I’m Getting Cold Feet About My Pending Marriage
Some things to consider if you are getting cold feel about your pending marriage.
In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer who has read 3% Man 10 times, Mastering Yourself 3 times, and has been applying it over the past 2 1/2 years. He has an easy and effortless relationship with his girlfriend, who is 12 years older. He is getting cold feet and doesn’t see himself with her in 20 years. He says, physically, she is starting to show her age.
Their wedding date is approaching, and he doesn’t want to break her heart or his. He feels torn on what to do. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.
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This is not a fun place to be. I can totally relate, because I was there at one point in my life and, obviously, I went through with the marriage and allowed societal pressure and pressure of the people around me to influence my decision making. Because I was young, I was inexperienced, and I didn’t have anybody in my family that could give me any decent advice. And, quite frankly, it’s not like I would have listened to anybody anyway. But there was a lot of pressure to get married, and I had a lot of feelings of guilt.
The reality is, I should have just moved on, moved away, moved to Orlando, maybe dated long distance for a while. And then, maybe at some point just started dating other people, and we should have gone our separate ways. But instead, I got married, and the whole time it never felt right. But I just ignored it. I thought, “I’ve just got cold feet.” That’s what all the women that I knew told me, “Oh, Corey, you’ve just got cold feet. She’s a great girl. That’ll go away when you’re together for a while. It’ll be fine. It’s fine.” But it wasn’t fine.
I’ve done countless phone sessions over the years with guys that are in these kinds of situations, where it’s kind of like they’re on the conveyor belt and they’re all caught up in the process. And the reality is, they’re not doing what they really want to do. They’re not listening to their inner intuition. And it’s tough to do, because either way… I mean, you’ll see when I go through the email part what this guy is struggling with. It’s like, “If I end the engagement and call off the marriage, then I’m going to break her heart and I’m going to feel terrible. If I go through with it, then I’m breaking my own heart and I’m going to feel terrible.” So, either way, people are going to get hurt. People are going to get upset no matter what he decides, whether it’s him, or his fiancee, or the people that are heavily invested in them being together.
Viewer’s Email:
Good afternoon Coach,
I’ve been following your work for about 2 and a half years. I’ve read 3% Man 10 times and Mastering Yourself 3 times. It has really helped me tremendously, both in my professional life and my dating life.
Since knowing about your work, I have put in the time and effort to get in shape, be a better business owner and let go of the beta tendencies that got me in bad situations in the past. I feel that now I’m in more control of my life, and my dating relationships have been more successful, so I thank you so much for that!
Fast forward 2 years, and I’ve been dating a woman who is 12 years older than me. She’s sweet, caring, considerate, she loves me and is there for me any time I need her. Sex is great, and she’s very supportive of everything I do.
Sounds great, right? What’s the problem?
There is one catch, however; we have plans to get married, and as the date gets closer, I’m starting to get cold feet. I realize her age has something to do with it, and of course her body is starting to show signs of it.
Well, the other thing you have to keep in mind is men tend to peak later in life. I mean, I know I’m 52 now, but quite frankly, I feel like I’m kind of just getting started where I’m at, at this point in my life. Because it takes a lot. I mean, those of you that read “Mastering Yourself” know, it takes a long time. You’ve got to think in terms of decades when it comes to creating your grandest goals and dreams.
I look back at where I was when I was 18, I was just starting my career and college, and then going through the construction industry. Then, later on in my late twenties, starting my own business and then building that business up to a successful business. And then in my mid-thirties, just hitting the reset button on my life. And so, it’s interesting, from the time I was basically 18 to the time I was about 36, when I started doing what I’m doing now, there was a 16 year period from when I had the desire and started on that path to getting into construction, the real estate, mortgage industry, buying, fixing and selling and flipping single family homes for a profit, then doing general estate mortgages. All those things that I did, that was a 16 year period. And it took a minimum of a decade before things really started doing well.
And, basically, the same amount of time has passed from when I started what I’m doing now, being a full time life coach. So, it’s like 16 years from start to finish for that previous incarnation of me, if you will, or that kind of life and lifestyle. And then, here I’m at the same amount of time, 16 years down the road. It’s taken a long time to get here. I’ve got four books out now. I’ve got thousands of videos, thousands of articles. We just started launching new content on my website, the “Members Only” stuff — having premium content there for people that really like my stuff and want to pay to have access to those kinds of things. It just takes a long time.
Success is long in coming, and there’s no shortcuts to success. I think it was Oprah that said, “You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” And so, again, the reality is you’ve got to think in terms of decades when it comes to accomplishing big goals and big dreams. And that’s why most people never start, because they get caught up in the minutia and they’re not disciplined. Success is making progress. If you don’t feel like you’re making progress towards your grandest goals and dreams, you’re not going to feel very successful, and you’re not going to feel very happy about where you’re at.
