wrong

‘Keep enjoying the love bubble!,’ messaged one friend.

‘Enjoy this time post engagement, it’s so special to be in a little happy bubble,’ said another.

WhatsApps like this kept rolling in — and, while I deeply appreciated the abundance of love ebbing out of every message, each one gently tightened the subtle knot in my chest. I’d just got engaged; and while I was — and am! — thrilled to be getting married, I somehow felt like I was ‘doing the engagement’ all wrong.

I really couldn’t have been happier when my boyfriend went down on one knee a couple of weeks ago. We were on a staycation in England; the beach was empty and, despite the bad weather warning, miraculously rain-free. He picked the perfect moment and I’ve never experienced a bigger surge of joy than in those few seconds when I realized what he was doing.

We went to a pub, had some champagne and giddily FaceTimed our parents. I was walking on air; I kept looking at the ring on my finger and the words ‘married’, ‘wife’ and ‘wedding’ kept jolting through me, little paroxysms of happiness.

When we got back to our accommodations, though, I started feeling small, inexplicable twinges of anxiety. We were both exhausted and we had a celebratory dinner booked that night, so my fiancé had a nap while I ran a bath.

As I was running the water, the anxiety continued to build — and I couldn’t understand it. There was no part of me that didn’t want to be engaged to my partner; I love him more than anything and I can’t wait to be married. But the waves of uneasiness kept rolling over me; and, as I stared at the water flowing from the faucet into the bath, I suddenly felt incredibly young. It was a bizarre feeling — I was weirdly homesick for my parents’ house, low-key panicky, and overwhelmingly tired.

But I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. ‘Shouldn’t I be over the moon non-stop?’, I worried.

We had a wonderful evening that night and a lovely lunch with his parents the next day — but even though the anxiety had gone, the feeling of ‘doing it wrong’ continued. We had a five-hour drive back to London and I thought we should surely be talking about the engagement and the wedding all the way home. But we were exhausted from all the emotion, and we ended up listening to several episodes of Desert Island Discs. It was just what we needed — and I know that now — but at the time, I kept thinking: ‘Shouldn’t we be in full ‘engagement mode?’.

We got home that Sunday night and went straight to work on the Monday morning. I taught an 8 a.m. Pilates class and then did a 9-6 desk shift. We had dinner with my family that night, which was great — showing my ring to my mom was incredibly special — but I was hyper aware of the mountain of work I had to do the next day.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still doing it all ‘wrong’, and that we should be celebrating more. Messages from my friends were flooding in and I was grateful for them, but every time someone mentioned the word ‘bubble’, I’d think: ‘What bubble?’. I was still unbelievably happy, but I didn’t feel cocooned in some sort of post-engagement love nest. We were both just alternating between working and scrubbing grease stains off roasting pans.

I’m not sure where I got the idea that we had to mark our engagement with a week-long (at least) celebration. No one had said we should be spending the specific seven days following the proposal commemorating the happy event; I think I’d just seen so many friends spending the days immediately following their engagements luxuriating in their new realities and I latched on to the idea of the ‘post-engagement week’ as a set period of time that would never happen again. And I couldn’t stop worrying that, by spending the week glued to my laptop, this (totally imaginary) set period of time was slowly slipping out from under my feet.

On the Wednesday, my partner went out to celebrate with some friends while I was teaching a class at home. I was done by 8:00 p.m., and spent the rest of the evening sitting at home on my own. ‘This is not right,’ I thought. It wasn’t that I thought my partner should be at home with me — I’d encouraged him to go out with his friends — but I realized I should have organized something for myself, too.

When my fiancé got home, I tried to tell him how I was feeling — that I was worried we should be doing more to mark this one-of-a-kind week — but mixed in with all the feelings of ‘doing it wrong’ were feelings of guilt. I wasn’t sure I should even be telling him any of this. I emphasised how grateful I was to him for organizing such a perfect proposal; I knew he’d put many hours into arranging the weekend and I wouldn’t have wanted anything to have been any different. I tried to make clear that I was worried I personally was letting the post-engagement haze slip through my fingers; that it wasn’t anything he was doing wrong.

I still feel a general version of this guilt now, while I’m typing this. I went to wedding after wedding when I was single and hoped beyond hope that I’d have my own wedding one day; but at the time, that possibility seemed impossibly distant. If I’d read an article like this back then, I’d have felt resentful and frustrated at having to scroll through a negative stream of consciousness from someone who didn’t know how lucky she was.

But, in a way, it was precisely because I had wanted this for so long that I was determined to make the most of it.

My partner heard me out. He (correctly) said he thought I was focusing too much on doing the engagement in one specific way, when actually it’s different for everyone — but he was more than happy to build in more celebratory time.

The next night, we lit candles at home and started writing out an initial guest list in our new ‘wedding’ notebook. Already, this felt different from an average evening at home, which was all I’d really been craving anyway. I just wanted things to feel different from the norm. The night after, we went for dinner at our favorite restaurant and splurged on champagne; and we spent the rest of the weekend celebrating with friends.

Now, it’s obvious where those wobbly feelings on the night of our engagement came from. It was the first day of my period — when I’m usually curled up at home with a heating pad feeling like the world is ending — combined with waves of adrenaline from the proposal and the alcohol we’d had earlier. I don’t do well with any one of those things at the best of times, let alone when they’re all mixed in together. It wasn’t surprising that I felt wobbly. Now, I feel silly for having stressed so much.

Ultimately, I was thrilled to be engaged and that was all that mattered; we can celebrate any time we want. We didn’t need to spend the week immediately after the proposal soaked in champagne, beaming and holding hands non-stop and talking about nothing but wedding color schemes.

But equally, I’m glad I took stock, was honest with my partner and made a point of really, truly living in the moment. We may have had to construct the scaffolding for the ‘engagement bubble’ ourselves, building it around a busy work week — but I’m grateful that we did.

After all, that post-engagement week does only happen once.

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