The wedding is off!

Woohoo! My sister is not getting married!

I know, you didn't even know she was engaged. Well, she's been unengaged for a couple of weeks now, and I only just found out. Which makes us kind of even, right? Right?

This is my youngest sister, the bipolar one, who was dating the guy who didn't believe in the field of psychology or in taking meds for anything psychological. He wound up proposing, she wound up accepting.

Which is when she started falling apart.

My sister is still very young and has lots of dreams about the things she wants to do in her life. She wants to travel, get an education (she just started college this semester,) get a career started, you know the thing. All the stuff young people dream about when they are first on their own and beginning to see the possibilities life has for them. And she's excited about all that, as she should be.

She loves this guy, but she realizes that getting married right now is going to mean giving up most of her dreams. Especially since he's about 5 years older than her, I think. Older enough that he's in a different stage of his life, one where he wants to settle down, start a family, establish roots.

I talked with her about a month before the break-up. She asked me if I'd had bridal jitters before I got married and if they included things like throwing up at the thought of getting married.

Um, no. I can honestly say I never once threw up at the thought of marrying the husband. Was I nervous? Yes. I was also excited, though, and my desire to be with him was much stronger than my fear over the risk involved in making that kind of commitment.

In my opinion, if a bride-to-be is that upset, she's not listening to the part of herself that's saying something is wrong.

I didn't tell her that in so many words. I tried hard to respect that she is an adult now, not my baby sister. Which meant I let her talk, asked a few questions that I thought might get her thinking about things she wasn't thinking about, and gave her a carefully phrased opinion that I thought she might be feeling rushed into this.

I think she made the right decision. He's a nice guy. Everyone in the family loves him, including (of course) my sister. But. As I pointed out in my previous post, I don't think love is a good enough reason to get married. There are many people we can love in our lives; not all of them are good matches for a lifelong companion.

She wants to follow her dreams so much that I really think if she were to get married right now she would wind up a bitter and frustrated woman. I don't want to see that happen to her.

Marrying young is not automatically a bad idea, but it is a bad idea for her. I'm glad she found the courage to take a chance on her future. I don't ever want her to have to look back and resent her husband and children over the dreams she gave up for them.