When I got engaged back in July, I was determined to understand, as much as you can ever really hope to understand, what I was getting myself into.  I don’t mean what I was getting myself into as far as my fiance goes and who he is.  No, I’m referring to my own emotional state, what getting married truly entails and means.  I wanted to be prepared and realistic for what was coming, and how I could expect it all to feel.  So I did what I always do.  I bought books on the topic and read them.  There were 2 that were particularly good: What No One Tells the Bride: Surviving the Wedding, Sex After the Honeymoon, Second Thoughts, Wedding Cake Freezer Burn, Becoming Your Mother, Screaming about Money, Screaming about In-Laws, etc. and Emotionally Engaged: A Bride’s Guide to Surviving the “Happiest” Time of Her Life . They were both helpful in different ways, and I truly believe all brides-to-be should read at least one!

One of the pieces of advice that resonated with me the most was a mention of the kooky paranoia that can often plague engaged/newlywed women.  WHAT?!? I thought when I read that part.  You mean the psychotic bouts of momentarily paralyzing paranoia I’ve been experiencing are NORMAL??!! Then I thought, why has not one of my married friends warned me about this?  After some consideration, I realized it’s probably because it’s not something anyone wants to admit, because when it happens it does not FEEL normal.  So no one talks about it.

I decided I was going to talk about the paranoia I was feeling.  I spoke with Tiffany, and discovered she has been experiencing the same thing ever since she got married.  She bought a house and got pregnant and now she is uber-paranoid for no good reason, too!  We decided a good way to get this out of our systems would be to blog about it: hence this post.  Tiffany has written a post about her problems with being paranoid lately as well, which you can check out by clicking here. {EDIT: Tiffany’s blog has suffered a tragic blow, from which we are not sure it will recover.}

So, what do I mean when I say I am crazy-paranoid these last few months?  I mean that sometimes, out of nowhere, I find myself gripped with an all-consuming fear that an awful, terrible, no-good, very-bad SOMETHING is going to happen, and then the fear passes as quickly as it came.  The result is me sitting around, scratching my head, wondering what the heck is wrong with me lately.

A few examples of this would be:

• I am utterly terrified that something bad is going to happen to Alex.  It’s a pretty non-descript fear, it can manifest itself many ways.  One time it reared its ugly head when I was waiting for him to get home from work, and resulted in me calling him every 5 minutes for about 45 minutes until he finally got near his phone and picked up, to find me nearly in tears because I truly thought he must be in a gutter somewhere.  Each time I get paranoid like that, the irrational fear involves something tragic and dramatic occurring that prevents our wedding from happening.
• I am worried much more often than I ever have been in my life that something is going to happen to one or both of my parents.  This particular irrational thought always involves something that makes one of them miss my wedding, and it is always for a tragic and dramatic reason.  For example, my dad recently had to go on a business trip to Texas.  I was SO SCARED something was going to happen to that plane.  And I’m never worried about things happening to planes, I’m one of those people who insists loudly that the chances of something going horrifically wrong in the air are much lower than something going horrifically wrong with a car on the ground.
• I’m also pretty paranoid something is going to happen to the WORLD, and that it will prevent me from being able to marry Alex.  I mean big things, like gravity will cease to exist and we will all go flying off into space, or a black hole will lumber into the solar system and disrupt planetary orbits, sending Earth hurling into the vacuum of interstellar space.

Obviously these are all doom-and-gloom, ridiculously improbable scenarios.  I’ve had this newfound paranoia manifest itself on smaller scales, though.  The biggest place I’ve noticed it is when it comes to driving.  It used to be that driving didn’t phase me at all.  I did it all the time, over long distances.  Now I dread being behind the wheel, because I have gotten cautious to the point of OVER cautious when it comes to driving.  I have gotten overwhelmingly nervous more times than I can count that someone was about to hit me.

Now, this may all sound like I need professional help.  But I think what’s important to realize is that NONE of these little instances of paranoia lasted for more than fifteen or twenty seconds – well, none except that time I got really freaked out and couldn’t stop calling Alex.  I always get a grip on myself and realize everything is fine, and that there is no point getting worked up over things that MIGHT happen, and that would happen regardless of anything I could do to stop them.  If a black hole is heading our way, I don’t think me sweating bullets over it is going to make a difference!

According to my books, this paranoia thing is actually normal.  I think the psychology behind it says something like this: newly engaged/wed women are so happy and everything feels like such a fairy tale to them, that sometimes it can get scary when you realize how perfect everything feels.  The result?  Being terrified that something bad will happen to take your happiness away, because after all, you’ve never gotten to experience a happy ending before now, have you?

It really made me feel better to realize that a) my mini-episodes of paranoia don’t necessarily mean something is wrong with me, and b) other people have experienced this issue.  So I’m curious, if Tiffany and I have both noticed this, has anyone else?  If you’re willing to share, please do!

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