The engagement

My husband and I dated 2 years and 4 months total before we got engaged. The in-laws made it such a long 2 years. But my husband couldn’t see what they were doing. He really believed that they would pull out of it. He kept saying “After we get engaged, they’ll get better” and then “Well, once we’re married…”


Both of us were scared to tell them we were engaged. The night he called to tell them, we were so nervous we were almost sick. What hateful thing would they say? After he talked to her for awhile, she asked to talk to me. There was no “congratulations” or anything remotely close. It was just a question of how she would be involved in the wedding. Would we have a unity candle where she could light the side candle? Weren’t we going to involve the mothers in some way?


Thankfully, with the in-laws living 4 hours away, they didn’t have much of a say in the planning. We weren’t even sure that they would agree to come to the wedding. But my husband and I were both in agreement that we would not introduce our parents until we absolutely had to, which was the wedding. No regrets there, at all. After all of the things they have said and done to me, my parents don’t have a very high opinion of these people.


But throughout our engagement, every time my husband spoke to his mother, she always managed to get in her jab. “Well, you know you can always back out. People get cold feet all the time. It’s OK to just postpone it. Well maybe you need to make for sure this is what you want.” You name it, she said it. She tried everything she could to get him to break up with me. She always had before and she never stopped.