“He was an Air Force pilot and was going through a great deal of training. He proposed before he left for officer training. Since we weren’t married, I couldn’t go with him, and he wanted to wait to live together until marriage. We set the first wedding date for the Christmas weekend of that year before he asked to postpone it. We set the next date for the Thanksgiving weekend of the following year while he would be in pilot school for a year and a half. He asked to postpone that one too, not because of training, but because he ‘wasn’t ready to get married yet.’ We set the third wedding date for after his training ended. Three months before the wedding (my dress bought, my bridesmaids’ dresses bought, stuff booked, save the dates sent, etc.), he asks to push it back again.
He wanted to just keep us engaged, but he was going to be moving to the next base in a few months and would be deploying regularly. In order to stay together without being married and see him, I would have had to literally drop everything, call out of work, and drive six hours whenever he would happen to be stateside for a few days between missions. It would have been impossible. We had been together for five years at this point, and I figured if he still ‘wasn’t ready’ to marry me by then, he never would be so I gave him the ring back. I had hoped it would scare him and that he would not want to lose me but he didn’t care much.
When we broke up, I was visiting him halfway across the country and had two days left until my flight home. It sucked. He didn’t tell anyone what happened. He didn’t cancel the DJ or anything like that, he made me do everything. I have never had anyone want to buy my old dress so we’re stuck with that too.
Two years later, he (a 30-year-old man) was engaged to a 17-year-old he met through his church at his next base. Bullet dodged. All these years later I realized he never loved me. He loved the attention, love, and support I gave him. He needed a constant ego strike and I gave it to him. The man I wound up marrying is more of a real man.”
