I Hate the Word Fiancé
But I love the actual fiancé and that’s what counts.
I’m a rookie to the engagement life.
It’s been a handful of months since my partner popped the question. I spent endless weeks hiding, so to speak, as everyone asked me about a wedding date. So while he did the on-the-knee thing, and I did the crying thing, and while I’ve proposed to Matt at least six times since out of jest and joy, the language and title that comes with a new relationship level is taking a while to sink in.
I just wish I were comfortable calling him my fiancé.
This is the part where I reassure you, reader, that I love Matt. I really do. My discomfort has nothing to do with the person or the relationship but is instead rooted in the nature of the word itself. It’s about the effect and impact and connotation of a seemingly simple piece of language. When I say “fiancé” I feel like I’m presenting this adult who has her shit together. Someone who understands how to throw a wedding and cooly knows how to get red wine stains out of a crisp linen tablecloth. Someone who’s on time for morning pilates, schedules morning pilates in the first place, and has a go-to stylist that convinced her to try balayage.
I am none of those things. I own neither a linen tablecloth nor a dining table on which to place it. I have commitment issues with hair stylists and the idea of a wedding feels overwhelming.
And such is my mental monologue when I reach a point of a story that requires introducing a Matt in my life:
“. . . oh yes I’ve been living in this neighborhood for a few years now. My — ahem — partner and I . . . ”
“I love that movie! I went last week and my — fi — boyfriend hated it. Yeah, I was surprised too!”
So I try to avoid it.
I think about the performance of narrative as if I were a gymnast during a floor routine. I try my best to channel Simone Biles while storytelling.
I start strong, confident. As I’ve said, I really love that Matt kid, so I do want to share stories about him. I go through the moves, I strike the right poses at the right moments, I make Simone proud. But then comes the hard part: I have to add some sort of descriptor.
I have to give him a title.
“My boyfriend” was never something I liked saying.
It felt flimsy, reductive. It made me think of middle school when we were simultaneously reverent and dismissive of relationship-based terminology. As an adult, I’d catch myself falling back on the word “boyfriend” while networking and I’d just push through the discomfort because it was simplest. Then I’d feel like a surge of guilt for not doing Matt justice. He worked really hard on his proposal, and in some strange way, “boyfriend” felt like I was diminishing a lot the care and consideration we put into our relationship.
“My partner” had incorrect connotations. Coming from startup life “my partner” brought to mind a co-founder, someone I was working with to launch this innovative idea that would disrupt a whole industry before we pivoted or were acquired. And yet “partner” is what I’ve historically felt most comfortable with. I used “partner” most often in the days before I wore a diamond ring on my left hand.
“My Matt” felt closest but is best used around other people named Matt, which is surprisingly often. “My Matt” sometimes slips out when there are no Matts present, and I just go with it, figuring the stranger in my presence could chalk it up to silly sentiment. I also like the idea that I’m giving someone a crash course into the characters in my life. Matt needs no true introduction and we can just let him be Matt. My Matt.
“My roommate” is funny and is subsequently what I’m most comfortable with, but while true, it also sounded odd, especially when I’d mention our pending marriage. The phrase “when my roommate and I get married” sounds like I’m harnessing a delusional crush or like I keep his clipped toenails on a shrine in my room*.
*(I don’t.)
“My Beyoncé” was the happiest mistake I’ve made. A vocal stumble quickly turned into an anecdote for friends, then a favorite inside joke. It happened while talking to a new neighbor in my building. I’d decided I’d reference Matt as my “boyfriend” while telling her my story, but then changed my mind midway through the word.
Why shouldn’t this person know he and I are destined for marriage? She lives nearby and we’ll probably see her around. I felt an unfamiliar surge of comfort with my newfound relationship status and somehow talked myself into calling him my fiancé in the laundry room of my building.
“This is me now,” I reasoned. “I can assume this persona.”
My mental Simone Biles launched herself in the air, and my tongue began to form the words. My brain rushed to override the earlier reasoning as best it could. What came out was the beginning of the word boyfriend, the ending of fiancé.
“ . . . my bo-ayon-cé.”
There was a pregnant pause wherein my neighbor looked confused, but I smiled, secretly pleased at this turn of events and determined to stay true to the Olympian’s golden rule: Stick the landing.
My Beyoncé. She’d approve. I was making lemonade of the situation after all.
My neighbor picked up the thread of conversation as if nothing happened. I cheerfully took my new phrasing to my next interaction with new people.
I take no issue with the word itself.
I’m fully committed to Matt. I acknowledge that a lot of the issues I have about the label that is “fiancé” are a culmination of different feelings coming at me from different places.
I’m self-conscious that I used to be a young person who couldn’t manage a relationship and friendships at the same time. I’ve been the person you couldn’t count on during wedding planning. I’m uncomfortable when I see so many photos or hear so much talk about weddings or planning or bridezillas or marriage-fueled drama in television, movies, and social media. And I’m hyper aware that our society celebrates a traditional family dynamic, which starts with an engagement and ends with a kiss at the altar, or perhaps the birth of a child.
I think that’s why fiancé feels oddly boastful. It makes me feel like I’m supposed to have it figured out by now, whatever “it” is. I’m not the person who gets things right or even wants to get things her way.
I’m not a confident person. Most days, I don’t even know where I’m going.
But I do love a person named Matt very much. I’m happy that he supports me and that I can support him back.
I’m still processing.
Friends and family have been nothing but positive about Matt and I entering a new stage of our lives together, but I’m still figuring out what all of this means to us and to me. Removing the label helps me process that.
There is a lot of weight and history in a word like fiancé. It signals the next stage of a relationship, the growth of a family. Historically it’s the person you’re betrothed to, rooted in the Latin for “trust.”
So yes, I will get married to this person named Matt. And yes, my Beyoncé and I are working on what that looks like, this wedding thing. And why, yes I do hate calling him my fiancé.
But I trust that it’s okay.
