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HELP! I
Have Cold Feet Before My Wedding!
Over 15 brides Google "cold feet" and link to my website
EACH DAY.
What are they searching for? Ways to
understand and deal with their cold feet,
I assume. I've written this article to give
them some assistance.
The saying "cold feet" is defined as "a loss or lack of courage
or confidence; an onset of uncertainty or fear."
It's commonly associated with being afraid of or having second thoughts about
getting married.
Cold feet are excruciatingly uncomfortable. Brides experience cold feet as an
amorphous mass of anxiety that keeps them awake at night, keeps their mind
racing, their heart rate up, gives them zits and colds and muscle aches, and
makes them miserable, jumpy, and unsure.
Cold feet can be helpful because, once examined, they are a gold mine of
information about your feelings about getting married. Your work is to
untangle that mass of anxiety and look at your specific fears.
There are 2 types of cold feet:
1. Individual Cold Feet: your own fears about getting married, in
general
2. Relationship Cold Feet: your fears about marrying your fiancé,
specifically
|
Allison Moir-Smith
Bridal Counselor and
Author of Emotionally Engaged
(Feb. 2006: Hudson St. Press)
Got cold feet?
Let me help you determine if they're
normal jitters or
red
flags.
Call for a FREE
consultation TODAY!
|
Think of your engagement as a journey. A journey from your known identity as
a single woman and daughter to an unknown identity as married woman and wife.
You're undergoing a major identity change, and it's natural and normal to have
fears right now.
Your cold feet are telling you that you need to focus more on this identity
change.
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How
Brides
Really
Feel
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You need to get clear about what your fears, anxieties, and concerns really
are. To articulate them. To understand them. To determine what is real and
what is imagined. To figure out if a fear can be worked through or not.
Your work is to untangle this amorphous mass of anxiety.
List your fears. (They could range from "My career's not set enough" to
"I'm
afraid of abandoning my family" to "I feel in my bones I'm just not ready"
to "Everyone in my family's divorced; I can't avoid that" to "I've lived alone
for so long; what's it going to be like?".) Write down your crazy ideas.
You may find that once you articulate your fears, you'll see that they're not
insurmountable, and that with time and attention you can work through your
fears. Your cold feet have brought you to the area you need to focus on in
order to be ready to get married.
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The opposite may also happen. By becoming
clear about your fears, you may have articulated what I call "dealbreakers."
Dealbreakers are feelings and thoughts that make it impossible to get
married. In this case, your cold feet are also helpful: they've brought you
face-to-face with a difficult reality.
Either way, your cold feet are a gold mine of information about your
feelings about getting married. Your work is to take time to articulate
what your cold feet are telling you: that's where the gold lies.
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Many brides and grooms contact me because -- all of a sudden -- they have
serious questions about the relationship. They're having doubts that never
came up in the 1, 2, even 5 years of dating!
As his girlfriend, you could humor and tolerate his infuriating quirks, his
emotional volatility, his emotional distance, his difficult family, his
unsteady career, his nice-but-dullness, his drinking or drug use, his
spending, his thriftiness, his chronic health problems.
As his fiancée, the reality of who he is sets in much more deeply.
Your cold feet are a message to you: "Do you want this life, for the rest of
your life?" Your cold feet are telling you need to take some time answering
that question.
I've recently worked with 2 brides who were struggling with cold feet. .
Both were feeling anxiety and angst about whether they should get married in 6
weeks. Both were in pain. Both put themselves under extreme pressure to
figure it out.
I had each bride tell me every fear, anxiety, concern, question, and crazy
idea that had been churning in her brain over the last few weeks. As she
talked, I encapsulated her thoughts and wrote them on a flip chart. After an
hour, we had a big, long, messy, disorganized list of how each bride was
really feeling.
The brides then made order of the messy lists. They put each phrase into one
of 2 categories:
-
Issues that are TEMPORARY or will be solved in a matter of months
(i.e. conflicts with fiancé about the wedding, conflicts with fiancé about
living together, short-term money problems that have a solution in sight,
personality or style differences that can be worked out over time,
recession-related unemployment but he's an ambitious guy, a dip in your sex
life)
-
Issues that are PERPETUAL or will take a great deal of effort and
willingness to address (i.e. work ethic, substance abuse, chronic health
problems, emotional distance, emotional volatility, sexual problems in your
relationship, you find him dull or wrong or hoping he'll change, you're not as
in love as you think you should be) [Note: all perpetual problems are not dealbreakers.]
When Bride #1 Looked At Her List...
She felt relieved. "I see that his health problems are really going to affect
my life, every single day," she said, "But when I look at the list, I mostly
see through it and that I really love him. I really want to be married to
him."
For this bride, taking a significant amount of time to untangle her cold feet
into specific fears helped her face and accept the reality of life with her
fiancé. She also got in touch with her deep love for him, too. These were
the missing pieces she needed to process before getting married.
When Bride #2 Looked At Her List...
She was angry. All she saw were negatives about her
fiancé, and she didn't want to see that. She had hoped that her cold
feet were just jitters. Instead, she came face-to-face with the
difficult reality that her cold feet were red flags.
She felt unsteady, ill-at-ease, unsure of what to do next --
call off the wedding? Or get married and hope for the best?
Run, Don't Walk, To The Bookstore
If you're feeling like Bride #2 and seeing red flags everywhere, pick up
Rachel Safier's There Goes The Bride: Making Up Your Mind, Calling It
Off, and Moving On (2003: Jossey-Bass). Author Safier knew she should
call off her wedding, but couldn't do it. Her fiancé called it off 2 weeks
before the wedding. Safier wrote this book -- interviewing 60 "Almost
Brides" like her -- about the experience, process, and aftermath of calling
off a wedding. It's an invaluable resource for any bride, offering
emotional support, intimate stories, as well as practical tips on how to get
deposits back and what to do with bridesmaids' dresses and the ring.
On Safier's website (www.theregoesthebride.com
), you'll find her no-nonsense list of 10 "non-negotiable" reasons why you
must call off your wedding. Her perspective is extreme, but helpful. For
example, "If you find yourself saying, 'I love him but....,' smack
yourself," Safier writes. "Those [four words] are not only a red flag, they
are a tent-sized red flag with fireworks popping around them."
If you're feeling like Bride #1 and needing to work through your fears more,
talking with family and friends about your feelings is essential right now.
But it may be difficult, because you're afraid that if you expose your doubts,
they'll turn against your fiancé or, if you do get married, they'll question
your feelings for him. Try to find support from people who can just listen --
and not judge or fix or force you to make a decision before your ready.
Choose carefully, and ask them for their ear.
If you can't find anyone, I'm here to help. I help brides sort through their
feelings of cold feet, and I help brides who've called off their weddings or
have had their weddings called off on them. If you're in Boston, we can meet
in person. If not, we can work over the phone.
Cold Feet Are Uncomfortable
But your cold feet are a gold mine of information which can help you deal
with, psychologically and emotionally, with the realities of getting married.
I wish you the best of luck, and remember that I'm here to support you
in any way I can. Call me TODAY for your FREE 15-minute consultation!
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The Private Lives of
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Calling Off Your Wedding
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