Make him aware of wedding dreams

Dear Carolyn: All my life, I’ve thought about what my wedding would be like. Little by little, life has destroyed this image. I thought that if/when I finally got married, I would still have an actual wedding.

I’m 36 now, and my boyfriend of three years and I want to spend the rest of our lives together. The only problem: He hates weddings.

The other night, when we were talking, I threw out the odd hypothetical of our eloping but bringing my brother (and his wife) and my best friend along with us as these are the primary people I would want to witness my wedding. He, not surprisingly because he’s awesome, had no objections to this idea.

My issue is this: I’ve given up too much of myself in prior relationships. My current boyfriend has never asked me to change anything about myself, so why can’t I get past the mental block that if I elope, I’m giving up one more thing that I thought I could eventually have? – Wedding Bell Blindness

If you haven’t made clear to your boyfriend how you feel about a wedding and your reason for feeling that way, in all of its not-entirely-rational glory, then you are in fact back to the old habit of giving up too much.

So what matters is not that your vow exchange takes one form or the other, but instead that your willingness to consider his needs is mutual. There’s nothing about eloping itself that says you’re losing yourself in another relationship, but if you elope without his having shown any interest in trying things your way, then that is a problem.

What you need to see now is how this “awesome” man responds to the whole truth of your wedding jones, including its origin.

If he knows it all and still refuses to grant you a positive in service of his negative, then you have some thinking to do. Namely: With an eye to the context of your years together, and how he hasn’t asked you “to change anything about myself” – have there ever been times, before now, when you and he plainly did not agree?