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In ‘Emotionally Engaged,’ Allison Moir-Smith helps brides-to-be interpret their conflicting feelings. Read an excerpt
In “Emotionally Engaged,” psychotherapist Allison Moir-Smith, founder of Emotionally Engaged Counseling for Brides, shares her three-stage process from her workshops and individual therapy sessions, offering insight, guidance, tips, and techniques for becoming an emotionally engaged bride — and wife. Here's an excerpt:
Chapter 1
The Happiest Time of My Life?
Yeah, Right.
It all started off happily enough.
In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was an “Insert Groom” bride-to-be. You know the type: the single woman who secretly fantasizes about her wedding in such detail that when she finally meets Mr. Right and he proposes, planning the wedding is a snap. From the moment Jason popped the question, my secret wedding fantasy was unleashed.
I could picture it well: in eleven months’ time, 120 guests would witness our marriage ceremony, held in a field on my parents’ property beside the Connecticut River in New Hampshire. My maid of honor and two flower girls would be wearing sunny, canary yellow dresses, with daisies tucked behind their ears. Jason would wear a bright yellow tie to match. We’d toast with champagne in my mother’s garden in its full summer glory and have dinner and dancing under a big white tent in the backyard.
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For two years, Jason and I sat side by side in graduate school. As we worked toward our master’s degrees in counseling psychology, our friendship deepened, slowly but surely. Over time, this handsome, smart man with a big, compassionate heart became one of my closest friends. During the final week of classes, our friendship bloomed into love. A year later we were engaged, and I had that perfect foundation for a relationship that had always seemed so elusive when I was going on blind dates: I was marrying my best friend.
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So you can imagine that when, a few weeks after Jason proposed, I started to feel sad, anxious, and irritable for days at a time, I was confused, to say the least. One minute I’d be giddily looking through books of invitations, the next I’d be lost in thought, reminiscing about some long-ago family vacation, nearly brought to tears by the memory. And at times, I became a complete bridezilla — a bitchy, self-absorbed, entitled, wedding-obsessed, perfectionistic, stressed-out nightmare of a person. (Which, I promise, is completely out of character.) There were days when, if a vendor didn’t return my phone call within twenty-four hours, I’d go ballistic. If I missed a date on my to-do list, I’d panic that the whole schedule was out of whack. If someone offered a simple suggestion about our wedding, I’d be offended.
As the weeks wore on, I began to feel a deep pit of sadness in my stomach about leaving my single life, which baffled me because I was happy (and relieved) to have finally found my mate. At other times I felt paralyzed by fear of the future, even though being married to Jason was exactly what I wanted. When I talked to certain family members and friends about the wedding, I felt overwrought with guilt, like I was abandoning them by going off and getting married.
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