Reader Question – Can I Forgive , Trust and Try Again With the Man Who Left Me At the Alter
Hi. Three years ago I met the “love of my life”. We moved in together after 3 months, got engaged within 6 and set a wedding date for a year (to the date) after we met. I was in heaven! Then on the day of our wedding he never showed up. I was panicked and thought something must have happened to him. His family was terrified too as they were all at the church too – waiting. No one heard from him for one week – we even reported him missing. Then after one week he called me (after he let his parents know he was okay and where he was) and said he just couldn’t go through with it, was sorry and after tearful and angry hours of phone conversation I told him to never contact me again. Fast forward two years later I get a call to please meet and hear him out. To summarize (I did agree to meet him – I know, I know!) but he said when we met he was too young (just out of college) to really know how to deal with that kind of love and feelings. Things just went so fast he was scared, lost and didn’t know himself. After getting some experience he knows he is ready to try, starting off a bit slower but moving towards a goal of really marrying this time. All the feelings came back when I saw him again. Am I nuts to give him another chance? I dated a lot since being left and no one came close to him.
Hopeful?, Little Rock, AK
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I have to explain a little more:
my position is this: We’re all human, and we make huge mistakes.
I picture this poor groom freaking out at the last minute and bailing before committing himself to a relationship and responsibilities he wasn’t prepared for. While I think he could have handled the situation better, I applaud him for refusing to just ‘go through with it’ because it was expected of him. How much worse would it have been to struggle through a divorce years later? Now that he’s more certain of his decision and comfortable with the responsibility, he’s perfect. If you loved him before, and he’s only stronger and more confident, what’s the question? Why would he come back years later for you if he didn’t mean it? Wouldn’t you WANT to be with a man who stands up for himself? (Again, method could use a little work)
I say go for it. Forgive him. Get in to some counselling, both of you, take it slow, and see if who you are now is a good fit for who he’s become. If he’s truly the love of your life, I don’t know what’s stopping you.
Wow,
I put myself in your shoes and imagined what I’d do: if It were me, and he really was the man of my dreams, I’d give it another go, with perhaps some counselling and support to overcome the alter bit. If he legitimately needed time to figure things out for himself, then I say BRAVO to him for having the GUTS to not show up to the wedding, THAT had to be really hard too!!! I say go for it, just be aware
~Sarah
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Not that you need yet another person telling you that you’re crazy…but if you allow him back in your life, you ARE crazy! There are plenty of people in the world that you’ve yet to meet, and he showed great disrespect for you, your family (and his!), and all of his friends with his actions 2 years ago. I love the Aesop fable post….it’s spot on!
If I were you, I will refuse him cause he left you. I think he is no responsibility. You had decided to marry at that time, but he left you without any message. I think he isn’t worth you loving.
Aesop’s Fables says it all:
“One winter a Farmer found a Snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The Snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. “Oh,” cried the Farmer with his last breath, “I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.”
The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.”
Personally, I think you are nuts if you give him another chance. To disappear for a week is a HUGE deal; to me it sounds like he needs much more than maturity to fix the problem. Sounds like he has an ingrained impulse to run away rather than fix situations he isn’t sure about. My guess is that is something that does not go away with maturity. I’m thinking it really depends on how much of that kind of drama you want to put up with.
Oof. It’s only been 2 years – there IS someone out there for you that’s way better than him. When you’re tempted to get back with him, think back on that terrifying week when you thought he was dead in a gutter somewhere because he did not show up for your wedding. Instead of EVER having a serious discussion with you about your relationship, he just decided to not show up on your big day. This is the same kind of spontaneous, emotionally immature behavior that could lead to a world of fresh new hurt. down the road. I’m sure there are some unresolved feelings there – lots of them. But the best revenge in this case is relationship success – with someone else.
To answer your question, YES you are nuts! DO NOT allow him back into your life. Someone who truly cares about you would’ve had that conversation with you in private before a wedding ever happened. You letting him back in will only show him that he has permission to leave again when things get tough. 2 years is not enough time for someone “to grow” from something like that. It’s ok for you to have those feelings still because they were abruptly and unexpectedly cut off. But you need to know that it is natural, it’s not happening because “you’re supposed to be together”. you’ve proven that you’re ok without him. He needs to take this as his loss and take the “L” (loss) for losing you. Now that will be some serious growth for him.