Weddingbee boards

I am having some very serious cold feet.  There have been several things that have come up between me and my fiance lately, and we have been arguing more.  

One thing is his not helping me very much to prepare for the wedding.  This had been an issue for the past year.  I had not listened to him enough about what he wanted for the wedding (not very much) and he had come to feel alienated from the process.  His response to that was to sort of go through the motions of engaging, like saying he would do a certain thing, and then not do that thing and not say anything and let deadlines pass.  It drove me absolutely nuts.

Fast forward to now, with six days to the wedding.  I am scrambling to get decorations together and put together all the last minute details.  I figure he will help me.  It is crunch time. He says he'll help, but he acts reluctant and tells me he'd rather be watching a movie. I get upset and start to cry a little as he heads off to the other room. When he comes back, I say it is like the times in the past when he didn't help me. He says it is like the times in the past when he felt like he couldn't ask for downtime without making me mad.

He says that this argument combined with the one we'd had earlier in the day was making him feel exhausted and pessimistic.  I reassured him that I was working on myself and my behavior really hard and making good progress.  

So I let him go do whatever, wondering if he would complete the thing he said he would tonight.  He said he was going to watch a show.  He came back and asked if it was really ok that he was doing that, and then came back a while later and asked the same question.  I said both times that it was ok even though it was not ok with me that he watch tv for hours 6 days to the wedding when there is stuff to be done.  I felt sad and discouraged, but I felt like that was the only acceptable answer and I didn't feel like another argument.

So, he proceeds to get drunk.  I proceed to try to do his task for him, because it needed to be done before tomorrow.  All the while he is demanding why I am doing his job when he said that he would do it.  I stopped doing it.  I felt too disheartened to complete my own work.  He went to bed without doing his work.

I feel like calling it all off.  Help.

I guess it's not that he categorically not interested in wedding crapola.  The thing is that we don't have a wedding planner.  Whatever he okays and we decide to do and he doesn't help with falls on me. Totally on me.  We are right up against the line, and instead of jumping in there and helping me, he wants to watch tv and maybe suggest that we should just cancel aspects of the wedding rather than him having to stress at all to lend a hand.  

The big issue is that I feel like I cannot say,  no, it's not cool with me if you watch tv while I scramble to put our wedding together.  To say that is a major problem because I am not letting him be him and am not making it okay for him to say that he needs copious amounts of down time when he believes he needs that.

I had sat down and watched and enjoyed his show with him for an hour and a half already.  I actuallu think he should follow through with his verbal commitments rather than me let him off the hook for leaving me high and dry at the eleventh hour because he has less intrinsic interest in decorating than I do.  I don't think he should get drunk when he promised to help me.

I have done almost all the rest of the crafty stuff, but I need help now just before the wedding.  I don't have friends who can help right now.  It is also now or never for decorating our venue.  And darn it, it's his wedding too, and he promised me he would do this.  I was counting on him.  It would have been another thing entirely for him to have informed me a while back that he would not be helping me at all.

What if like Burris said that he decides he has less interest in caring for a baby and raising children than I do and just doesn't do as much as I do because he doesn't feel like it, that he would rather be doing other things.  I am not such a maternal type that I want to raise a kid virtually by myself.  What if work is not something he is interested in too much and he decides not to do very much of it?  What if there are other promises he makes which he subsequently finds unpleasant and doesn't follow through with but are important to me?  What if I continue to risk anger and blowups from him if I express displeasure with any of this?

Well, I have sort of taken wedding from him in the past.  A few months ago, he really made it clear that that's how the situation looked to him, and I really really really apologized and made huge efforts to mend my ways. He told me that it was really important to make the wedding his too, and I agreed.

Is it my penance to accept him telling me he would do things, and then not doing them, and either I have to do those things, or they don't get done? This is hard for me to do.  When he behaves like this, it makes me feel like he doesn't care about me or getting married to me.

I feel like he places a premium on relaxing and having fun, and I feel like these things are important, but he sometimes makes them more important than other stuff (like getting our wedding together) that I consider important.  He doesn't like to feel like he is being compelled in any way (or even just expected to do something) in any way. It makes him feel controlled and honest to god when he chooses not to do important things,sometimes I feel it is an effort to try to to take control back of the situation, but not openly, under the surface.  This can happen when I just want something that seems simple and straightforward to me.

I don't feel allowed to express displeasure when he is doing any of these things because he would see that as controlling.

I think he sounds like a jerk, and if you feel this way today, it's only going to get worse in the next six days.  Get out now while you can.  I can't believe all these grown women here who are trying to excuse immature behavior from grown men just because "weddings aren't really for men."  It's not about the wedding; it's about the fact that he said he would help you, then did nothing, and then got defensive and mad when you called him on it.  That behavior won't stop just because he puts a ring on his finger, and you will spend the rest of your life (or just the entirety of your marriage) nagging him, being disappointed, and getting into fights because he can't be bothered to follow through on his promises.  

The moment I told my fiance that work was stressing me out and I was too exhausted to do the essential planning stuff when it needed to be done early in our engagement, he took over and did what we needed to be done, and then told me he was happy to do it.  Had he not done those things, we wouldn't be having a wedding.  He is my partner in all things, and I shouldn't have to beg and nag my partner to help me.  And you shouldn't either.

Why should she have to be in a miserable marriage with a selfish man while waiting for a baby to come along?  And a baby is not guaranteed to change him.  He is who he is today, and she needs to decide if she wants to marry that person, not the person he may or may not become after they have children.

I feel like I have done wrong with the wedding planning in the past.  I feel like he hasn't often dealt with that in a very good way, by being indirect and controlling.

We intend to get therapy for my issues and for his after the wedding.  Most the time I am sure that I want to be with him forever.  I had resolved to take all the wedding planning burden off him that i could since it clearly was causing him a lot of distress.  He is happy with this idea.  I am largely okay with it.  I feel like I have a handle on things.  But I was occupied doing something tonight for the wedding in another room and called out three different things that I either wanted him to help me remember or that I wanted him to get back to me with his opinions before the night was over.  I need to take action on these pieces of information tomorrow. I feel like I at least need help remembering stuff. He got concerned that I was "freaking out", even though I wasn't (and he was the one actually freaking out), that I was stressing unnecessarily and pressuring him to do a bunch of things.  My tone of voice was not freaked out.  

I have freaked out in the past, occasionally because I was overwhelmed with the planning which I have done almost all by myself, and then often because I felt like there was so much to do and I was so frustrated because it didn't seem like he wanted to help me.

He fell asleep without doing any of the things that I had asked him.

I am really really frustrated. I feel like he believes that he is completely unaccountable to me for the wedding planning.  I am lucky to get any help I can get and I better be happy with what I get.  I feel like he is punishing me.  I am on the other ultra accountable for any demands I might place on him.  I am trying to have him be his happiest self on our wedding day by doing some extra work, but i don't feel like he is doing that for me. 

Talking about this with him is like touching the third rail.