The Mixed Feelings of Engagement

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll probably know I’m generally pretty honest. In fact potentially too honest 😂 the thing about me is that I cannot lie. Nor can I tell half truths. It makes me feel all hot and flustered and I just hate it. I’ve always struggled in games that involve this aspect. When we played Among Us for Nolys birthday in September, my heart was literally going crazy and my hands all shaky! (Not even exaggerating. Can’t do that because, y’know, lying. Ask Nolz if you don’t believe me, he witnessed it firsthand! (Predictably I always ended up being one of the characters who had to go after the others, kill em off and then lie about it. Nightmare.)). The same would happen for mafia and cheat when I was younger, though I would feel a slight thrill when I’d successfully managed to do a cheat, but the point still stands that the thought of being anything less than totally honest results in heart palpitations and somewhat sweaty palms. Therefore it seems right to me that I’m truthful and real in my blog, the things that are great and the things that are hard and everything else in between.

With that in mind, I wanted to write about the mixed emotions of getting engaged which I think is generally not really spoken about.

This is not to say that I’m unsure in any way of mine and Noly’s relationship. Getting engaged and married is what I, and we, have wanted for so long. I am totally sure on Noly and we both believe that God is in our relationship. If I was insecure in this I think I probably wouldn’t be writing a blog and posting it on the internet 😂

Therefore it was quite a surprise when after Nolz (finally) popped the question that evening both us felt rather sick! In fact, neither of us finished our food which is a big sign if ever there was one. Very occasionally one of us might not finish but the two of us at the same time? Unheard of. Both big fans of food 😂 (it’s quite funny actually, I have rather a healthy appetite and women here generally (in my eyes) don’t eat all that much, so in group events I often find myself with all the men going for seconds 😂).

I think this came about for several reasons. First of all, getting engaged fundamentally changes the direction of your life, even when that’s what you’ve been working towards for so long, actually being engaged makes it all a bit more real. For us, it brings rather a lot of things to a head- where are we gonna live, what are we gonna do, what’s the plan etc.

The second thing was that on the night we got engaged (12.12.20 if you’re interested), we couldn’t tell anyone! We wanted to tell Noly’s parents, brother and sister-in-law together, and Javier and Cristian were away for the night. And my family were all asleep. So it felt like we had this HUGE big secret that we couldn’t yet share with anyone! Thankfully, the following day we found the time to do some calls home and then that evening we could finally start telling Noly’s family. The more people we told the more this feeling started to go away thankfully!

Anyways, that night after we got engaged, I could not sleep a wink. Waaaayy too many things buzzing around in my mind about wedding logistics, future, the fact that we’d GOT ENGAGED. I googled “how to calm your mind when you’ve just got engaged” and came across a whole load of articles about people feeling anxious after getting engaged. I feel like this response makes SO much sense, for the reasons mentioned above. It’s such a big thing to happen and even if you’ve been waiting and hoping for it to happen for ages, actually getting engaged is suddenly not just a nice theoretical idea of spending forever with someone but actually a reality!

So yeah, I thought I’d write a lil blog post on these reflections. I feel like perhaps people feel that they need to just show the happy, flowery, magical side of things and maybe feel like they can’t share the things that aren’t quite so perfect, but that’s not real life so here we are!