So I’m Engaged: Do I Have To Say Fiancé?

Engaged people can be obnoxious. That’s what I thought before I was engaged, and it’s what I think now that I am. For starters, engagements are by definition a lil’ flashy. Literally speaking, there’s the ring. I was always noticing women wearing big rocks, little rocks, enviable rocks, ugly rocks (Pear shaped diamonds?! Patooey!), when I would ride the subway. Sometimes I would find the bragginess of a big ol’ diamond annoying and contemptible. So now I turn my ring around on the way to work so I just look like a married lady with a wedding band.

Then there’s the wordage associated with engagements. I completely loathe the word “fiancé.” First of all, I am not French. In fact, I basically came thisclose to failing French in high school, but the kindness of my hot lesbian teacher, Mademoiselle McNally, saved me with a respectable D-. So why do Americans use the word fiancé to describe their betrothed? “Boyfriend/girlfriend” is so low key, mellow, unassuming, and friendly. Fiancé screams, “HA! HA! I am better than you! My relationship is so great, only a French word can describe it!” Unfortunately, there is no other word in the lexicon to describe my once-boyfriend, now future-husband, other than the hateful fiancé. I’ve tried to think of others, but “partner” sounds like we should be lesbians having a commitment ceremony at a backyard barbecue, while “lover” is as pretentious as “fiancé” only ickier. Eww, I would never refer to M. as my “lover” when speaking to my Dad.

Relationships with friends change after you get engaged. It’s not necessarily in a bad way – all friendships change as you grow from juvenile adults (the early 20’s) into mature adults (late-20’s, hopefully) and it’s not even because I’m necessarily coming off as a smug engaged. Because my love relationship has suddenly gone to the next level, sometimes I think my opinion on matters of the heart is considered suspicious. For example, before I would always be the person my friends would tell their relationship problems to and I was always adamant that they should expect the kind of relationship they deserve and never to settle – based a lot on my own decision to stop settling which led me to true love. Now that I’m a smug engaged, I almost wonder if my friends still think I get them and their relationship struggles, as if the ring on my finger indicates that all problems of my own have ceased to exist.

Then again, maybe I have changed too, when it comes to my friends and their relationship drama. I don’t really get it anymore, why some of my most wonderful friends stick with the most….blah guys. I can’t sympathize as easily. Grow up! Branch off on your own and try being single and stoked about it! But I know that suggestion would be met with, “Yeah, but you don’t know what it’s like…you’re engaged!”

And I am. But I wasn’t born engaged and I did spend 28 years and two months or so not as a smug engaged and I even lived for 24 years being totally 100% single (sometimes lonely, sometimes loving it), so my opinions are shaped less by the last two months and more by the previous 28 years. Who you are and what you think doesn’t change so dramatically when you wake up one day as a, gag, fiancé. I’m a pretentious Frenchie to the one person who doesn’t care that I can barely spit out bonjour, but I’m still the same smug singleton that I always was on the inside.