Have We Been Engaged Too Long

Question: How long are you supposed to stay engaged? My sister has been with her finace' for 10 years and engaged for 4 of those years? Many people say they should be married by now but I don't see the rush. Have they been engaged too long?

Answer: KWK says YES chile!!!!! Woosah. To answer your very 1st question: I guess the politically correct answer would be, people can be engaged as long  as they want to but I have a follow up question. Why would one want to wait that long until they finally get married? I really don’t understand people’s reasons for getting married now-a-days and I am unsure if people understand their reasons for desiring marriage as well?

Self Check: If you are getting married, or if you were engaged what would be your primary reason for getting married? Forget the “correct” answer what would be your truth? If it’s anything other than honoring God through your commitment to your future husband then I could see why a prolonged engagement wouldn’t be an issue!  

What I think people fail to realize is “to get married” is not about the ceremony, until you become financially stable, to gain a social status, or any of these other worldly pursuits  for  marriage. If you didn’t know: Marriage is a God idea and was created for His purpose, however we have misconstrued His design for marriage as well as everything else. Why did God establish marriage in the first place? #1 Marriage was created for His Glory; for one man and one woman to come together and establish a covenant with Him. The other reasons for marriage (in no particular order) are for companionship, procreation, and sexual fulfillment.

How many of us are currently involved in many of the reasons for marriage, RIGHT NOW  without the ring? Plenty!!  So what is the reason for getting married if you're doing everything like you're already married? You want the answer: because you want to do it your way! People with this mindset carry this same attitude into their engagement and marriage. Hence the variety of  reasons for prolonging the engagement and later getting a divorce. 

 Back in the day people didn’t waste any time to get married after their engagement. While God requires no sex until marriage many engaged couples would at least refrain from sex during their engagement. If someone is engaged for more than 1 year it is clear that they are doing everything that a married couple is doing so why should he buy the cow when he’s getting served the milk regularly?

Simply put: Men used to commit more when women had standards! When we dropped our standards everything else fell off right along with it. When women started wanting freedom and equal rights (nothing wrong with that I think its liberating to a certain extent)  it changed the game totally.  If you are giving a man some babies, companionship on demand, and sex on the regular anything is liable to happen, and a forever long engagement can be one of them!

On the flip side, if the woman is the reason for the delay its possible that she is unsure if she wants to get married to him or anybody! Listen: Women who want to be married, want to be married and don’t have years to waste on a silly engagement. Some people wait until they are engaged to try and figure out who they are marrying, so they opt to prolong the engagement to learn more about the person they once liked tremendously but currently aren't so sure.All this in hopes of one day starting to like this person again. Some people are trying to wait until the other person becomes who they want them to be. HINT HINT: A marriage consists of two imperfect people, so if you can’t deal with the person now then you won’t be able to deal with them in a marriage so stop wasting their time. Others wait until they get themselves right financially, occupationally, etc but if you trust that this is person you are supposed to marry you might as well trust that God will sustain you when you make the decision to honor Him. Let's face it: marriage comes with many highs and lows, nothing I repeat nothing will be 100% right so you're simply wasting your time waiting for the perfect time!

All in all 1 year to 1 ½ years max, (per KWK) for the engagement but people are engaged much longer because standards, requirements, and expectations have changed dramatically and/or are faulty. 

All of the question are submitted via FB for KWK Ask Kristen Fridays*

                               *All images are from Google*

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