1 One (or both) of the individuals is too immature in his or her personality development and simply is not ready to settle down. Such a person finds that he or she resents the thought of becoming linked to one person exclusively, talks a lot about the loss of freedom and wants to continue to play the field.
2 Often, a person will say, T love her (or him) a lot and we’d make a good couple, but do I really want to be married to him or her for years and so lose my freedom?’ Such doubts are probably universal but fleeting. When they persist the couple are not keen enough on each other to want to make an exclusive commitment and should not get engaged.
3 Not uncommonly, because boys mature later and more slowly, the girl is ready, willing and able to go ahead with the serious commitment involved but the boy is not.
4 Unfortunately, some potentially very good relationships fail at this stage because they are unrealistically based from the start on romantic, instead of realistic, notions.
6 Often one or other of the couple feels that the relationship is nearly right but is not quite good enough in some ways. This is a real dilemma because no one is perfect, and this goes for the person doing the agonising. There are two useful questions to ask yourself. The first is, ‘Given that I’m not perfect, have my faults and am certainly not «ideal», have I the right to demand that someone else is all these things?’ The second is, ‘Given that I know of these faults and shortcomings in the relationship, am I sufficiently flexible to be able to adjust?’ In other words, ‘Can I love him or her, warts and all?’
7 Engyesis (‘marriage sickness’) is a medical term used to describe a cluster of symptoms (anxiety, depression and doubt) about one’s partner which occur during courtship and engagement. When it was first described in 1888 it was thought that it was the sexual tensions of this group of people that caused these very real psychological problems. The main symptoms are inability to sleep, loss of appetite, weight loss, headaches, a feeling of tension and a lack of concentration. Almost all such people are insecure about their proposed marriage. Some people become suddenly struck with one or more of these symptoms on making specific wedding arrangements. The ill one then often says, ‘You can see how ill I am, it wouldn’t be fair to go on with the marriage’, to which the well partner says, ‘I love you, I’ll stand by you.’ At this point the ill one becomes worse and goes to a doctor. The idea that sexual tensions are the cause of these problems is probably not true because in one survey at least half such couples were having intercourse. This same survey found that about half the patients had had a previous psychiatric ailment or illness for which they had sought medical advice.
The question is what to do in such cases. One survey found that the illness subsided more or less completely with the breaking of the engagement or on marriage but that about a third continued to have symptoms after marriage. Medical opinion differs as to what should be done. Some doctors say that any relationship that produces illness must be basically unsound in some way and so should be abandoned and others that given that two-thirds seem to do well after marriage, perhaps it is simply a way of reacting to the common stresses of courtship and engagement, which go once the couple settle down together.
8 Parental opposition is, and always has been, a factor in the breaking off of courtship and engagements. Very often in our experience, parents do know best and usually have their child’s future at the heart of their suggestions. Of course, by no means all such advice is lovingly given and some parents have all kinds of motives for wanting to put their children off marrying anyone, let alone any one particular person. It really is up to the individual to decide. Parents, it seems from research, approve of over 80 per cent of all engagements, so this is not a widespread problem.
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