Lifting the Veil: Exploring Premarital Hesitation and Engagement Dissolution Consideration

Objective

This study examines real-time narratives from online forum users to understand their experiences with premarital uncertainty and gain insight into the decision-making process around dissolving wedding engagements.

Background

Issues that lead to marital dissolution often emerge early in relationships, making the engagement period a critical phase to address concerns before the legal and emotional complexities of marriage arise. Informed by interdependence and relational turbulence theories, this study investigated how engaged individuals articulate their premarital uncertainties and potential dissolution considerations during the engagement period.

Methods

Using a grounded theory approach, we analyzed data from 36 Reddit posts about premarital hesitation, alongside 2213 associated comments, from 1535 unique individuals.

Results

Original posters (OPs) struggled with concerns about the future of their relationships while expressing ongoing feelings of love and commitment to their partners. Commenters validated OPs' concerns and encouraged them to visualize their future marriage.

Conclusion

We uncovered a premarital hesitation process characterized by emotional ambivalence, reappraisals of the past, and conjecture about the future. Using Reddit data revealed the complexities of stay/leave decisions and the potential role that outsiders can play in responding to relational uncertainty. This rich, naturally occurring dialogue offers rare insights into relationship dynamics that are often elusive in traditional research.

Implications

Premarital educators and clinicians should consider how couples may be seeking relationship advice in non-therapeutic spaces. Additionally, researchers could further leverage online forums to collect data from populations that are difficult to reach through conventional methods.