It seems there’s a feud brewing between victoria beckham and her new daughter-in-law, Nicholas Peltz.
According to Page Sixthe pair are no longer speaking as their relationship reportedly unraveled in the lead-up to Nicola’s $5 million wedding to Victoria and david beckham‘s are, brooklyn beckham this past April.
“They can’t stand each other and don’t talk,” a source told the outlet. “The build-up to the wedding was horrendous.”
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David Beckham, Victoria Beckham, Nicola Peltz and Brooklyn Beckham were close and went on vacations together ahead of the wedding in April. (instagram)
The source said that in the months before Nicola and 23-year-old Brooklyn’s star-studded Miami wedding, the 27-year-old actress and her wealthy family – she is the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz – did not want Victoria “to be any part of the planning”. The source claimed that Nicola wouldn’t clue the former Spice Girl in on anything and “communication was minimal.”
Apparently, ever since the extravagant affair – which was held at the luxurious Peltz family estate – it’s been “non-stop petty drama” and the tension is coming between Beckhams and their son.
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Nicola Peltz and Brooklyn Beckham tied the knot in Miami on April 9. (Instagram)
“They haven’t spoken to him much in the last few months,” said a source, adding that Brooklyn’s parents weren’t happy when on Instagram he posted a cover of Nicola gracing the cover of British magazine Tatler with the headline calling her ” The New Mrs. Beckham.”
Prior to the Page Six report, there was much speculation about the relationship between the Beckhams and the newly minted Peltz Beckhams. The Beckhams were always a tight-knit clan and they embraced Nicola into the fold when she and Brooklyn started dating in 2020.
The group posted sweet snaps of their vacations together and they were constantly gushing about each other and ‘liking’ each other’s social media posts.
But after the April nuptials, that all seemingly came to a halt.
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Speculation monsoon emerged that the feud stems from the treatment the Beckhams allegedly received from the wealthy Peltz family before and during the wedding.
According to the Mirror, Victoria and David and their three other children – Romeo, Cruz and Harper – were not invited to sit at the top table at the reception. Instead, the seats were taken up by Nicola’s billionaire father Nelson, fashion model mother Claudia Peltz and her siblings de ella.
“The top table was all Peltz’s and it really felt as though the Beckhams were not at the forefront,” a source told the outlet.
“There was a feeling that the wedding was all about the Peltz family, as you can imagine, as it was their house and their daughter and their son making the speeches.”
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Former NRL star Michael Lichaa has been acquitted of domestic violence charges after his former partner refused to turn up to court and ex-teammate Adam Elliott vouched for his version of events.
The 18-month saga finally drew to a close on Friday when Mr Lichaa was found not guilty of assaulting his former partner Kara Childerhouse during a heated late-night incident at his south Sydney home.
Mr Lichaa, 29, has persistently denied assaulting his former finance and Magistrate Melissa Humphreys on Friday acquitted him of common assault and intimidation charges.
His trial before Magistrate Melissa Humphreys took a sensational twist on Thursday when Ms Childerhouse refused to turn up to Sutherland Local Court to give evidence.
Despite being subpoenaed and midway through her testimony police were unable to contact her after knocking on her door and calling her.
The court heard that she no longer wanted to take part in the proceedings and was pregnant and worried about the stress of reliving the incident.
All of her testimony which she had given up until that point was excluded though a statement, in which she retracted the allegations, was admitted into evidence.
It left the prosecution with no evidence to tend on the assault charge.
Police had alleged he was involved in an argument, which prompted concerned neighbors to call police to his Connells Point home.
The court has heard that the incident occurred after Mr Lichaa caught Ms Childerhouse performing a sexual act on his mate and former teammate Adam Elliott.
Mr Elliott told the court on Thursday that he had been drinking for 12 hours following a party at Mr Lichaa’s home.
When it was suggested that Mr Lichaa had assaulted Ms Childerhouse, he said “I disagree.”
