Dear Licia:

SOS. Any advice would be much appreciated.

I am currently engaged to a man I’ve known for almost one year and we’re currently in our wedding planning stages. I realize I haven’t known him for very long, but I do know that he and I really are two peas in a pod. Most of our experiences, interests, and actions are very similar.

We have both been in really long relationships that failed because of our former significant others cheating on us. Naturally, he and I both have some insecurities that we both need to deal with.

Most of our insecurities have been buried deep inside, but there are times when they surface.

For him, it’s when he drinks heavily. For me, it’s when I see some type of questionable evidence—which means me snooping and finding questionable behavior like a poem to someone he met two months before me and spent one weekend with, saying that he loved them and even wrote a song about…and this might be petty…but the fact that his browser history showed him looking through photos of my good looking girl friends or good looking girls who are friends with my guy friends (that I barely know).

I can’t seem to be completely at ease after finding out this information, since I’ve only known him so long; but I know in my heart that he would never cheat on me—because I know he and I know better and would never be who our former significant others were.

I’ve brought it up to him, and he has reassured me everyday that the girl he spent one weekend with was someone he cared about because she taught him that it was okay to love again…and that looking at my friend’s Facebook pages was just to know more about who they were (since we both live in different states).

I’ve been duped so many times, that I don’t know what to believe. The other pea in the pod in me tells me that he was being a normal guy and checking out girls on Facebook—but seriously? Does it have to be my girl friends or my guy friend’s girl friends?

I don’t know if I could ever be comfortable with that.

Thanks!

Ailene

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Dear Ailene,

Thank you for your question.

I will put this bluntly—you and your fiance both have work to do before your marriage comes together.

This work, the work of relationship, and coming to terms with your own demons will be hard. It will create a scenario in which you will have to begin to look at your own “stuff”. It will be a mirror you may want to crack because you can’t stand the truth of it all.

It will expose and envelop.

You will doubt yourself, your fiance, and everything you see. You will hate it to its core because this work will make you cry, sob, yell, and second guess. From the flames of of destruction this work will begin to build you up. It will raise you to a higher vibration and allow understanding amongst the chaos. Clarity will commence and new seeds of passion will begin to take form.

Understanding at its highest level will be lifted out from the dregs of deception and will lie flat on the gurney waiting for examination.

This work has a name: Pre-Marital Therapy.

Marriage cannot happen without it.

If you think you don’t need it then you should not be getting married.

This therapy, prior to long lasting union, is vital to flush out the discoveries that a couple must look at as they commence on the marital path. It is a necessary recognition of emotion and truth telling that will unveil the deepest of secrets.

It is a steady cane to even the wobbliest of foundations.

Life is long and we are imperfect. Choices, decisions, upbringing, insecurities, proclivities—these are all factors in how we love. Who we are in relationship is how we are in life—only magnified a thousand percent.

I implore you not to take this lightly.

When we take responsibility for our emotions, decisions, and needs we can then care for other more wholly and completely. No matter if it is one year, 10 years, or 40 years—discovery of self and self in relationship will unveil new meaning and will wipe clean a slate that is tarnished with fear of failure in love.

So Ailene, my advice to you is this: find a well recommended Marriage Therapist in your area. If you and your fiance are living in different places currently—get to the same place ASAP and once together, begin the process. Start your work and begin to understand fully and completely how you both love—together.

Be afraid—fear is good in this instance.  It will propel you to that which will hold you in union for years to come.

Think of this as a time for discovery.

Look through the telescope lens and see the stars align.

Let the Marriage Therapist be your astral guide.

xoxo,

Licia

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Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: Andrew Turner