Is it normal for a guy to have doubts or anxiety about popping the question?
I'll share my experience. I was at a point in my life where I didn't want to date anyone besides the person I would marry. This was also something the woman who would be my wife had prayed for. She had had a boyfriend for several years, who it turns out had had some other girlfriends during that time, and that had broken her heart.
I was overseas in her country, and found out from a missionary who lived on her Bible college campus, who'd had be for dinner one night, that there was a library with a lot of English books. So I went there to read and to meet people. I had been praying for a wife, and it had even seemed like the Lord might have spoken to me that I would meet her that month...or was that just me.. I thought. I was also praying for friendships, too.
After we met and had our first conversation,we both had a sense of what was coming. I went home and prayed about whether this was the woman I was to marry. She went home and wrote her prayer down in her journal along the same lines, "If it be your will give me to him, and him to me" if I remember right.
We started seeing each other. I would pray about it, asking if this was the woman I was supposed to marry. It seemed like the Lord was saying, Yes. As I kept praying the same thing, it seemed like He was saying, "Yes, why don't you believe me?" One time, this young woman said something that bothered me on the phone. I prayed about it, and sensed the Lord speaking to my heart some details about her past, and why she had reacted the way she did on the phone. Later, she explained why she had reacted the way she did on her phone, and told me the same story I had gotten in prayer. So this was a kind of confirmation that I was hearing God. Still I just wasn't sure.
What kind of doubts did I have? What if I am hearing wrong? What if I marry this girl and mess up her life? What if God has some great plan for her, and I just come in here and mess all that up? Stuff like that. I just wanted to be sure.
So I was like 80 to 95% sure. I figured we'd get married. We discussed the topic a little. I didn't know this, but in her country, you get engaged by going to see her parents-- usually taking your parents to meet hers. In my country, the man drops down on one knee and gives her a ring. I wanted to surprise her. We'd talk about marriage, but too much talk of it bothered me. It kind of stole my thunder for the proposal. And I didn't want to commit to being engaged without proposing. So we'd talk a little about it. If I had it to do over again, I would talk in depth about marriage, and what we were expecting out of each other if we married. But things turned out well, anyway.
So for months, I prayed about this. We had that first conversation on February 16th and probably in early to mid May, she went on a short-term missions trip to an island in the country, way up in the jungle. It was quite an adventure for her. I bought her a cell phone, but it usually didn't work, not in the jungle anyway. During that time, I decided I was going to pray and make up my mind.
Do you know what helped me? I had two friends, both Americans as it turned out, one married to a woman from the same country, but from another ethnic group. This guy had said the way he made decisions was to pray, "If you don't want me to do it, stop me." I thought that sounded unspiritual. Later, he explained it. He said if he had to make a decision, he'd consider whether anything in the Bible spoke in favor of it or against it. He'd pray and see if the Lord seemed to be offering direction. But he realized that doing nothing was also a decision, so he'd just trust God and make a decision, and pray, "If you don't want me to do it, stop me." God can speak to your heart after you decide to do something.
Then I talked to this missionary on the phone about making decisions, marriage, etc. He told me I was supposed to be enjoying this time, not stressing out about it. He said he'd pray and just make a decision, and then sometimes the Lord would speak to his heart or he wouldn't have peace about it before he took the action.
There were a number of other factors that were contributing toward me having doubts on this, other people's input and things like that, but I'll not go into all that. I'd talked with my parents and they seemed supportive.
So I knelt down and prayed within a couple of days before my wife came back from the missions trip. So I prayed and told the Lord all the reasons I believed I should marry this woman. If it wasn't His will, I asked Him to stop me, but I was going to go for it.
Before, I'd been at 90 or 95% sure. When I made the decision, I was at 100%. This was going to happen. It was the Lord's will. I had peace about it. I proposed to her around mid-July.
The evening after I picked her up from the train station after her missions trip, I took her to a night service. An evangelist prophesied over us that night about us going to many places and meeting many people. He'd been in the US for a year. I knew him, but he hadn't known me since I started dating. That's a pretty big deal to prophesy something that implies people will be married. I'd have really loved a confirmation prophecy before I decided to propose. I prayed a lot for that sort of thing. I think the Lord waited on purpose until it was a done deal as far as I was concerned to teach me about wise decision-making.
To explain why I wasn't going to be taking her out the next Monday, I told my wife I would be meeting with an older man from church. He helped me pick out an engagement ring for her. The next night, I think, was my birthday. We had an excuse to dress up and go out some place nice, a buffet, but I couldn't eat much, and I probably rushed her. Once she got pass all the joyful tears and emotions and stuff, she said 'yes.' They didn't do the one knee thing there, and it came as a big surprise to her.
Then we faced the real obstacles to getting married-- trying to get consensus about a date and how and when in a collectivist extended family, and opposition to our plans from one party when her parents had approved it, and other family issues. They say her people group is the hardest to marry into in her whole country. I got adopted into the people-group as her cousin to marry her. That three-day cattle-car/refugee-style ship ride to get to her parents town was quite an ordeal. Then there was wedding planning around Christmas without a lot of friends around to help because of other commitments. But it happened.
Maybe your boyfriend could benefit from talking to mature godly men about how to make decisions. Both the guys I talked to had done stuff. One had planted a church, I think, and started two or three Bible colleges. The other had been successful in starting a couple of companies.
