with you…discuss this. Is it a trait or simply a situational circumstance?

Will you be seeing the change anyway due to a change in a particular outside force—or are you looking largely at a personality trait—perhaps avoidance or lack of commitment to the need you are expressing. If you discover that it seems more a trait than a short-term circumstance, ask yourself if this is something you are willing to live with if it doesn’t EVER change. If the answer is NO, you have good concern to seek help or consider that the person you are engaged to is not likely to be able to meet your desired wants or needs. THEN you have a decision to make…are you giving up a part of yourself to be with this person? A good resource for reading on this topic is “Do I have to Give Up Me to be Loved by You” by Drs. Jordan and Margaret Paul, 1989 in paperback.

The Problem With Pleasure

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The problem with pleasure is nothing…except the interpretation we bring to it.  Sometimes I think the only other topic with more confusion around it is that of money (i.e. the misreading of scripture that “money is the root of all evil”).  From a similar, puritanical place we are taught that pleasure is synonymous with selfishness.  That it degrades the spirit.  That giving pleasure is better than receiving it.  That we shouldn’t have too much fun because then something bad will happen.

Different Kinds Of Pleasure

There are aphorisms and superstitions around the topic of pleasure that do not serve anyone.  Truth told: pleasure should be the predominant experience of a person’s life with pain being the exception. Of course, here at AskDanandJennifer.com, the kind of pleasure that first comes to mind is sexual pleasure.  But pleasure is something that should be a part of most of our pursuits in life.  In your job, career, volunteer work, hobbies, friendships, family, shopping, religious or spiritual expression, there should always be a pay off for giving your time, attention, and talents to these pursuits.  And the pay offs should provide genuine pleasure.

For instance, some people choose careers in order to please their parents.  To make a different choice, even if it brought personal satisfaction and pleasure, would produce too much guilt.  There’s a negative pay off to pursuing the career or job that makes the parents happy and that is you get to feel loyal.  But that loyalty can lead to dissatisfaction, resentment, and deep unhappiness.  Whereas, suffering a little guilt and pursuing your dreams can produce satisfaction, joy, and tremendous happiness!

Over-Pleasing

Some people are the sounding boards for practically every single person in their lives.  They wind up giving and giving and giving until it hurts!  They give their time, attention, even their money, to make sure that the people in their lives know they are loved and valued.  The problem is these folks don’t get this kind of love and attention returned to them.  They are so easy to get along with and so pleasing, that everyone who uses them thinks they’re fine, that they have it all together, and that they don’t anything from anybody.

There is initial pleasure for the giver in such relationships because it does feel good to be so well appreciated.  However, the day comes when most conversations with your friends and colleagues make you feel like a used, dirty rag.  Real pleasure comes from relationships that have healthy give and take from both sides.  Everyone needs to receive regular attention and nurturing support. Some give of themselves sexually in such a way as to please their partner for fear that attending to their own pleasure will have bad results.  They fear coming across as too self-centered.  Truthfully, there is no greater pleasure than knowing your lover totally trusts you with his or her sexual pleasure.  It is a huge complement when your partner melts at your touch, or over the way your breath feels on the back of her neck, or through the direct eye contact he gives you that lets you know you’ve found the exact right spot.

Sexual Pleasure

If your romantic partner refuses to find pleasure in your sensuality and makes you feel wrong in any way for desiring sexual pleasure or sensual attention; it takes a lot of courage to confront the situation inside yourself, in the first place, and with him or her as well.  Our bodies, minds, and souls were built to receive pleasure.  If you deny yourself this natural, human expression, you’ll pay dearly with resentment, anger, even depression.  Allowing someone to determine that you are bad or wrong for desiring pleasure is the same thing as denying yourself.

Having trouble with pleasure is built in to a variety of cultures around the world.  However, there is a simple and effective way that will allow you to open up to receive more pleasure in your life.  It does take courage and some effort, but it’s worth it. All you have to do is commit to loving yourself more each day.  People who love themselves allow greater amounts of pleasure into their lives.  If they are alone, they take care of their own needs and desires.  If they are in a relationship, they learn how to effectively ask for what they want.  Because they appreciate themselves and their own pleasure so much, they have a whole lot of love and pleasuring to give as well.  A circle of energy is created in their lives with plenty of give and take in most of their relationships.