Mr Elliott told the court that Mr Lichaa exclaimed “what the f*** are you doing?” and he went outside and walked back and forth in a heated state.
A witness previously told the court that she heard a man saying loudly “I’m going to f***ing kill her”.
His lawyer James Trevallion denied that amounted to an offense of intimidation, adding there was no evidence the words were said in her presence.
“Clearly it was a situation where there was a lot of emotion and feeling and it would be remarkable when walking up and down the street if he wasn’t yelling and screaming and emotional and upset about what had occurred,” Mr Trevallion told the court on Friday.
Comancheros boss Mark Buddle has been extradited from Darwin to Melbourne to face court over the alleged importation of $40 million worth of cocaine into Australia.
Key points:
Mr Buddle was extradited from Turkey to Darwin this week
Now in Melbourne, he faces two charges that carry possible life sentences
He was remanded in custody after a brief appearance at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) said officers escorted the 37-year-old on a chartered flight from Darwin to Melbourne this morning.
It is the final move in a series of extraditions.
Mr Buddle was taken into custody by AFP officers in Darwin earlier this week after being extradited to Australia by Turkish authorities.
He was deported to Turkey from Northern Cyprus last month, and taken into police custody in the capital, Ankara.
The Australian Federal Police released images of the extradition.(Supplied: Australian Federal Police)
Mr Buddle is understood to have left Australia in 2016.
He had been living in the self-declared republic of Northern Cyprus after being granted a residence permit in August 2021.
The area declared its independence in 1983 but is recognized by only one of the United Nations’ 193 member states, Turkey.
Mr Buddle became president of the Comanchero Outlaw Motorcycle Gang in 2010 when former leader Daux Hohepa Ngakuru left Australia.
He was understood to have been leading the Comanchero Motorcycle Club while living overseas.
Mr Buddle was national president of the Comanchero motorcycle gang.(AAP, file photo)
A Darwin judge on Wednesday granted a request for Mr Buddle to be extradited to Melbourne.
Now in Victoria, Mr Buddle faces two charges over the alleged importation of more than 160 kilograms of cocaine in 2021.
Both the charges of importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug and conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Mr Buddle did not make an application for bail.(abcnews)
Mr Buddle appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court this morning for a brief administrative hearing.
The 37-year-old was wearing trackpants and escorted by two guards.
He met Magistrate Kieran Gilligan before taking a seat and looking around the courtroom.
Mr Buddle did not make an application for bail and was remanded in custody until his next court appearance in November.
He waved and gave a thumbs up to his lawyer as he left the courtroom.
Former news anchor and Trump-backed candidate Kari Lake has won the Republican nomination for Arizona governor, elevating a candidate who has embraced the former president’s false election claims in a key swing state.
Lake did so after declaring victory prematurely on Wednesday when she had only a slim lead over land developer Karrin Taylor Robson (R), who nabbed the backing of former vice president Mike Pence and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R). And Lake had already warned that her own primary de ella might be tainted by fraud she refused to provide proof for.
“We out-voted the fraud, we didn’t listen to what the fake news had to say,” Lake told reporters, according to the Arizona Mirror. “The MAGA movement rose up and voted like their lives depended on it.”
Kari Lake was predicting fraud before primary day
Lake’s victory was one of several for prominent election deniers in Arizona. If these Republicans win in November, they will be empowered to dramatically upend the election process in a key state in 2024 and beyond. Arizona became ground zero for unfounded 2020 election conspiracies after Biden narrowly beat Donald Trump there — the first time a Democrat has taken the state since 1996.
Lake will face Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) in the general election. Hobbs defended the election process in Arizona as the person in charge of certifying Biden’s victory in 2020.
“This bitter primary race that fractured the Republican Party on a local and national level has finally come to an end and the result is a nominee who has taken an extreme position on abortion, elections, guns and more,” said Raquel Terán, the chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party.
