How I Knew He Was the One

Well I couldn't let my FH have all the fun. (FH=future husband for those of you unfamiliar with the vernacular of wedding blogs, like I was until very recently). So I'm contributing too... this is an equal relationship, right?

Some of you might be a little confused about the chronology of all this, let me explain.

Yes, I told my FH I wanted to marry him about one month before he proposed. How does that work? I have to back up...

When we first started dating, I announced I did not want an exclusive relationship. I'm not really sure what I meant by that, but it felt like a good way to put off committing to anyone. I didn't last long, and we soon became an item, and had the DTR about what to call each other (he said I could call him "boyfriend," unless there was a more gender neutral term I preferred :).

Shortly after that, I told him I didn't even want to hear the word marriage in any context for a minimum of six months, and then I didn't want to make a decision about it until we'd been together for at least one year. You may at this point be thinking I'm a total commitment-phobe, but if you know me I move slowly and think things through and wait for the right timing, so it just made sense to me.

So, this summer my FH flew out to Atlanta where I was doing research and drove back with me to Texas. Somewhere in that really long car ride I told him that I wanted him to be the one to bring up marriage first, if he ever wanted to bring it up (this was at 8 months). Of course, I was bringing it up first in starting this conversation. So we talked about talking about marriage, and decided we weren't ready to even talk about it, and that was that.

Over the summer my now fiance dropped some pretty large hints. OK, they weren't hints, they were declarations. "I want this relationship to end in marriage," and things like that. I was more freaked out than flattered at the time... not because of him but because I was wrestling with myself in a lot of areas. And that needed to happen.

At the end of the summer, I had a change of heart and told him I was ready to talk about marriage... Actually I said I was ready to explore the possibility of marriage, but conversation topics like engagement and weddings were off the list. Marriage is so much more than those thing, so I didn't want to get swept up in the other stuff before we talked about the hard stuff. That's when we decided to go through !0 Great Dates Before You Say I Do, which is geared for seriously dating couples who are thinking about marriage (and also engaged couples). It was fun and practical and I kept discovering that we were even more perfect for each other than I thought. We also went through pre-engagement counseling of sorts (it may sound weird, but it's a Godsend to begin digging up your issues before you dive into marriage).

But what it really all came down to is that I knew I loved him, more deeply than I ever could have imagined. And I was so sure of his love for me. He told me that he would wait for me. That gave me total freedom to take the time and really be sure. I went home to visit my family over Labor Day weekend and spent the whole time thinking and praying and feeling, and at the end of the weekend I had this total peace that he was the one, that God meant for us to be together. I journaled about all the reasons I was sure and filled up six pages. This was 3 weeks shy of one year.

Since I'm all about waiting for the right moment, I waited until Thursday and took him to the park where we exchanged our first "I love you." Then I told him that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, that I was really sure. He was ecstatic, to say the least.

So about one month later, he popped the question and presented me with a beautiful, conflict-free diamond ring in a candle-lit proposal in the most symbolic place. And that's how it happened.