Pleasing Yourself

With a commitment to love yourself more each day, you find yourself doing and saying things to you that you would give to someone you highly value.  You say, “I love you!” to yourself.  You give yourself good strokes for things well done.  You dress in such a way that you enhance your good feelings towards yourself.  You are patient with yourself and yet you challenge you to be better, strive farther, and accomplish more because you value your potential! These kinds of things will give you pleasure.  As your self-worth and pleasure increase, you will attract those who desire to give you pleasure as well.  And then life will be fuller, richer, and sweeter – with the hard times handled with more grace and confidence.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T Is How Men Spell Love

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I got a phone call this week from a woman whose relationship was falling apart. It had been fading for a long time and likely didn’t have the potential to be re-birthed. She wanted a magic cure for it. I worked with her from her perspective of trying to save it and towards the end of an hour long conversation, we got to the nuts and bolts of what had likely gone wrong; which was also the thing that could bring the relationship back to life.

Losing All Respect

What had gone wrong was within a couple of years of their relationship, she stopped respecting her man. When you stop respecting someone, there is no neutral. No respect results in words and behavior that communicate disrespect. Disrespect from his woman will tear at a man’s love for her. If they don’t catch the problem and fix it, that disrespect will ruin the relationship.

As I coached her to share respect in verbal and physical ways, I faced a challenge I always face whenever I have this conversation with a disrespecting woman. I said to her, “Men are just fine as they are. They don’t need to be fixed or improved. The way they are, the way they handle themselves, is perfectly fine.”

She interrupted me at that point and said, “For them,” meaning men are only perfectly fine just the way they are in the company of other men but not in the company of women. There is the rub. There is the relationship disrespect that makes a man walk away. It is subtle and insidious. Nothing says “I love and adore you,” to a man quite like verbalizing and showing your respect of him. Remember or imagine what it is or would be like when your fellow says, “I love and adore you!” It nurtures you, feeds you, and improves the relationship. In the exact same way, that is how a man experiences the words, “I respect you.”

How To Express Your Respect

I have to be honest, though. It isn’t easy for a woman to express her respect for a man either verbally or through her actions. I don’t know why it isn’t easy. It does seem to be a universal challenge for women. I imagine the answer to why is multi-dimensional and multi-generational. But at the end of the day, “why” doesn’t matter.  This is a relationship problem that behavior modification can solve.  It takes discipline but is quite simple. Whenever you find yourself respecting or admiring him for anything, no matter how small or big a deal it is, tell him so. It may feel awkward and uncomfortable. You may choke on the words, but say it. You’re not the only person in the room and I can tell you from experience, he will not experience your discomfort. Rather, he will feel seen, heard, appreciated, and deeply loved. Those are results that make the discomfort worthwhile!

Show him you love him. When your best girlfriend shares an interest with you that you could care less about, you don’t dismiss her or tune her out. But we tend to roll our eyes and huff and puff when the men we love request our attention for something they’re interested in that we are not. Stop those eyes from rolling, focus on him and give him your full attention. He will feel respected and he’ll adore you for it. This isn’t about becoming “perfect respecters.”  Relationships can’t be perfect.  Life and relationships are messy on this planet.  The thing is there are ways to make life and relationships more fun and fulfilling.  Women respecting men and men loving women are key ingredients to the recipe of making life and relationships yummy!

Grief Can Affect Your Relationship In Surprising Ways

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Our beloved dog, Buddy, died this week.  As a rescue dog, we were never sure of his age, but believe he was at least fifteen.  He was a big black dog with white and black dotted “socks” on his feet.  Of all the breeds that contributed to his physique, the Labrador retriever in him was most evident.  He was beautiful and he seemed to think I had hung the moon.  He was a dear family member and, although it is a privilege to be able to help a pet exit this earthly plane, letting him go was painful.

How Grief Can Affect Your Relationship

This journey with Buddy brought home to me the affects of grief on a relationship.  Grief is a part of every loss, whether it is the loss of a precious heirloom, a job or career, a quality like faith, or a relationship.  Some women even feel grief when a fingernail breaks!  It doesn’t tend to be long lasting grief, but the loss brings an experience of grief, even if it is short lived.

There are a variety of ways grief can affect your relationship.  The most notable is how when we’re grieving our attention turns inward.  It can be difficult to tolerate other people complaining about the trials and tribulations of their lives.  If your significant other is used to depending on you to process the irritations of the day, you can find it bugs you in a way it never did before.  Impatience and arguments can then ensue.

