A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about what it feels like to me as a mid-twenty-year-old male watching a high majority of my friends get married. This post is a guest post written by a good friend of mine, CeCe, not only in response to that post, but more so as a reflection to that post from a mid-twenty-year-old female's perspective. As she told me, "Everyone's feeling it, but nobody's talking about it."
So here's someone talking about it. Thanks, CeCe.
I am a twenty-something female, and my body is split in two. I’m at a point in life
where my heart wants to get married, but my head’s not there. After I was asked to
pick out some engagement ring options, my heart somersaulted and I scoured the
Internet for hours looking for a ring that embodied my spirit and personality.
Apparently my spirit and personality are pretty broad because every shiny and
sparkly thing caught my attention.
While my eyes and heart were copying and pasting links and pictures into a
document, my head was sprinting to catch up. My relationship isn’t new and I don’t
question my future with my significant other, but I still feel so young and so
unprepared. Yes, I’m technically an adult but I still feel like I’m an undergrad. I
mean, I still get nightmares about missing a final. It seemed like my social media
went from twenty-first birthday posts to engagements overnight. Nearly every day
on Facebook or Instagram someone is getting engaged. And I used to feel serious
pangs of jealousy at newly engaged couples that had been together for a shorter
amount of time than my boyfriend and I had. It didn’t seem fair. We were in love,
why couldn’t I be the one flashing my new ring?
It wasn’t until my best friend got engaged that I realized how juvenile I was being.
Sadly, leading up to her engagement I told myself I was allowed to be upset but then
I had to pretend to be happy for her. After receiving a text from her saying she was
engaged, I didn’t feel upset or jealous or any of the negative things I thought I would.
I was too happy, because she was happy. She was in a place in her life where it made
sense for her to be engaged. I wasn’t. Looking back, I feel horrible for being jealous
of something that hadn’t even happened yet. I measured the success of a
relationship with diamond rings and surprise proposals. If you take away the ring,
you still have a couple who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives
together, and that’s what I have now.
Being patient in this matter is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Watching
friends plan weddings and have showers fills my heart with longing but my
somewhat sensible head always catches up and reminds me that I am happy just
where I am and to enjoy being in love and being loved. There’s a peer pressure that
new adults face and it’s sticky and smothering and hard to escape. Surrendering to
this pressure left me feeling impatient when I could have been feeling joy. Until my
day comes, I will continue praying for a patient heart and an understanding mind
because nothing good comes from a disconnected nervous system.
-CeCe
CeCe's Note: If you take away the ring, are you still a couple who loves each other and wants to spend the rest of your lives together?
*More to come from CeCe in the future. Interested in writing? Get in touch*