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“Doubt Means Don’t” Is Wrong. How To Use Your Cold Feet About Your Wedding As Data
Most brides – and grooms-to-be find me by Googling “cold feet about my wedding” or “cold feet engagement,” or “cold feet anxious engaged.”
And I’m so glad they find me.
Usually at 3am. Googling in bed, trying not to wake up their sleeping partners, who are so happy to be engaged to them and not understanding why they don’t feel exactly the same way.
Those are lonely and scary nights, feeling anxiety, dread, and worrying about themselves.
Wondering: “I’m not over-the-moon about being engaged. Does this mean I have to call the engagement off?”
They’re troubled by what I call the “phrase of the simpletons”: Doubt Means Don’t.
That phrase makes me angry. Because, in my decades of counseling brides and grooms, and in my own personal experience during my engagement, I know that “doubt means don’t” is simply, unequivocally NOT TRUE.
Sure, you can follow the simpleton’s advice of “doubt means don’t” and impulsively act upon that discomfort you feel in your belly, those worrying thoughts spinning around in your head.
You can end this relationship that you’ve probably enjoyed and been enriched by for months and years and miss out on a life with this person by following that bumper sticker slogan.
But I doubt you are a simpleton.
And I doubt you want to throw away your past — and your future — with this person because you’re feeling anxious, and confused about why you’re anxious, when this should be, as Instagram reminds you daily and Disney’s Cinderella taught you when you were little, the happiest time of your life.
The reality is: being engaged is emotionally complex.
You feel pressured to be happy and excited 24/7.
But inside of you, you feel a lot of upheaval and confusing feelings.
Which get lumped into one category of “cold feet.”
And that helps you not at all. In fact, it probably freaks you out even more.
How do I help brides – and grooms-to-be with cold feet?
I help them take that big lump of cold feet and separate the feelings and issues into more manageable, well, lumps.
Here’s how a typical free 15-minute consultation or first session with a bride or groom goes.
When we first meet each other on Zoom, the bride or groom is generally experiencing a mix of anxiety, dread and relief.
Anxiety, because, well, they’ve been going round-and-round in their heads for weeks or months and don’t know how to work themselves out of it, how to find resolution.
Dread, because meeting with me escalates things, in their minds, to a different level of seriousness.
And relief, because they have hope I can help them sort things out, get clarity, and feel happier.
(You can read lots of specific, personal stories about brides and grooms successfully working through their cold feet with me.)
The first action we take together to pull apart the lump of cold feet and separate out the issues and feelings that are about your fiancé/e from the issues and feelings that are about YOU.
Lump #1: Your fiancé/e.
Lump #2: You.
It’s always easy for the brides and grooms to rattle off their concerns and complaints about their partners. They know them by heart. They’re nothing new – they’ve had these worries from the very beginning of the relationship. Now engaged and committing to a lifetime, however, these concerns have taken on a new urgency, import, and magnitude.
So in a conversation with someone safe (or contact me for a free 15-minute Zoom consultation), or in a very safe journal, give voice to all those issues with him/her pinging around your brain. Put them on paper, under the heading “Him/Her.” Differences between you. Finances. Looks. Habits. Personality traits. Cleanliness. And their family. It all goes here.
Now you’ve done the easy part.
Because Lump #2: You, is where things get complicated.
Looking at yourself, owning who you are – and not just projecting your feelings onto your partner who, though he may be a little overweight, or has annoying gaming habits – is the hard part of this cold feet process.
But the real data about cold feet is within you.
Take the lump that is your feelings about being engaged and separate them out into these categories:
Category #1: How You Make Decisions.
Are you a definitive person? Or are you someone who struggles with most decisions in life, big and small? Most people who work with me have a really tough time getting to “Yes, I want this!” even when faced with a menu at a restaurant.
If you’re at all like that, why would you approach this decision – the most consequential decision of your life – any differently?
When faced with a job offer, do you agonize and hem-and-haw?
And when you commit to that job, do you have second thoughts and buyer’s remorse?
If this rings true, then much of your cold feet has to do with YOU BEING YOU. Decisions are never easy for you.
You didn’t get a lobotomy when you got engaged. You are being yourself. As uncomfortable as it is, this is who you are and what you do.
Stop being surprised that you are having anxious feelings about getting married. This major life decision is not an exception – despite what the fairy tales say. In fact, it would make sense that you are even more yourself under this level of stress.
Category #2: Changes In You.
Getting engaged changes you to the core as an individual. And few people talk about that!
You’re no longer single; there will never be a first kiss or sex with another person.
Your career is tied to someone else’s from now on. Whatever fantasies you have about giving your 2-week notice and moving to Paris is now complicated, forever, because you’re a “we.” (You have to convince him to move to Paris. You have to both get jobs. Etc., etc., etc., more adult things. This is just a new reality you’re facing.)
You are growing up, enormously, taking on the privilege and responsibility of life with another person.
All this happened as soon as you got engaged. How much of your feeling of cold feet are wrapped up in your own stuff?
Category #3: Changes In Your Family.
As much as you’d like the decision to get married to be just about the 2 of you, your family is making a huge impact on your happiness or stress.
Are they completely on board? Will planning the wedding with them be easy and fun? Lucky you! This is unheard of, frankly.
Because all families react to engagements. Moms, dads, siblings, in-laws. Some become controlling about the wedding plans. Others withdraw and get distant.
If you have experienced the death of a parent, or you grew up in a divorced family, you all will have feelings about your getting married.
If you’re overly close to one parent, or if you are estranged from a parent, these factors will also play into your feelings of cold feet.
How much of your feelings of cold feet center around your family history and current situation?
This is how I begin every relationship with a bride or groom with cold feet. I hope this is a helpful place for you to start on your own, right now – to examine what is him/her and what is you.
I’m always here for a free 15-minute Zoom consultation. Please reach out and we will meet within a day or 2.
I’ll leave you with this:
How are you going to make this life decision?
By following the simpleton’s bumper sticker phrase of “doubt means don’t”? Or by doing the work?
For more information, visit the Cold Feet page.
