Why Being Engaged Feels Like This

Why Being Engaged Feels Like This

Being engaged is supposed to feel like the best thing that's ever happened to you. You just decided to spend your life with someone you love. You're excited. You want to share it with people. And then you tell your family and the first thing they say is 'so when's the wedding?' or 'are you thinking spring or summer?' or my personal favourite, 'you're not pregnant, are you?'

And suddenly this moment that was supposed to be about you and your partner becomes about everyone else's timeline, everyone else's expectations, everyone else's idea of what your life should look like now.

I've been working with engaged couples for 15 years and I can tell you this happens to nearly everyone. Engagement triggers a massive identity shift and most people around you have absolutely no idea how to hold space for that without projecting their own stuff all over it.

You go from being single to being engaged. That's already a shift. Then you're expected to become bride and groom, then Mr. and Mrs., and at every stage people are telling you what that's supposed to look like. You're being taken out of your box and forced into a new box that isn't necessarily yours. And when you don't fit into that box the way people expect, they get uncomfortable. They start asking questions. They start giving advice you didn't ask for. They start living through you.

This can make you feel unsafe. It can make you defensive. You came to share something beautiful and instead of being validated in your truth, in your expression of 'hey, we just got engaged and we're really happy about it,' you're being asked to perform a version of engagement that fits someone else's narrative.

I've had couples screaming at each other across my boardroom table because the stress of managing everyone else's expectations on top of actually planning a wedding broke something open. You put family together, add high stress, add money, and suddenly everyone's reacting instead of responding. They're not coming from the present moment. They're coming from a previous memory stored in the body that hasn't been processed properly and is now being aggravated.

The first thing you need to do when this happens is stop. Take a breath. Ground yourself. Where are we now? Why are we here? How do we actually feel about this?

Because when someone asks you 'when's the wedding?' the moment you announce your engagement, they're not hearing you, they're not validating what you just shared. They're running with their own projections and ideas of what being engaged means. And your nervous system knows this. You came to share joy and instead you're being asked to defend your choices or explain your timeline or reassure someone about something you haven't even thought about yet.

We've lost the ability to just hear things. People hear that you're engaged and they immediately feel the need to swoop in and save or fix or add their opinion. But you're not asking for advice. You're sharing how you feel because you want to share how you feel. That's it. That's the only thing that needs to happen in that moment.

Part of why this is so hard is because we have these unconscious conditions about what engagement means that have been put in by society and movies and books and family stories. You're supposed to want the big white dress. You're supposed to start planning immediately. You're supposed to be thinking about babies. These aren't things most people have consciously chosen for themselves. They're just absorbed. And then when you don't perform those things, people get weird about it.

But this is your life. Your path. Your emotions. And looking after your emotions during this phase is one of the most important things you can do. Because if you don't, if you spend this entire engagement stuck in your head trying to manage everyone else's expectations, the whole thing will pass by in a flash and you won't remember how you felt. You won't remember the actual experience of becoming partners in a deeper way.

Your wedding day will come and go so fast. What you're left with are memories. And you can choose to create embodied experiences, moments you can feel in your body, moments of actual connection. Or you can spend the whole process performing for other people and miss it entirely.

The engagement phase is a transition. It's a moment of transformation. And transformation requires space. It requires softness. It requires being allowed to figure out what this new identity means for you without being forced into boxes that don't fit.

So if this is resonating, if engagement feels more overwhelming than joyful right now, if you're managing everyone else's emotions instead of your own, I want you to know that's normal. That's the reality of what this phase brings up. And it doesn't mean anything is wrong with you or your relationship.

If you want some actual space to process this, I'm holding a free 90-minute online session on February 3rd called Enjoying the Engagement. It's for couples who want to feel calmer and more connected during this phase. We'll do some grounding work, talk about why engagement feels so emotionally charged, and practice some simple tools you can use when the stress shows up. Not a webinar. An actual experience.

You can register here: www.tohaveandtohelp.com/enjoy

It's your engagement. Your life. Your path. And you're allowed to do it in a way that feels true to you, even if that makes other people uncomfortable.