Jennifer

Finding anyone of either gender who is a successful waiter is usually rare. However, I have met more female waiters. Why? Men are glorified for having multiple sexual partners while women tend to be shamed. A promiscuous woman is labeled as a slut, but a promiscuous man, will at worst be called a man whore, but is usually called a player. If you are a man who does not act in this societal prevalent role, you are appealing because you obviously will treat women with respect and will not pressure them into anything physical.

I didn't imply that at all. I was simply relaying my own personal experience and what had worked for me. My best advice is that positivity can definitely benefit your life in many ways and there is no harm in trying to remove any negative thoughts from your mind to replace them with positive ones. It's difficult at times, but with some work, you can remove some of the negativity, and it will benefit you immensely.

It was about 6 months for me, and 1 year for him.

Hello- it's been a while since I've been on the site but I wanted to just add a small note to this conversation to share with everyone (as this applies to anyone single!) When I was single, I wasn't too happy about it. Yes, I was very young, but I had convinced myself that I was going to end up alone since I wanted to wait and I would be the one single friend in her 30's while everyone else was married with kids. I wasn't completely desperate, but I was really looking for someone. After quite some time of trying way too hard to find someone with similar values as mine, I stopped looking. I became happy with who I was, and what I wanted. I realized that when I was meant to find someone, I would. I was very happy being single. That happiness and confidence that I felt was something that radiated off of me. It drew people to me and I made new friends and within months of finally being happy with myself and my life, I found my husband. Become one with yourself first, find your inner peace, and become happy. Project positivity and others will be drawn to it. (Caveat: I'm not guaranteeing you'll find someone instantly, it may take a while. I just know it worked for myself and my husband as well).

I just saw this, and yes, I'd like to confirm that I'm totally on board with this idea! I'd love to contribute.

I wanted to be a part of the ring process and was happy that I was. I told my husband before he proposed that all I wanted was a surprise engagement. Even though I knew the ring was coming, he still managed to COMPLETELY surprise me, which was awesome!

We did not buy the wedding rings on the same day, we picked those out together as well at a later date. It's generally a good idea to buy a wedding ring that matches your engagement, otherwise it may look odd. (For example, if one is yellow gold and the other is white gold doesn't really match). Yes, I agree. If you're going to be spending thousands of dollars on a ring that she will be wearing for the rest of her life, you would want her to like it, wouldn't you? I've had friends who have HATED their ring and actually got their fiance to return it and buy another one. If you don't want to see the ring beforehand, then you can just give your boyfriend an idea of what type of ring you would want (drop hints here and there) or actually go down together to pick it out.

My husband is 7.5 years older than me. However, he looks the same age as me (he has such a youthful face, that will come in handy when he's older for sure!) Honestly, the age gap hasn't even been a problem between us. I usually forget there is one, to be honest. Love knows no numbers, but at least be old enough (18) if you're going to go for the 10+ year difference. Which "sounds better?" 18 year old and a 28 year old 30 year old and 40 year old Same age difference.

SOOOO true.

I picked out my ring with my husband, and we are both so happy we did it that way. It was special to pick it out together.

You hear a lot that marriage is the greatest from certain people, but those must all be people who are either married but unhappy, or people who are divorced, or people who don't ever want to get married. Marriage is not all fun and games, it takes a lot of work. There are MANY wonderful aspects of marriage. I can't even begin to list them here, but the most important are things like being in love, spending your life with another person, etc. It takes a lot of communication and a lot of work to make it work. Not trying to say that everything takes a lot of work, but there are definitely certain things that takes a little more work than others. COMMUNICATION is SOOO important, I cannot stress that enough. Basically, to answer your question, being married is having the ability to wake up next to your spouse, then having them come home, and then being able to fall asleep next to them. You also get to spend a lot of time with them, eating meals together, etc. You live with them, so you see them a lot, which is so wonderful when you love a person and you just can't get enough of them. It's really awesome.

This is interesting because I too, was MIA for a few weeks because I was also in Europe. (Probably at the same time as you, Sally! Wouldn't that have been neat if we crossed paths and didn't even realize?) The culture is MUCH different. They are much more open about sex, sex is just everywhere over there. Sex is way too taboo in North America and I'm not saying we should have sex stores everywhere, but just less of a taboo over even talking about it. I found that I always had legitimate questions to ask with no one to really turn to because no one really discusses things like that. Also, I saw that most young people enter relationships younger rather than older and from what I know, the majority of young people are sexually active. But they have such a different attitude towards it then we do over here in North America.

Flirting is emotional cheating that could potentially lead to physical cheating. Don't flirt with anyone who isn't your significant other if you're in a relationship.

A big thank you to everyone again!! You're all so amazing and supportive!!

Thank you so much.