• I just wonder how such conversations about announcing engagements go down
Is it wedding season already? I think it must be because I feel like so many people I know are going to be getting married soon.
One of them is my cousin, a bunch of them are friends I went to school with.
I am just in awe of all of this.
Weren’t we just little kids a few years back, playing with dolls we made from mud and climbing trees to pick guavas?
I know that time has passed considerably, but I just still think that we are so young. We are young adults. Are we really ready to get married?
Of course the more rational side of my brain knows far too well that we do not progress or grow at the same rate, and some of peers are actually ready to settle down.
We cannot all be in the same phase in our lives.
Some people are running the race slower than others, while some are not even interested in the same race others are running.
Metaphors aside, I really envy everyone who is ready to go down that marriage path.
It just takes some big guts that I do not think I have the capacity to have at the moment.
It’s not the lifetime-of-commitment part. I can do that, no problem.
My problem is actually the silly part of the whole business, telling my parents.
Bringing my partner home and telling parents, “Hey, guys. This is the guy I have been dating. He has asked me to marry him.”
My family has never given me the impression that they are accommodating of such things as introducing the person we are dating to them, so I feel like it will be a painful affair.
By my family, I mean my parents. Especially my father.
My father is very protective of his two daughters, and my mother likes to hover over her only son (though she profusely denies it).
With such odds against us, my siblings and I have always known that bringing home the boyfriend or girlfriend would be difficult.
I just always imagined that it would end in tears or in punches. My mother can really make somebody cry and my father is known for chasing away suitors.
On two occasions, my father has chased away boys who were bold enough to come to our house to say hi to me.
He gave himself and myself quite the reputation, which protected me from no-good boys.
Unfortunately, it made me rebel. I went and did what any teenage girl with an over-protective father might do in the same situation: I dated in secret.
Of course, my siblings knew and maybe my mother suspected, but I knew that the truth would come out eventually.
Anyway, I can’t imagine how that conversation will go down once I decide I’m ready to take a guy home because it’s time he met my folks.
But I have to get used to the fact that I am at that age when my friends will be sending me wedding invites and my mother might start asking me when I will be sending out my own wedding invites.
Fortunately I’m the middle child, so I hope our firstborn will spare me by being the first to have that conversation with my parents.