I've been thinking a lot lately since "tis the season"for engagements, weddings,any other such announcement. As you know from various other posts I went to a small school in the middle of a corn field. It was like living in a bubble. You were kind of disconnected from the real world out there. I'm sure a lot of small colleges are like this.
Girls were made to believe if you were in a relationship for longer then a year you were expected that ring by spring. Candle passings made girls stress about when that so called guy was going to pop the question. It became a culture of "needing" or "wanting" that type of relationship and that if you did not have that ring by spring if you were in a relationship longer then a year. Let me explain candle passings. A candle passing is when someone gets engaged and it is not out yet. Someone puts signs up all over campus advertising that someone is engaged. All the girls meet up and pass the engagement ring around then you pass a candle around to who you think the person is that got engaged. Once the girl who is engaged gets the ring 3 times she has to blow it out and announce the engagement.
This tradition has led to a lot of unreal expectations in life. I'll admit I was in a 4 year relationship when I attended this college and had these expectations. I would get engaged by the end of my college years, get married right after I graduate just like half the girls that attended GU. Well my story isn't quite like that and part of me is glad it wasn't.
To make a long story short. I got engaged a year after I graduated so no candle passing. lol.... I was engaged for a year before the flourished relationship just kind of ended. I'm not sure if it was because we grew up in a world where that was just how things worked where you ended up with that person. I think my eyes opened up being outside of that bubble and realized that there is more out there. Maybe it was a mistake breaking things off maybe it wasn't I'll never know for sure. But I couldn't live in that bubble anymore. I'm kind of glad I did because I needed to grow as an individual learn who I really am. (Which I'm still working on) I will never say I needed more from him, it was a relationship a girl dreams to be in. I'm thankful for what I learned in that relationship and I HAD what every girl would want one day.
Why'd I let it go? Too many variables, I needed to work on myself, right out of college do you really know who you want to be in life none the less share it with another person for the rest of your life. I wonder how many of those right out of college marriages actually last? I'm not saying they won't but the maturity level is there on some levels. Being really ready. I know a lot of people who have gotten married right out of college and it has worked. And then I know a few that question it. But I wasn't ready to take that risk. At one point I thought I was. Guess you'd say brainwashed to think that way. The bubble.....
Till Next time,
Alice
