Wedding jitters are one thing, but wanting to call your wedding off to leave your fiancé for his brother … well, that's something else. But try telling that to one person who was sure, absolutely sure, that they should try to postpone their wedding to see if they could "work out" things with their soon-to-be brother-in-law.
The letter writer was supposed to get married in July, but had to cancel because of the pandemic.
In a letter to the Care and Feeding advice column on Slate, the LW explained that instead of celebrating, they and their fiancé decided to stay with his family for two weeks "and then have a small family celebration when everyone's in town next month."
Now there's a second problem...
The LW's future brother-in-law, Tom. The LW never really spent any time with Tom in the past. He lives on the other side of the country and at Christmas he left early to spend time with his then-girlfriend.
When the LW first met Tom, they didn't like him.
But now that they've spent more time together, they've come around to realize that Tom is "actually an amazing guy."
"I feel really confused," they wrote. "My fiancé is everything I've dreamed of since I was a teenager. I think Tom might be the person I never knew I wanted."
And the LW is only more confused now that Tom told them that he's thinking about moving back.
"I don't think it would be hard to get my fiancé to put the wedding on hold until we can have something big, but am I being ridiculous in thinking this will somehow buy me time to figure out what I want?" they continued.
"Am I delusional in thinking that leaving my fiancé for Tom would ever work out with the family dynamics? How can I figure this out?" they added.
Most people in the comments agreed -- the LW needs to slow their roll.
"If Tom is willing to date you under these circumstances, he's a sleaze. Unless he lost his hand in a bread-slicing accident and blames your fiancé, or something like that," one commenter joked.
"This is garden variety pre-wedding jitters/doubt combined with common pandemic stress/neuroses playing a trick on your mind," someone else added. "Tom has given you no indication that he is interested in you, you are not particularly interested in him as a person other than the fact that he is not-the-guy-you're-engaged-to, and you are deluding yourself that this would play out well in any plausible scenario. Call off the wedding if you actually think your fiancé is fundamentally wrong for you, but don't do it because you think some fantasy of finding-the-one-you-never-knew-you-wanted will jolt you awake, and most certainly not because you want to sample the family tree. Snap out of it, and act rationally."
"Do your fiancé a favor and just leave him," a third commenter suggested. "If not his brother, then someone else will come along and you'll be tempted over that person. Maybe you're just too young and should have more relationships before marrying anyone."
And columnist Danny M. Lavery agreed -- this was *not* a good plan.
To Lavery, it's all about defining what "figuring this out" means. If it means using a prolonged break to think about the LW's relationship and if this is really what they want, "I think there's an excellent chance of things working out."
If it means leaving their fiancé for Tom — not so much. The LW hasn't even indicated that Tom is interested!
"If you were to break up with your fiancé because you'd fallen for his brother, you two would probably never become friends, and the rest of your in-laws might take a very long time to come around, if they ever do (unless you are writing to me from within the movie While You Were Sleeping)," he explained.
If the LW wants to postpone the wedding, the time must be used to think through the relationship.
"It's not ridiculous to take your sudden reevaluation of your feelings for your fiancé seriously," Lavery explained. "What are some of Tom's amazing qualities (and what made you mischaracterize them as 'unlikable' when you first met)? Has he made you realize something's missing in your relationship? What's he got going for him besides 'amazing?'" he probed.
Ultimately, the LW needs to really consider the possibility of Tom turning them down and if they'd still believe that ending their engagement was the right thing.
"There's no casual, easy way to postpone or call off a wedding; your fiancé and would-be in-laws aren't going to shrug and say, 'No worries, take your time,'" he wrote.
So the LW needs to consider their next move — without Tom in the picture.
"The answer to the question of 'Am I ready to marry my fiancé?' can't rest upon 'I want to find out if his brother likes me first,'" he added.
