Most of the time, when you receive the marriage proposal you’ve been waiting for, it’s a time of relief and celebration. It must be one of the most exciting times of her life. Unfortunately, all of this can be denied if you fear that you got the proposal because your partner has cheated on you and is trying to show his remorse and commitment by asking you to marry him. This is usually not the way you wanted it and you’re not sure how to proceed from here.
Someone might say, “I’ve been looking forward to marrying this man for quite some time. But he always had a reason why it wasn’t the right time. Last week, I found out he had been cheating on me with an old girlfriend. When I caught them, I immediately put her off.” He left and ran after me. He promised me he would never see or communicate with her again. I told him I wasn’t sure if this would be enough for me. I told him I wasn’t sure our relationship could work with this kind of damage. A couple of days later, he showed up at my house with an engagement ring. He said he was so sorry he messed things up the way he did. And all of this has made him realize that it’s me he loves and that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I would have loved to have heard this two weeks ago. But now he’s flawed. Now I feel like he’s only doing this because I caught him cheating. At the same time, I want to accept the proposal because I’ve wanted to. to marry him from the first moment I saw him. I don’t understand how it is possible for him to propose to me now and I told him that I couldn’t make a decision right away.”
I know this must be very confusing for you. And it sucks that you can’t get the thrill you deserve. And I think this should be a red flag that now is not the ideal time to proceed with an engagement or marriage. You probably already know this and this is why you don’t feel the rapport that a woman would normally feel right after she was proposed to. That’s why you were right to delay an answer.
Potential Reasons for Proposal: As for why he proposed to you, he’s probably sincere when he says that this made him realize that he loves you and doesn’t want to lose you. This is often the genuine response that people have. But sometimes it’s also a way (even if it’s not a conscious thought) to make the adventure “go away” and speed up the whole “moving on” part. He figures that if he gives you what you both know you want, you’ll be more forgiving of him and more willing to move on quickly. The problem is that if he does this, he overlooks the issues and is therefore vulnerable to this coming up again in the future.
Using potential marriage as motivation to heal first: Because you want your marriage to be long and healthy, perhaps you could use this event as motivation for him to do what needs to be done to heal.
You could try something like, “You know I’d love to marry you. But things have changed now because of infidelity. We can’t start a marriage before we’ve healed this. I’d like to see if we can do that, but I need your cooperation. I’d like a counselor to help us heal. If this works, then I wouldn’t be opposed to getting married. But I want to start our marriage with the confidence that we’ve moved past this and have worked through the issues leading up to this. Enough is enough It’s bad dealing with infidelity when you’re not married yet. I don’t want to deal with it as a married couple. So, are you going to counsel with me? Take it one step at a time. Let’s think about healing first and then if all goes well, We can think about marriage later once we get through this.”
I know that a part of you probably wishes you could put those doubts in your mind to rest, get married and move on. But I can tell you from experience that those voices can haunt you until you do the work of healing. Truly, for me, the healing was the only thing that gave me confidence in my marriage and in my husband again. I don’t think you can really have the confidence until you get the job done.
No one is saying that you have to take marriage off the table forever. But it makes sense to wait until the relationship has healed. Because getting married should be a wonderful and happy time. You don’t want to have to worry if he cheats again. Therefore, it makes sense to heal and then remove those doubts so that when you get married, there is nothing else to think about other than simply enjoying and fully experiencing that day with an open heart and a clear mind.