There are few things in life worse than being engaged to the man of your dreams, only to have him call off the wedding at the last minute. NBA player Richard Jefferson recently called off his engagement a few days before the million-dollar wedding. A woman named “Nora” was supposed to be married this summer when her fiancée called it off the day of the wedding.

I looked into both situations and found some telltale signs. In the case of Jefferson, he said the relationship had been on and off. He also said they had been fighting a lot in the months leading up to the wedding.

In Nora’s case, her relationship had also been on and off. In the months before the wedding, her fiancé kept saying he didn’t want to get married. Instead of seeing this as a red flag, Nora figured that since he had initially been reluctant to live together, but eventually agreed, that the same thing would happen with the wedding.

What is going on? In her book Why Don’t You Understand, Dr. Karen Gail Lewis says: “There are societal messages about the attitudes that go along with being a ‘good’ male. One of those is reflected in the adage, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ This often turns into the typical male behavior of ignoring a relationship problem as long as possible ... Men do not confront a relationship problem unless absolutely necessary because … the risk is they’ll make things much worse.”

Both Jefferson and Nora’s fiancée knew that it didn’t feel right to get married, yet waited till the last minute to pull the plug. There were issues that hadn’t been resolved, that’s why both relationships had been on and off for years.

In your desire to get married, you need to heed the flags and not rush into something that will probably not work out, even if there is a wedding. Sometimes you may need to work on the issues, and sometimes you may need to move on.

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