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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Dear Mr. Blue,
My boyfriend of almost five years recently proposed, I accepted and we announced our engagement to his family and mine. I've announced our engagement to all of my friends, and we shared the announcement with some mutual friends. My fiancé has been a confirmed bachelor until now (he's 40 and has never been married, engaged or in a live-in relationship), and seems very reluctant to tell his fellow bachelor friends that he proposed. Some of these friends of his are in long-term, committed relationships, but they have all sworn off marriage. Fine by me. But it's been almost a month, and he has yet to give them our happy news. When I asked why, he said that he wanted to tell them in person. So now he's seen them all in person. I asked why, again, and he said he wanted for us to tell them together. So now we've seen them together. And they didn't even notice the ring!
I'm afraid that deep down he doesn't want to tell the members of the bachelor brotherhood, the people who know him best, because he really doesn't want to be engaged or to get married. Plus, when people ask us about a wedding date, I say next summer, he says the summer after that. We haven't set a date, and he avoids all conversations about specific plans. I'm very hurt, but I don't want to push. How patient do I have to be, and when is enough, enough?
In Limbo
Dear In,
The purpose of engagement is to wave off the competition and give the couple a quiet pond of loyalty and commitment in which they can get to know each other. In olden times, engagements tended to be very short, and in modern times, when couples leap into bed on the third date, the idea of engagement is slightly quaint, but nonetheless it is there. It lets you see each other up close, socially tied to each other, and see each other's families. Many engagements are broken (though not nearly enough), and that is always a live option right up to the playing of the Mendelssohn and the grand procession. Your boyfriend's reluctance to tell his bachelor brotherhood is not so big an issue as the inability of the two of you to agree on a mutually acceptable wedding date. This is a pretty basic and straightforward question, and if he's avoiding the decision, and any conversation leading up to it, it doesn't bode well at all. Give back the ring and tell him to take a few months and think about what he wants to do. And you think about it, too. Don't be a prisoner to convention. Don't hurtle forward toward marriage to a man who makes you feel bad.
Dear Mr. Blue,
I am graduating from a fancy-pants law school next year, having gone to a fancy-pants college, and excelled in both places. My parents paid for everything and I'm really grateful to them for doing that. However, I have discovered I don't really want to be a lawyer. I am at a big law firm this summer, and I don't like the work and I don't think I do it very well. Lawyering is not the intellectual struggle for justice I thought it would be; basically it is a grind. I've never had a real job before -- I'm only 24 and have been in school since I was 3. Am I just being spoiled and lazy? Ungrateful? Part of me thinks I should appreciate how lucky I have been and just sit down and write those motions and briefs, and part of me wants to finish the novel I started in college, teach handicapped kids how to swim, maybe run a dog-walking service, anything but sitting in front of my computer writing boring motions for big corporations. I don't know how, or where, to start, though, and I am getting married next June to the most amazing man I have ever met, so I can't so easily take off for Peru.
Too Young
Dear Too,
Give lawyering a chance for a couple years. You've worked hard to prepare yourself and it would be a cheat to simply walk away from it on a whim. Take it as an experience. Lawyers are the closest thing we have to a conscience in this country; without them, big government and big corporations would run roughshod over us. Unlike journalists, lawyers are held to a code of ethics and when they violate it, they can lose their butts. Of course there's drudgery -- there was drudgery in your education and there's more in your career -- but it does have a noble end. Give it two years and then, if you're not cut out for it, you can write a bestselling novel about a dog walker and use the windfall profits to build a swimming pool for handicapped kids.