Other election deniers who prevailed in Tuesday’s Arizona GOP primary were venture capitalist Blake Masters, now set to face Sen. Mark Kelly (D) in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country, and secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem.
Masters ran an ad saying “I think Trump won” and Finchem, a state lawmaker, was outside the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, before rioters stormed the building in a deadly attack. He has self-identified with the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group and self-styled militia, and said he would decertify Arizona’s 2020 election results if he had the power to do so.
Endorsed by prominent election conspiracy theorists MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, Lake has said she doesn’t recognize Biden as the country’s legitimate president. She has said if she had been governor in 2020, she wouldn’t have certified Biden’s victory. And if she wins in November, Lake’s most dramatic election-related proposals would eliminate machines that tabulate votes, like electronic equipment from Dominion Voting Systems used by Maricopa County,where more than half of Arizona residents live, and replace them with people to hand count millions of ballots from individual precincts where voters would be required to cast their ballots in person.
State officials, many of them Republicans, have warned that counting all ballots by hand would make it impossible to meet statutory deadlines.
Lake, if elected, also wants to terminate mail voting, exchanging it for a one-day election, and strengthen voter identification and auditing requirements, which already exist in Arizona.
The 52-year-old mother of two began her career in Iowa after studying journalism at the University of Iowa. After many years in the industry that ended with her frequently being criticized for sharing misinformation on her social media accounts, Lake left her anchor position at Phoenix’s local Fox station in March 2021. Three months later, she announced her campaign for governor.
Full Arizona results here
Lake won the endorsement of Donald Trump that September and has in many ways modeled her campaign after that of the former president. Even before the primary, Lake was telling her supporters of her not to trust the results of Tuesday’s primary — unless she wins.
See who Trump has endorsed in the Republican primaries
If Lake wins in the fall, her leadership would move the state further to the right after Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election — a possible shift that has alarmed many more conventional Republicans in the Grand Canyon State. Lake has pledged to try to enact election-related policies that could fundamentally upend the way Arizonans vote — and how their votes are counted.
Hannah Knowles, Colby Itkowitz and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this report.
While a big deal has been made about some former PlayStation exclusives coming to the PC — like Horizon and God of War — no deal was made last week whatsoever about a game with a much lower profile, but which I love regardless.
That game is Hohokum, which was first released on the PlayStation 4 (and PS3, and Vita) in 2014, and which remains one of the most chill video game experiences available. A collaborative work between artist Richard Hogg, developers Honeyslug and the record label Ghostly, Hohokum is to beautiful 2D adventure where you play as a worm…kite…thing that just floats around its various levels, poking around a colorful landscape just to see what happens.
It’s magic. I love this game so much that amidst all the hardware drama and blockbuster releases making up our roundup of the last console generation I wrote a whole thing just about this little game, which I described as being — in terms of meeting its ambitions — perfect.
You move a big snake thing around a floating landscape, and sometimes you run into things, and sometimes you fly through things. You’re never fighting, talking, not really doing much of anything.
Yet for Hohokum these aren’t limitations. They’re a canvas.
It’s a game that understands the links between interaction, visuals and soundtrack to a terrifyingly perfect degree. Each is inspired by and reliant on the other two, to the point where once it gets going Hohokum is almost synaesthesic.
one thing Hohokum is now providing to also be is timeless. Eight years on from its original release its art style hasn’t aged a day, and technically looks as though it could have been released yesterday. The accompanying heavyweight soundtrack also sounds as good in 2022 as it did in 2014, no doubt helped by the fact that many of the artists involved — like Tycho — are still killing it today.
So if you haven’t owned a PlayStation in a while and never got to check this out, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Annapurna has published this PC version (which, admittedly, is probably why less of a fuss was made than if Sony had released it), and it’s out on Steam now.
Lady Gaga has confirmed she will be in the next joker movie, playing the Harley Quinn to joaquin phoenix‘s supervillain.
Gaga made the news official by sharing the title sequence from the film on Instagram – which you can watch above.
