Hi Claddagh1 …

I’m a man who’s a little older now, but when I was young I had a very similar experience to yours. Sadly it didn’t work out well, for me and for the woman involved, because I withheld the truth from her. So I’m writing to you from significant personal experience.

You see, when I was in my 20s I watched the woman I loved marry someone else. Many years later her husband told me all about the affair he was having. I then had the unpleasant task of telling her that her husband was being unfaithful to her. It wasn’t long before I watched them go through the trauma of divorce. Before it was finalised I visited her knowing that she would soon become ‘available’, but I discovered that she had changed out of all recognition, and changed for the worse. She was no longer the woman I’d fallen in love with. What a mess!

Here’s my story:

I was in my 20s, five years out of college, and ‘A‘ was a student living in London. I met her at a friend’s house. Until then I didn’t believe in ‘love at first sight’, but an uncanny thing happened. I stepped through a doorway and saw her sitting on a settee, and at that very instant my heart did a backward somersault and I fell madly in love with her – on the spot! Later I discovered that we were a perfect match in almost every way, but that didn’t help us much.

The very next moment, after my highly unexpected reaction to seeing her, I was introduced to her fiancé. Talk about an emotional roller coaster ride! Can you imagine it! Shooting up to the stars one moment and diving down to the depths in the next. It’s sounds like something out of a poor quality B-movie, except it really happened.

Well, I was young, and from the wisdom of youth I decided to say nothing to either of them, so as not to spoil their life plans. Little did I know just how much I was spoiling by not being truthful with them.

I became very good friends with them, and especially with A. She and I would spend hours talking with each other. We were the same nationality, from the same part of the country, and from the same class structure. We had a close personality match and we were on the same wavelength. Everything in our genes, and in our backgrounds, told us subconsciously that we were a perfect match. But consciously we couldn’t see it – well she couldn’t.

We were even housemates for a while! But the wisdom of youth in infinite and so, like the eegit I was, I didn’t tell her how I felt about her.

A‘s fiancé, L, was from the Far East. His family were all successful professionals and they didn’t want him to marry A because they felt she was not up to the necessary professional standard. Her parents were also dubious about the wisdom of the match. But it was this very opposition to their relationship which drove them together. Like me, they also had the infinite wisdom of youth. I think they saw themselves as brave warriors standing against the unjust attitudes of the previous generation, and they would not be cowed into submission!

So, what do you think? Am I talking about the wisdom of youth, or the folly of youth? I know what I think!

The amazing thing is that the folly of youth knows no bounds! One day, a few months before their wedding date, they came to me and told me that they weren’t sure whether or not they really wanted to get married. Wow! What an opportunity for me to spill the beans (tell them how I was feeling) and sort the horrible mess out once and for all. But did I do it? NO!!! The insane wisdom of youth told me that I should only do that if they decided to separate on their own accord, without my intervention. [*sigh*]

Shakespeare wrote:

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. (Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3)

Did you get that? Back in the 16th Century, a large commercial sailing boat which was ready to leave harbour would wait until just after the high tide when the water would start rushing out to sea. By leaving port ‘at the flood’ it would get the maximum advantage and be swept out to sea where it was most likely to catch a good wind and so be well on its way towards its destination. However, if the ship didn’t set off at the right time it was likely to struggle to get away from the coast, and would be left in shallow water with it’s sails flapping, going nowhere fast!

For me the high tide came along when A and L told me about their misgivings regarding getting married. If I had ‘taken the flood’ and told them about my feelings for A, life for me – for us – would have been very different. But I failed the test. Instead I gave them some home-grown ‘wise advice’. Unfortunately they took it, thinking it solved their problem, and they got married.

Well, I stayed close friends with them and watched as their six children came into the world and started to grow up. In my relationship with them I felt like the proverbial spare wheel – the also-ran – but such were my feelings for A that I didn’t mind too much. I was uncle to A‘s children, when all along I could have been the father of her children. If A and L‘s relationship had been good I would be more philosophical about it now, but from what I understand it was always a major struggle and now they’ve parted company.

And what about my own romantic relationships since then? Shakespeare was right. In the intervening 3 to 4 decades my own record of romantic relationships has been abysmal. A hasn’t fared much better either. As I say, what a mess!

Should I have told her how I felt about her soon after I met her. YES!!! And if not then, should I have explained my feelings to her – to both of them – after they came to me with their pre-marriage dilemma? MOST CERTAINLY YES!!! A had the right to know how I felt about her. They both had the right to know. I was an eegit and an idiot not to tell them!

OK… so crying over spilt milk doesn’t help much, except to show you that keeping quiet may not be the best thing to do!

So this is how I see your question now. When a couple is contemplating marriage I believe they have the right to know everything that’s going on in their world which impinges on them and may have a bearing on their decisions. If their families, friends, work colleagues etc. see stuff and know stuff that they don’t see or know, they ought to be told. They certainly don’t deserve to have important secrets kept from them. That’s just not fair and right.

In marriage, as with life in general, the TRUTH is vitally important. TRUTH is more important than convenience. It’s more important to carefully and gently speak the TRUTH to someone contemplating marriage, than it is to hold back because of a fear of challenging the status quo.

What’s more important to you? That your female friend’s wedding plans should go ahead regardless, or that she should have the option – the chance – to make up her own mind, and decide about her own future, given all the relevant facts – all of them! Hey, what the hell… she may be in love with you too!

Look at it this way. You’ve known her for 10 years and you’ve had these feelings for her all that time. If you tell her now how you feel she will have three options:

1. Change everything, cancel the wedding, and elope with you!
2. Change nothing and go ahead and marry her fiancé on the planned day.
3. Postpone the wedding and tell him, and everyone else involved, that she simply needs more time to think things through … that she loves her fiancé (kind of) but needs more time to sort out her feelings and make sure that she knows – I repeat, that she knows,  for her own sake, that she’s doing the right thing. Is that too much to ask?

In your post above you said several things which speak volumes to me:

• You said that you and she “… are always there for each other.”  That speaks of relationship which needs to be taken seriously – very seriously indeed.
• You said that her “initial reaction to the [marriage] proposal was a no“. That sounds pretty significant to me. Why would you say ‘no’ to someone who asks you to marry them unless you have serious doubts about the wisdom of the match, and whether or not you really love them.

Most importantly of all:

• You said, “… minutes later she said yes [to the marriage proposal] due to family pressure.”   OMG! She’s marrying someone because other people want her to do so, not because she wants to do so!!!  Maybe she’s as much of an eegit as I was!

It seems to me that this is a woman who has one of the following two problems:

1. She’s an impetuous kind of girl who makes spur of the moment decisions about very important things, and flits between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ depending on how she’s feeling at the time … or …
2. She has a very good friend, who she’s known for a long time, who she really cares for, but he’s afraid of rejection and is a little lily-livered when the chips are down, and hasn’t got the guts to tell her how he feels about her!

Does that ring any bells? Sorry to be mean to you, but honestly… it’s not just your happiness that’s a stake here. There’s her happiness to think about, and the happiness of any future children she may have who are likely to grow up insecure if their parents have a poor marriage because they don’t really love each other.

Well, enough said. I hope I’ve given you some things to think about which you may not have considered until now. My advice is to be open and honest with her. Treat both her and yourself as adults, and not as children who can’t handle the truth. Trust her with the truth. Help her to understand all the options that open up when she knows the truth. Don’t keep her in the dark. Turn on the light so that she can see what’s really what. That’s the only way for both of you to become mature people in the long run.

Good luck to you – to both of you!

JJx