You’ve got to feel like when you look around your life that you’re seeing incremental changes and incremental progress. And so, it takes a long time. Like I said, I’m 52, and I kind of feel like it’s the second go around. When I was 36, I literally hit the reset button. It’s like playing a video game. You hit reset in your life, and it’s like being 18 all over again, just completely starting all over in a completely new industry. It takes time to build those things. That’s why it’s so important to choose what you’re going to do for a career, something you love, something you enjoy, because it’s going to evolve also.
And it’s the same thing with the people that you choose to spend your time with. Obviously, in this case, this guy is thinking about marrying this woman. And then, it’s also who you hang out with, who your friends are, what you do socially, what you do for fun. All that stuff determines and shapes your destiny and who you eventually become.
I never thought I’d be so vain to care about something like that, however, it really is affecting me.
Guys don’t really tend to peak, if you will, until they get in their mid-thirties. That’s why I noticed when I got into my mid-thirties, women became really aggressive towards me in letting their interest be known. Whereas, I remember when I was in my twenties, I had to work harder to get the attention of women. But in my thirties, especially the mid thirties, it’s just came to me. Because, once you get to be competent and you have confidence, you just have a vibe of indifference about you and women can feel it.
There’s something different about a guy that’s basically come into his own. For women, that tends to happen earlier in life, because they’ve got a biological clock ticking. And if they’re going to have babies, the older they get, the harder it is for them to conceive, especially if they wait to get married and try to start a family.
And so, in his case, he’s probably kind of starting to feel like, “Man, I’m just kind of getting started, and here I am with a woman that’s 12 years older.” I don’t know how old this guy is. He didn’t say. If I had to guess, maybe he’s in his late twenties, early thirties. And so, if she’s 12 years older, her childbearing years are probably behind her. Even with in vitro fertilization, that stuff’s not easy. It doesn’t always work. And it’s a lot harder to get pregnant the older you get.
And so, on some level, he’s going to be thinking about that. And that’s why us guys, we tend to be attracted to the younger women, the innocent quality. Because if you’re going to have a family with somebody, you don’t want to be with a girl that’s, quite frankly, been with hundreds of dudes. You want to feel like it’s something special. Because it’s not an accomplishment for a beautiful woman to go out and get laid. All she has to do is tap any dude on the shoulder and say, “Hey, do you want to go home with me?” Almost 100% of the guys are like, “Yeah, sure, let’s get out of here.” But guys have got to work harder at that.
And so, if you’ve got a pretty girl who all guys want to sleep with anyway, who’s just giving it up to anybody, because she doesn’t value or respect herself, if she doesn’t value and respect herself, how is a guy going to do that? So, on some level, he’s got to be thinking if he marries her, is he going to forego the possibility of having children just because she’s so much older than he is? So, that’s something that he’s got to consider.
But I’ve learned in life that when you go against what your intuition is telling you, with what your feelings are, it never turns out well. When I was younger, when I was in my early twenties, I didn’t have the confidence, I didn’t have the life experience. I didn’t have the people around me that I could ask these questions and get good advice from, so I could make good, intelligent, informed decisions upon. So, I made a lot of mistakes. Obviously, if you read my books, you know about them all. I mean, I made lots of mistakes, but I learned a lot. And part of what I do is passing this knowledge on.
And if this guy is getting closer and closer to the wedding and he’s getting cold feet, you’ve got to listen to that. You can’t just ignore that. Because if you go through with the marriage, then just talk to any of your friends that have gone through a divorce, ask them how much fun that was. Ask them how much fun divorce courts were — especially if they’ve got kids involved, and then fighting over custody and all those shenanigans. It’s not a lot of fun.
So, you’ve always got to know what your downside risk is. It’s a lot easier to call a wedding off than to go ahead and get married and then still feel the same way. And then a year or two down the road decide you’re going to get divorced, because now you’re going to lose a lot of money. You’re going to inflate the bank accounts of divorce attorneys. Why would you want to do that? It’s just a lot of downside risk.
Some days, I feel I would like to marry a younger woman, despite my girlfriend being the perfect girlfriend, ( besides the age thing).
Yeah, because I would say, on some level, you’re thinking, “I’d like to have a family.” And especially if this guy is in his thirties, then that would mean his girlfriend’s in her early forties or mid-forties. And, you know, the clock has kind of run out for the most part for her. So, if he wants to have children and he goes through with it, he won’t be having kids. Unless he stays with her for a few years, and maybe 5 or 10 years down the road when he’s in his forties, he can always get divorced then and then date somebody 15, 20, 25 years younger.