The film, titled Joker: Folie a Deux is set to release on April 10, 2024.
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Lady Gaga at the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. (WireImage)
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gaga’s Harley would exist “in a different DC universe” than the one played by margot robbie in suicide squad (2016), birds of prey (2020) and Suicide Squad (2020).
The film will see former joker director Todd Phillips return as director and co-writer alongside Scott Silver.
The second installation of the series is highly-anticipated, given the success of joker in 2019.
The first film broke box-office records as the first R-rated movie to hit the US$1 billion mark, reports Peopleand also earned 12 Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor win for Phoenix.
Phillips teased the sequel back in June, sharing a red script for the film and another black and white photo of Phoenix reading the script.
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No other cast members have been released for the project.
But there is a clue in the film title.
‘Folie à Deux’ is a French term referring to a delusion or mental illness shared by two people. So perhaps there are some dark and twisted journeys ahead for Phoenix and Gaga.
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Leona Lewis gives birth to first child: ‘Our little Carmen Allegra’
David King and Kane Cornes have gone through a few candidates on SEN Breakfast.
See their thoughts below:
Subscribe to the SEN YouTube channel for the latest videos!
Harry McKay (Carlton)
King: “I’m going with Harry McKay. He hasn’t been the same presence in that forward line the last few weeks.”
“His form against top eight teams – four games, five goals. 12 games against bottom teams, 34 goals.
“Do it against the best. They’ve got an opportunity to go up to Queensland and shake up the season.
“I looked at Harris Andrews last week, I think he’s really gettable, I know he intercept marks a lot, but he’s gettable. So Harry, get it done.”
Jordan DeGoey (Collingwood)
Cornes: “I thought he was excellent against Port Adelaide, he got seven coaches votes.”
“But it is often easier to play well in your first game back, a lot of players returning from injury play well, the challenge for them is that second game back.
“They’re against a very good side, big stage, 14 goals this year, I just feel like it’s a big weekend for Jordan De Goey.”
Ken Hinkley (Port Adelaide)
King: “It’s a big night for Ken Hinkley on Saturday night. Get the matchup right against Shai Bolton or pay a price.”
Cornes: “Is he the hardest matchup in the game?”
King: “No, Jeremy Cameron is the hardest matchup in the game.”
King: “I just think this matchup and the way they use him – it’s the Dustin Martin role – be ready for it, be aware of it, plan for it, and find the right matchup.
Cornes: “I’m trying to go through Port Adelaide’s line-up and work out who are they going to play on him? Martin has got them in big games and they haven’t been ready for that. Darcy Byrne-Jones is there, Dan Houston is in the mix – or do you say to Jase Burgoyne, he’s yours young fella. Finals are off the agenda, it’s about development for Port Adelaide now, I’d like to see him experience what it’s like to play on a player like Shai Bolton.”
Matt TabernerFremantle
Cornes: “He just needs a big weekend. His last five games from him: St Kilda nothing, two goals against Sydney, one goal against Richmond and nothing last week. ”
“Fremantle’s lack of scoring recently in the last three weeks, nine goals against Sydney, seven against Richmond and just five last week against Melbourne.
“It’s a massive issue for them. Can Rory Lobb and Taberner be the combination that is going to put Freo in top four contention once again, I’m not sure.”
alastair clarkson
King: “I think we’ll find out sooner rather than later. You would want this tidied up before the end of the home-and-away season – I don’t think we’d be too far away.”
Cornes: “I get the feeling you’re confident (he’ll coach North).”
King: “Absolutely I’m confident. Why wouldn’t you be confident?
Ed Langdon (Melbourne)
“It’s a big night for Ed, isn’t it?”
“When you make strong statements like that, the focus does come to you and the club and whilst we enjoy the openness of the commentary, no doubt it has brought an extra element of pressure to Melbourne tonight.”
There’s no doubt having a baby is a life-changing event and while it’s well known many mothers struggle with depression or anxiety, so can fathers.
