Nervous Confidence

I’m still not exactly sure when I got the balls to actually propose.  With my negative-real perspective on life, I always figured that I’d gather the courage to propose later.  Never did I think later would be now.  How do you decide what person you are going to be with for the rest of your life?  Before I did it I think I put life into perspective a little bit.  I feel like moments like this cross our paths all the time, but we never give them as much thought.  For so many men, there is a similar very short lived question that possesses the same or more impact on our lives:  What if she gets pregnant?  For some reason that question doesn’t carry nearly as much weight in terms of decision making, but usually requires a longer commitment .  I’m an analogy thinker and my mind always attempts to make experiences connect.

My latest connection, wrestling and proposing.  I guess to be more general I could just say competition and proposing.  There is a certain feeling that you get right before a competition.  Before I would go into a match, I definitely had confidence in myself, but there was a nervousness that came along with it.
'This guy looks huge, but I’m going to win anyway.'
'This guy looks like he’s never trained before, but what if he catches me slipping.'
I think all the time about the fact that I’m going to be married sooner than later.  I’m very confident that the woman I will be marrying is a wonderful person, but in this case disagreements and lack of self-confidence causes me nervousness.  Am I the husband type?  Growing up I’ve had girls tell me that I’m the relationship type, but I’m not sure that means the same thing.  I also worry about the disagreements.  They happen all the time in every relationship, but do I have the ability to contain my anger and not allow the straw to break the camel’s back (the disagreement to end the relationship)?

With the commonality of major decisions, I figured that I should be used to it.  I could have been scared to choose the wrong college.  Instead of just picking the one I thought was best, I could have continued learning my entire life and never have obtained a degree.  Everyone knows someone like that in terms of relationships, usually someone you refer to as family because they’ve always been there but never actually married into the family.  Maybe that’s why they call it common law.  Or I could have let the decision choose me.  I could have just waited until I got the letter in the mail saying, 'Come to my school and you’ll earn millions more over your lifetime.'*  I feel like people let decisions choose them a lot.  When I think about my mentality in wrestling it helps to relieve some of the anxiety.  Regardless of the match I always worked hard and I very rarely got pinned (never by my count and 3 times by crappy officials).  I’m sure this won’t be an easy match, but I’m confident that I’ll win.

* subject to ambition, socioeconomic status, drive, quality of education, who you know and luck, loans/loan interest not included