When All Your Friends Are Engaged… And You’re Not

In April 2016, my first college roommate got engaged. The day after her boyfriend proposed, she woke up super cheerful and peppy, as I’m sure you can imagine. :)

When I returned to our apartment after my 8 am class that morning, she hugged me and squealed, “I’m engaged! I’m ENGAGED! He and I are getting married!!”

I loved watching my friend be on cloud nine throughout her engagement and especially as she and her husband said “I do” a few months later. Seeing them happily in love made my heart happy.

As the months passed, more and more of my friends have become engaged and gotten married. Over Christmas break 2017, it seemed like every time I found myself popping over to Facebook, I would see engagement announcements from another one of my friends.

Each time, I would excitedly click the “Love” button and comment a “Yay congrats!!” …while feeling slightly weird that I’m now old enough to be in the “all the friends getting married” phase of life.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who experienced the abundance of friends getting engaged over the break. I had the following conversation multiple times with classmates when the semester started:

“How was your Christmas break, Kara?”

“Great! One of my friends got married and I was in her wedding, so that was really exciting and fun!”

“So cool! Yeah, so many of my friends got engaged or married over the break. It’s kinda weird, honestly!”

“Yeah! It is for me too!”

And then we would kinda laugh about it.

An Emotional Rollercoaster

When my friends started getting engaged and I realized I was entering a new stage in life, my emotions took me on a crazy rollercoaster ride. Typically I went through five phases after my friends got engaged…

• Phase 1: Excitement. “So and so are engaged?!? YAYAYAYAY!!!”
• Phase 2: Self-pity. “Man, with all these happy engagement posts, it makes me focus on the fact that I’ve never had a boyfriend. I feel kinda left out.”
• Phase 3: Self-condemnation. “Wow, I’m an awful person! So and so are engaged, and I’m feeling sad! What even?”
• Phase 4: Doubt. “Maybe I’ll never get married. What if God wants me single forever?!? Can I trust Him?”
• Phase 5: Acceptance. “God is good and He is WAY wiser than I’ll ever be. I can trust His plan for my life.”

Sometimes I felt guilty for the “self-pity phase.” I knew I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself just because I was single. There are worse things. But as the self-pity and self-condemnation warred amongst each other, it was difficult for me to be joyful as a single.

Caleb and I started dating shortly after my first college roommate got married. However, having a boyfriend didn’t stop me from the twinge of jealousy whenever one of my friends got engaged.

There was a deeper issue at root in my heart.

I think I was subconsciously living with a form of a scarcity mindset.

Back when I was single and my friends started dating, it was hard for me not to compare myself to them. I thought for some bizarre reason that because they were dating it would now take longer for me to start dating.

I know that doesn’t make much sense… but can you relate at all?

Then, when friends started getting engaged and married the same scarcity mindset crept back in. It was as if my friends getting engaged meant there were fewer engagements to go around.

Ha!

Well, thankfully all of that isn’t true. However, it took me years to figure out this was what I was thinking deep down.

About a year ago, I asked my best friend if she ever felt jealous when her friends got engaged.

She said no. That she felt genuinely happy for them.

I began to actually ponder why I felt this way each time my friends got engaged.

I think it comes down to that scarcity mindset AND that I was comparing Caleb and my relationship with my friends’ relationships.

Wondering why they could get engaged after just dating a few months when Caleb and I had been dating for two years.

This is what I had to do:

1. Learn to stop comparing myself to others.
2. Become content with my season of life.
3. Trust that God knows my future and will be with me every step of the way.

It was a gradual process, but now I don’t care when my friends get engaged.

Okay, that sounds bad. LOL, I care, but I don’t take it personally. That’s what I mean. :)

In fact, just last night, I saw on Instagram that one of my friends from college got engaged. I clicked like and commented “Yay! Congratulations!” as always. However, that twinge of jealousy never came. I was genuinely happy for my friend without comparing her to me.

On this blog, I have commented many times that no two love stories are exactly alike, but I think I FINALLY actually believe that.

Caleb and my relationship looks way different than all of my friends’ relationships, and to be totally honest, I’m really glad. I wouldn’t want to get engaged after just dating a few months or even a year. I rather like dating. Does that mean I hope we don’t ever get married? Of course not!

I just know that I’m happy with him in my life and I’ll be fine regardless of if we get engaged in two months or two years. (Although at this point, I definitely would prefer we get engaged sooner than later 😉)

Just because one person gets engaged doesn’t mean I never will. Just like someone starting to date didn’t mean I never would.

And the same is true for you ❤️

Back before Caleb and I started dating I wrote a post called 3 Things to do When All Your Friends are Dating… And You’re Not. If that’s your season, check it out :)

Also, can you relate to any of this at all? If so, please let me know :)

Posted by Kara Beth & filed under Dating, Singleness. This post has 4 comments.