Perinatal anxiety and depression, from pregnancy through to a child turning one, affect up to one in five new mums and up to one in 10 new dads, according to Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia (PANDA).
A world-first online treatment program called Dadbooster aims to help fathers after their baby is born by reducing moderate to severe symptoms of postnatal depression.
A silent struggle
For Luke Rigby, the birth of his daughter Olive in 2018 marked the start of a mental health battle that left him struggling for almost a year until he was diagnosed.
Returning to work three weeks after Olive’s birth, the 27-year-old said he ignored early warning signs that something wasn’t right.
“I think I averaged a day off a week … I’d give myself a kick up the butt, but it would only last for probably a week or two and then it becomes like a self-replicating cycle,” he said.
His turning point came when he finally decided to visit his GP.
“I booked him for a 15-minute appointment, but I reckoned that lasted about 45 minutes,” he said.
“It was just me in his room sobbing and just the things that I was holding inside of me that I’ve never really said, even to myself, before they just came out … like a word vomit.”
Mr Rigby says he tries to spend as much quality time as he can with his four-year-old daughter.(Supplied: Luke Rigby)
Luke Rigby isn’t alone when it comes to dealing with peri- and postnatal depression and anxiety.
An increasing number of fathers report similar experiences.
Dadbooster to help fathers
Jeannette Milgrom, executive director of Melbourne’s Parent-Infant Research Institute (PIRI), said, through her research and development of treatment programs for women, it became apparent there was an obvious gap in treatment options for men.
“What we found is that this has not been addressed in the literature,” Professor Milgrom said.
“There have been some involvement of men and trials of providing education, but there hasn’t been any targeted treatment for depression in men.”
That’s about to change.
Jeannette Milgrom developed Dadbooster to help fill the void in treatment options for fathers with postnatal depression.(Supplied: Jeannette Milgrom)
Professor Milgrom and her team are working on a world-first specialized web-based treatment program for depressed or anxious fathers.
Dadbooster involves six sessions along with SMS messages, regular contact, advice and encouragement to keep motivated participants.
Changes in symptoms are also closely monitored.
Professor Milgrom said the treatment was comparable to face-to-face therapy and was modified to appeal to men.
“There’s similarities in the sense that the core treatment for depression is cognitive behavioral therapy… we’ve made it very easily accessible for men… it’s a very mobile, responsive program and it’s shorter and sharper,” she said.
‘Even rocks crumble’
Julie Borninkhof says more than one in 10 dads may experience perinatal depression.(Supplied: PANDA)
Australia’s mental health system to date has not been great at picking up on vulnerability in men, according to PANDA CEO Julie Borninkhof.
“Organizations like ours are really trying to break down the barriers and remind people that even rocks crumble,” Dr Borninkhof said.
“We don’t screen as readily and ask as many questions as we do of women… so the one in 10 is probably under-reported, because we also know that screening dads in the perinatal period is not as great as it is when we screen our mums.”
Dr Borninkhof said data collected through PANDA’s annual mental health checklist for expectant fathers had revealed some alarming data.
“There’s about 60 per cent of those that really do fear that they’re not going to be great dads,” she said.
Professor Milgrom said her research had identified the importance of giving a voice to the issue.
“Once men start hearing other men talking about it, it becomes very enabling to be able to share the experience and feel that it’s so common,” she said.
hanging out together
It’s a sentiment shared by Tom Docking, founder of Dads Group, an organization promoting positive parenting for men by combining dads, their kids, a cup of coffee and a playground.
Since establishing the Toowoomba chapter a few years ago, Mr Docking said getting fathers together with their children created a supportive environment.
Dads Group offers support to fathers around Australia.(Supplied: Tom Docking)
“From our research, it’s the presence of the child which helps to keep the focus on being better as a father, a partner, a community leader, and a benefit to himself and his own identity,” he said.