Younger women like older guys. They always have, because they want competence, they want safety. They want a man that knows what he’s doing. They want a smooth operator. And, quite frankly, young guys are just not smooth operators. They don’t know what they don’t know yet.
In a way, I feel like I’m settling for somebody I don’t see myself with in 20 years.
Well, if you don’t see yourself with her in 20 years, you definitely should not get married. I mean, you already kind of know. It’s just you feel guilty about it. And these feelings of guilt are what caused me to go through with my marriage, because I didn’t want to hurt my wife’s feelings. I didn’t want to break her heart. But it was a lot worse waiting, getting married and then later pulling the plug on it, because it was messy, and it was expensive, and it wasn’t a lot of fun.
You know, it didn’t take long to get into the marriage, but it took several years to get out, because we had a house to sell and it was hard to sell that property. We still had a business deal together that had some real estate that had to be disposed of, even after we were in the process of getting divorced. So, I think it was like three years to finally get the divorce done, the paperwork signed. And I was only married a year; we didn’t have any kids.
It was a lot of stress involved in going through that and explaining what happened. People were like, “You guys just got married. What happened?” You’ve got to explain the whole story like 1,000 times, because every time you run into somebody that knows you, they’re like, “Oh, what happened?” and then you’ve got to go through the whole thing. I wouldn’t want that for this guy, or anybody for that matter, especially when he’s already going, “I don’t see myself with her in 20 years.” If you don’t see yourself with her in 20 years, you shouldn’t marry her, because then you’d be lying to yourself and lying to her. And it’s not fair to her or you.
But given the proximity of the wedding, I also feel very guilty about calling off the engagement. I’m in the middle of a perfect shitstorm between breaking somebody’s heart and breaking my own. Would you please give me some advice? I’m really torn about my situation.
Listen to your intuition. You already know the answer. It just means doing a lot of unpleasant things that’s going to let a lot of people down, and it’s going to upset a lot of people. But, man, going through with a marriage and then divorcing later when you when you finally feel like you’re going to do something about it, it’s a bad way to go, my man. Trust me. You don’t want to do it. I’ve been there, done that, got the t shirt.
Thank you so much for your help. Maybe I didn’t find it, but I don’t think I’ve seen videos of you talking about age differences. Thank you for all you do to help us out and for sharing your knowledge with the world.
Bob
Well, it’s not just an age difference. You’ve got your intuition that’s saying, “Don’t do it, dude. Don’t marry her. You’re not going to be with this girl in 20 years.” You already know the answer to that.
I remember I had a girlfriend that I met and she was in another country. When she came over to my hotel and I opened the door, I was thinking, “Man, I’m probably going to marry this girl and we’re going to have a family and live happily ever after.” And when I opened the door and we kissed and hugged, I just remember my intuition was going, “Oh yeah, you’re probably going to hook up for awhile, and you won’t stay together with her.”
Mentally, I’m going, “I’ve been waiting for somebody like this for years. What are you talking about?” And so, I’m having my head and my heart in conflict. My intuition’s going, “Oh yeah, we’re just going to hook up for awhile. It’s not going to go anywhere.” And my mind is going, “No, no, wait! That’s not what my plan was here.” And my intuition was right. I didn’t like it at the time and I ignored it, and it was right. You’ve got to learn to listen.
The same thing with my ex wife — getting married, the engagement. I wrote about all that in “3% Man,” I don’t need to rehash it here, but you’ve got to listen to that. You’ve got to learn to trust your heart. Steve Jobs said, “You’ve got to trust your heart, your intuition and your curiosity, because they somehow already know what you want to become.” And, as I pointed out here, it’s in your email. You already know what you want to do and what you need to do. You just have to have the courage to do it.
You need to do it for yourself and, quite frankly, you need to do it for your fiancee as well. I know it’s not a fun and pleasant thing to do, but it’s a lot easier to go through a breakup than to go through a divorce once you’re married. So, it’s easier to break up with a girlfriend or a fiancee, but it’s a lot harder, and way more expensive, and way more unpleasant to divorce somebody once you’re married.
And like I said, you’ll be feeling guilty because you’ve got this email out, this video’s out there, and if you go through with it and you later decide to leave, you’ll be like, “It was all out there. It was so obvious.” So, you’ve got to trust your intuition. It’s telling you something for a reason. Every single time in my life when I’ve done the opposite of it, I’ve experienced pain. And pain is life’s way of saying what you’re doing is wrong. Your ideas are wrong or flawed, your approach is wrong, and you need to change it.
So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge, or maybe you’ve got a conundrum like this that you’re racking your brain over, your head and your heart are in conflict and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen and book a coaching session with yours truly.