We’ll admit it. We like to think of ourselves as “experts,” or, at the very least, guys who can fake it pretty well. But when it comes to some subjects, we still know next to nothing.
Like, say, women. Or, more specifically–bridal psychology.
So, from time to time, our friends at OneWed–who have the distinct advantage of being female–will help us pull back the curtain, so to speak.
Since a lot of guys recently got engaged, we’ll start with some basic psychology–understanding signs of stress. Below is from Marta Segal Block of OneWed.com:
Guide to the Bride’s Mind: Signs of Stress
OK, you’ve proposed. You’re officially engaged to the woman of your dreams. You’re happy, she’s happy, everything is perfect. Then, about a month or two into the engagement, you start to notice some strange things. All of a sudden, the fact that you leave dirty dishes in the sink turns into a full-blown argument. Your sex life is slowly but surely starting to dry up, she’s biting her nails and did she really just eat a pint of ice cream in one sitting?
Guess what, your fiancée is starting to stress out. Planning a wedding is stressful for women, and in the coming weeks, I, your helpful guide to the bride’s mind, will walk you through why that is. But for now, you need to realize that just being engaged is also stressful for her.
Why? Probably for the same reasons it’s stressful for you. She’s just agreed to spend her entire life married to you. That means your formerly endearing habit of leaving water glasses all over the house is now something she has to deal with FOR LIFE! That means her fantasy of meeting a stranger on a train in Europe, it’s not going to happen. What’s more, she now has to think of herself as a “wife,” a very loaded term with lots of implications, and being a wife is just one step away from thinking of yourself as someone’s mom, an even more loaded term!
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On top of all the life-altering changes she’s encountering, she also has to plan the biggest, most important party of her life. A party that she’s been told defines who she is as a person.
If you’re engaged, you hopefully know your fiancée well enough to know the signs that she’s stressed out (if you don’t then let’s make this a long engagement, ok?). Pay attention, ask questions, talk to her, buy her a gift certificate for a massage. If you deal successfully with her engagement stress now, it’ll make the wedding planning stress much easier to handle.
Marta Segal Block writes the Ask the Wedding Maven advice column for OneWed.com, home to both the Savvy Scoop a daily blog of helpful and non-cringe-inducing wedding information and weddingpreparty.com, the single coolest way to plan your wedding online.
