I Regret Saying Yes To My Boyfriend's Proposal

Q: My boyfriend of five years proposed to me on New Year's Eve in front of all of our friends, and I said yes. But now we’re past the first initial excitement, and people are starting to ask when we’re getting married. Frankly, I’m kind of dreading it all. Worse, I’m not sure I should have said yes.

I love my boyfriend, and we have a great life together, but I still really want to travel and maybe even teach English abroad for a year or two. We live in a big city right now, but he wants to move back to our hometown and have kids within a few years.

Last year, my best friend got married, and I think I got caught up in the fun parts of her wedding and bachelorette party. I started talking to my boyfriend about getting married, but when nothing happened after a few months, I dropped the subject. Now that he has actually proposed, I don’t know what I want. Is this just regular anxiety about growing up? If I tell him I’m not sure we should get married, are we over?

A: One of the most frustrating parts of life is that you can’t run A/B tests to see which decisions will make you happier. Or at least happy. All you can do is make choices to the best of your ability and trust that, should the results be unpleasant, you’ll be able to make a new choice.

If you move abroad, you might fall in love with a local goat herder and start life over again halfway across the world. Or you might hate your teaching job and never get the hang of living in a rural area, and also you get bed bugs and have to burn all your clothes.

When it comes to the future, there are no guarantees. All you know is how happy you are now — and, to some extent, how you felt in the past. (Although brains conveniently wallpaper over certain eras, I’ve found.) That is all the information you have.

Typically, newly engaged couples are ecstatic, or at the very least, satisfied. Meanwhile, you’re anxious, unfulfilled, and full of dread. I don’t think it’s likely that marrying this guy will improve your state of mind. It’s more likely to make you feel worse. (It’s interesting, by the way, that you call him your boyfriend. He’s your fiancé.)

I suspect you currently have a “great life” by someone else’s standards. Maybe you two have perfected a killer karaoke duet and host a wonderful annual Friendsgiving. But that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily the right person for you.

Sometimes, leaving a relationship when there isn’t something obviously, glaringly wrong is the hardest call to make. Because on paper, it should work. You’ve been together five years! He proposed! All the pieces are falling into place! But it doesn’t sound like that’s actually your dream.

The fact that you got caught up in your friend’s nuptials is telling. You were inspired by the idea of the wedding, not the person standing at the altar. The girls trip and the color scheme, not the prospect of spending 50 years with someone who sneezes too loudly and makes exquisite shakshuka. You want to have more thrilling adventures, and while I do think that marriage can be an adventure of its own, I don’t know that it’s the adventure for you. At least, not with this guy, and not right now.

Many, many people get married, then go off and travel or live abroad with their partners. They seek out all sorts of new experiences together that aren’t about moving back home or having kids. Marriage does not need to be a harbinger of impending boredom. But the wrong partner might be. Calling off the engagement will likely mean ending the relationship, too.

In no way do I mean to discourage you from traveling, but all of the human emotions that have ever been felt in Paris or Chiang Mai, have also been felt in Lansing, Michigan.

Remember, though, that life has an endless capacity to amaze and surprise you. Going to another country is not a shortcut to fulfillment or enlightenment, no matter how much it may seem so. Often, what you learn when you leave home is not that you become someone else in a new place, but that you are the same. The truth is: wherever you go, there you are. In no way do I mean to discourage you from traveling, but all of the human emotions that have ever been felt in Paris or Chiang Mai, have also been felt in Lansing, Michigan.

It’s very daunting to have to confront that loving someone isn’t always enough to make a marriage work. The excitement of a proposal or the endeavor of a wedding might give temporary relief to the feelings of boredom or dissatisfaction, but they won’t solve the problem of long-term incompatibility. I do think that if you make this relationship one of the big projects of your life, you could make it really, really good. But I also think you must recognize that likely comes at a cost.

If your life looked exactly the same five years from now, would you be upset to still be with him? Would you be sad you hadn’t traveled? It’s a good way to gut-check the changes you’d actually like to make. Once you figure that out, go chase after them. Be dogged in your attempts to create a life that lights you up. As far as we know, we don’t get another shot at it.

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