Mr Docking said the group was letting fathers know about Dadbooster and other services available.
“It’s important to realize that we can only do this together collaboratively to really address the needs of our community,” Mr Docking said.
For Mr Rigby, help from his GP and connecting with a local dads’ group gave him the support he needed.
Now, he shares his experience with others to raise awareness of perinatal and postnatal depression.
“My biggest bit of advice is to be radically honest with yourself … and ask the question about why you don’t feel 100 per cent and then go from there,” he said.
Georgia’s abortion ban counts a fetus as a person. And now, so does its tax code.
The state’s Department of Revenue announced this week that “any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat” can be claimed as dependent, providing a $3,000 tax exemption for each pregnancy within a household, months before the child is born. Georgia’s law bans most abortions after six weeks, which is usually around when doctors can begin to detect fetal cardiac activity.
The announcement marks a new frontier of anti-abortion policymaking in a post-Roe America, where conservative lawmakers have moved beyond banning abortion, and are now trying to expand the legal rights and protections afforded to a fetus under “fetal personhood” laws. Georgia, Alabama and Arizona have passed abortion bans that include language broadly defining a fetus as a person.
Separately, nearly 40 states, including Texas and California, define a fetus as a person in cases involving homicide. For example, Scott Peterson in 2004 was convicted in California of murdering his wife and unborn child. His wife, Laci Peterson, was eight months pregnant when she was killed.
Georgia’s abortion law goes further than any other fetal personhood provision. Called the Living Infants Fairness and Equality, or LIFE, Act, it prohibits abortion after six weeks and explicitly recognizes the fetus as a person.
A federal judge struck down the legislation last summer, finding that it violated a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. The appeals court delayed a final decision, pending a ruling from the US Supreme Court.
More Coverage of the Kansas Abortion Vote
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, a three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit handed Georgia conservatives their long-anticipated victory, allowing the abortion restrictions to take effect.
In the appeals court’s July 20 ruling, Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr. wrote that “a person of reasonable intelligence is capable of understanding that the ‘core meaning’ [of]’ the provision is to expand the definition of person to include unborn humans who are carried in the womb of their mother at any stage of development.”
Gov. Brian Kemp, who signed the law in 2019, celebrated the court’s decision.
“Georgia is a state that values and supports life at all stages — and the Georgia LIFE Act and this provision both reflect that commitment,” said a spokesman for Mr. Kemp.
State Representative Ed Setzler, a Republican sponsor of the law, said in a leaked 2019 video that the ultimate goal of the law is to have the Supreme Court acknowledge the personhood of a fetus.
“It is about establishing personhood of the unborn child, in the tax code, for child support for mothers, in our census counts, across our code, so that we can lay the foundation that no other state in the nation in the last 46 years has ever done, which is to establish the personhood of this child, and we’re going to take this to the highest court in the land,” Mr. Setzler said in the video.
Mr. Setzler did not respond to requests for comment.
Georgia’s push to recognize a fetus as a person could lay the blueprint for other conservative states, which have not yet clarified the meaning and effects of such an approach, legal experts said.
“The anti-abortion movement has always been a personhood movement, there was just no consensus on what that actually meant,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who has written several books on abortion and the law .
Before the demise of Roe, conservatives were united around the singular goal of restricting abortion access. But Ms. Ziegler says the anti-abortion movement is struggling to find consensus on what fetal personhood means in a post-Roe legal landscape.
“Nobody has really worked out, how do you enforce personhood beyond just ‘you can’t have an abortion,’” she said. “Georgia is starting to work that out, but they’ve really only looked at a handful of situations. How do you enforce this in HOV lanes? Do you give a fetus its own attorney? There are so many questions left open.”
Last month, a pregnant Texas woman ticketed for riding in the HOV lane alone argued that her fetus counted as a person under the state’s abortion ban. Texas’ abortion ban does not include fetal personhood, but its penal code does.
Georgia’s abortion law also allows the mother to collect child support to cover the cost of “direct medical and pregnancy related expenses” before the child is born.
