If you're engaged more than a year, there's something up.

In the words of Nicholas Stoller—“If you’re engaged more than a year, there’s something up. There’s a lot of debate as to whether one should or shouldn’t get married, but when you get engaged, it’s a promise to get married, and if you don’t just do it within a year, one of the parties is using the excuse of, like, ‘I can’t find the right venue’ to put off the wedding.”—we are confronted with the weight of engagement. It is not a trinket of romance, nor a gesture to be stretched into eternity, but a promise: a vow that points forward, demanding fulfillment. To linger too long in this state is to risk transforming a covenant into hesitation, and a vow into doubt.

The ancients knew the peril of delayed commitments. In the Roman world, an oath sworn before witnesses carried binding power. To defer its fulfillment was seen not as patience but as betrayal. The man who pledged service and withheld it, or the general who promised action but delayed, was judged unworthy. So too with engagement: once the promise is given, the time for endless waiting has passed. The bond must be sealed, or suspicion grows that the heart falters.

Stoller’s words pierce deeper still, for he unmasks the excuses that often cover fear or uncertainty. The search for the “perfect venue” or the “perfect time” may hide a deeper truth—that one heart is reluctant, unwilling to pass from promise into permanence. The ancients spoke of this in allegory: Penelope, though faithful, delayed her suitors by weaving and unweaving her tapestry. Her waiting was noble, for it guarded loyalty to Odysseus. Yet when delay is born not of loyalty but of hesitation, it becomes a shadow over the vow.

History itself offers warning. The Trojan War was ignited not by swift commitment but by wavering loyalties and broken promises. Paris and Helen’s bond, born of passion, lacked the swift seal of honor, and thus drew nations into ruin. Commitment delayed, or corrupted by doubt, becomes not a private matter but a storm that spreads outward, sowing strife in families and communities alike.

Thus, let us learn: an engagement is not meant to be endless, but to mark the passage from promise into action. To delay without cause weakens trust, to hide reluctance beneath excuses corrodes love. The wise know that vows are not meant to linger like mist—they are meant to become flesh and deed. For love grows strong not in hesitation, but in the courage to seal promise with action.