How Grief Affects You

Impatience with the things in life that don’t work tends to become inflamed during grief.  Not being able to get the cap off a bottle can result in a broken bottle and feelings of rage.  Too many things going wrong, even if they’re insignificant, can result in head banging or a fist through a wall.  At this point the grief becomes complicated with the addition of shame for having lost such control over something so seemingly meaningless.

Another way grief affects you and your relationship is how it makes your body ache.  It is as if your muscles respond to your emotional state.  It can cause you to feel listless and lifeless.  Things that used to bring you joy simply don’t any more.  Your appreciation for those things will return; but in the meantime, your spouse may be frustrated as his or her attempts to lift your spirit with these things fall flat.

Grieving affects your appetite.  Some people crave nurture food when they grieve and others eat less.  If your relationship has problems with food, grief can shake it up.  If dieting is a big part of your relationship, turning to food can cause a great deal of stress.  If your partner is concerned that you are eating too little, he or she can come across as a nagging mother and cause consternation.

Grief Is An Expression Of Love

When grief accompanies a loss through death or separation; landmines (in the form of memories and habits) lie everywhere.  My dog Buddy was my shadow.  With his declining health, I was in the habit of sneaking out of my office when taking little breaks so as to not wake the sleeping giant.  Usually I failed at this and he would pull himself up off the floor, following me to the kitchen or laundry or wherever.  During this first week following his death, whenever I get up from my desk my stomach clinches as I anticipate trying to sneak out, hoping he’ll continue to sleep, only to find the floor beside my desk is empty.  When the loss is a family member and the landmine is, for instance, bath time with a child that no longer takes place, grief can be crippling to the parents and to their relationship.

The solution to the problem is time and patience.  Joy will return.  Happiness will come back.  Sleeping through the night will occur.  Laughter will fill the belly.  These things and more will creep back into your life (or your loved one’s life) unexpectedly.  You won’t be able to plan them on your calendar but they will return.  In the meantime, recognizing the toll grief takes while choosing to be patient begins the healing process.

If you or a loved one are in the throws of grief, hang in there.  Grief is an expression of love.  Remind yourselves that a day will come when choosing joy will be the best expression of love for that absent person or pet.  In the meantime, giving grief the space it needs is love enough.

Bump-A-Holic

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I’ve written earlier about the craze that seems to be infiltrating many communities and homes, creating less than ideal conditions for babies and parents: the bumpaholic. And I believe this type of pregnancy can be less than ideal for several reasons.

It’s for the wrong reasons. We’ve all heard about the more common situations under which a pregnancy isn’t a good idea, even if it’s planned. Things like getting pregnant to keep the man, to try and save the relationship, or to create a bigger purpose in your life. But here’s another ill-advised reason to procreate: an attempt to recapture those feel-good hormones  people experience during pregnancy along with the attention from friends and family.

Women in these situations should look at the reasons why they’re desiring this type of attention and endorphin rush. In my book, Make up, Don’t Breakup I talk about why relationships stagnate and then go south and investigate ways to keep this from happening. If you’re searching for attention and connection, examine that with your partner before you bring another person into your lives!

Reasons Not To Get Pregnant Right Now

It’s financially stressful. Sure, there’s never a PERFECT time to have a baby, but naturally certain times are better than others! With the financial strain many of us are facing now, it’s simply not wise to add and additional financial burden to the equation. Which brings me to my next point.

Doing so can create strain in a relationship. In many Bumpaholic situations, the women often strongly desires to get pregnant while the man may be more reticent. Pressuring a partner into having a baby can be one of the most dangerous forms of financial infidelity. Not only can it easily become a point of contention between partners, it can also present an unhealthy and volatile environment to bring a kid into.

It’s denying feelings at the core. I touched on this in my first point, but when it comes to feel-good hormones and attention paid to us, it’s only natural to want more! We have a biochemical craving for connection, as I mention in my book Financial Infidelity, that spurs us on to want to connect with the important people in our lives. When those needs aren’t met by our parents, we can try to overcompensate for that as we become parents ourselves, by looking to create a large family. Or it can be a reflection of the abandonment people feel from their significant other, or from life in general. As our society becomes busier and busier we pull away more and more from the relationships that should be an integral part of our lives. Creating a baby with someone not only allows us to feel close to that person, but gives us someone to lavish our affection, emotion and energy on.

These are all dangerous reasons for bringing kids into the world! Just as alcoholics must examine their relationship to alcohol and what drives them into the destructive habit, so too must a mom looking for fulfillment through pregnancy look at her reasons for doing so.