True confession: I was a runaway groom
Brides getting cold feet happen so often that Lifetime movies have been made about them; but not much has been said about the men who cower in the face of commitment. Below, 45-year-old Bryan shares his story.
I was in love with a woman who I thought was the love of my life. When we met I knew right then and there that she was to be my wife. She was different from all the other women I had been with; she was special and everyone around us could see this as they saw the happiness we had brought to each other’s life.
A year or so after being with her, I asked her to marry me and she said yes. We agreed to get married a year after the engagement. We had one year to plan and execute our marriage. I was really excited about standing at the altar and seeing her walk down the aisle. I was looking forward giving her my last name and calling her my wife.
As we started to plan for our wedding I started to question myself. Did I really want to take this next step? Was she the one for me? What if there was someone better out there for me? She was a wonderful woman and I loved her but this was a major step.
Our wedding day drew closer and closer and with only four months before our big day, I had to sit her down and tell her how I felt. It’s not that I didn’t want to marry her, I just wanted more time before I said ‘I do’.
She was disappointed and hurt by my choice. Our relationship was never the same and six months later I cheated on her. I just had to see what else was out there.
I told her what I did and she forgave me. She was willing to work on our relationship but I wasn’t. We were still engaged and she still had intentions of marrying me. I still loved her but didn’t know how to tell her that I was no longer ‘in love’ with her. If I was to marry her I would be marrying her only because she was a good woman and finding a woman like her was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Whenever it came time to talk about our wedding I would tell her I wasn’t ready, and before I knew it we were engaged for two years and I was living a double life. I had another woman who was pregnant with my first child and I made the decision to stay with her and end things with my then fiancée.
I still love her and often wonder what my life would have been like if I had married her. Cold feet got the best of me, it got into my head, and it led me down a path that I couldn’t return from.