Democrats said the law might also expose women who experience miscarriages to unknown consequences.
“So what happens when you claim your fetus as a dependent and then miscarry later in the pregnancy, you get investigated both for tax fraud and an illegal abortion?” tweeted Lauren Groh-Wargo, the campaign manager of the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams.
Monday’s announcement says taxpayers who claim the new deduction may be asked to provide medical records or documentation of the pregnancy. The Revenue Department has not clarified if and how families who lose a pregnancy might protect themselves from allegations of fraud.
Specific instructions on how to claim a fetus on a tax return are expected later this year.
I am getting married soon to my partner of six years and all of a sudden I feel really nervous and unsure about it. I do love him but we started dating when we were very young and, although our thoughts and ideas align well as we have grown together, I still wonder if I could be better matched to someone else. I feel terrible for having these thoughts as I know he doesn’t. I know he will be an amazing husband and we can have a nice life together but I miss the passion of the early stages of a relationship.
A new co-worker has started at my workplace and we have had some flirtatious moments. It felt good to be seen in that way by someone else, however I wouldn’t dare take that further. But I get on really well with him and find myself wanting to talk to him all the time. I wonder if having conflicting thoughts like these is a bad sign. Shouldn’t I be completely content with my engagement and excited to marry someone I love?
Eleanor says: While “I do love him, but” isn’t ever quite what you want to say about your fiance, I think your question houses a subtle distinction. Does this discontent lie within the relationship itself, or in what the commitment represents? Is there anything wrong with your actuality – or are you simply grieving the loss of possibility?
That second kind of dissatisfaction, the loss of possibility, often envelops us in the lead-up to big commitments. Once we’ve settled on the big move, the career decision, the relationship milestone, a deflating sense of anticlimax can creep in. I think it’s because these moments mean our vision of how things might be starts to come into sharper resolution – we start to see how things really will be, and therefore, at the same time, what they won’t be. For every big choice we make we decline an alternative future. We say to ourselves that those doors are closed, and the versions of life that lie behind them will stay hushed and inanimate.
That can be hard to stomach. Especially for the choices that take us from youthful things to grown-up things, from freedom to responsibility; they can make us feel as though we’re running out of possibilities. Sometimes that’s why flirtations have such kerosene power in moments of life transition – before a marriage, in midlife. It’s not so much that we’re transfixed by that particular other person but that we’re transfixed by getting to see ourselves, briefly, the way they do – as an unknown, as someone who crackles with possibility.
It would be peculiar if you felt nothing like this as you approach your wedding. The whole point of getting married is that your life changes as a result. You promise to take another person’s wellbeing as seriously as your own. That’s a big decision about how your future looks (and how it doesn’t).
But, if you really love someone, what on the surface looks like a “loss of possibility” should in fact feel like the exact opposite. True, monogamous marriage means you turn down the possibility of a new relationship, or the thrill of chemistry with a stranger, but what you get instead is the vast breadth of future that opens up between people who want to make a life together.
When you really love each other, that seems expansive, not constraining. It makes you feel that there is more of you, and more of the world – more future; more possibility; more freedom – not less. This is one of the great mysteries of love and commitment – how we could, by taking on responsibilities to each other, come to feel more like ourselves.
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If the alterations that marriage asks of you already seem unwelcome and constricting, that’s when I would want to pause. Your partner will not want a spouse who sees your union as a sacrifice – as something that robs you of the openness you long for.
You asked whether you should feel completely content and, while the answer to that is almost always no, it is important to distinguish between kinds of discontent. Losing any kind of possibility can leave a trail of melancholy. But if you can’t see the glow of different, exciting possibilities within your new commitment – that’s when it might be time to wonder.
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Do you have a conflict, crossroads or dilemma you need help with? Eleanor Gordon-Smith will help you think through life’s questions and puzzles, big and small. Questions can be anonymous.
