Marnie experienced the absolute dream proposal on the beach at sunset in Fiji – but unfortunately it’s what happened after the proposal that threw her for an absolute six. Just 10 days later, while she was still floating on cloud nine, her fiancé told her something that quickly had her plummeting right back down to earth…
Welcome to our series, The Love Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, fairy-tale endings, setbacks and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences with love – from the woman who cheated on her husband with a work colleague, one woman’s temptation now the love of her life is finally single (although she’s not), and the woman who forced her husband to choose between her and his girlfriend.
It had been three-and-a-half years since Marnie and Tom had swiped right and formed an instant connection.
“It was quite crazy really,” says Marnie. “We lived on streets that ran parallel to each other – like a two minute walk from each other. There was a supermarket close by that we went to, a chemist and a little bar where we both liked to go. We must have crossed paths so many times.”
But after exchanging a few messages on Tinder they agreed to meet for a wine at the little bar around the corner.
“I didn’t tell Tom how close I lived, because I obviously didn’t want him to know in case he turned out to be a psycho,” says Marnie.
She told him she lived down the road on the third date at the little bar – their third date in as many days.
“It all happened pretty quickly,” says Marnie. “There just didn’t seem to be the games I’d felt with other guys I’d met on the apps – like it didn’t feel like he was dating around and talking to other people. It was like, we were dating and then very quickly he was my boyfriend – we didn’t have a conversation about it at any stage, it’s just how it was!”
Marnie knew Tom had been single for about a year, apart from a girl he’d dated for about two months on-and-off. Before then, he’d been in a relationship for nine years, but they’d grown apart.
“They’d met when they were both 23 and Tom said they’d just become different people and broke up,” she says.
Now, three-and-a-half years into dating him, Tom told Marnie he’d received quite a decent bonus at work and wanted to book them a holiday.
“It was the middle of winter and he suggested Fiji so, yeah, it was an easy yes,” she says.
Her friends were immediately excited.
“There had been a lot of weddings and I think they all thought we were next,” she says.
And sure enough, as Marnie and Tom walked along the beach at sunset, Tom got down on one knee and proposed.
“He was meant to do it further along at this spot he’d picked out, but he was getting way too nervous,” says Marnie. “I’d forgotten about the proposal – I thought he was getting sick or something because he was acting so weirdly and then he suddenly dropped down and I figured it out.”
They kept the happy news to themselves that night, but the next morning they started Facetiming their family and friends.
“I was, like, beyond happy,” says Marnie. “I felt like I was floating, I was so happy. I remember I just like held my hand up to the camera and waited for my friends to answer the call. It was the best feeling.”
When they realised what was going on, a woman in one of the restaurants alongside the beach had taken a few photos of Tom and Marnie during the proposal. The photos were lovely – they were so thrilled to unexpectedly have them – and Marnie posted one up on to Instagram that night.
“It was so sweet,” says Marnie. “We were in an absolute daze after the proposal and then this woman came running over with her phone to show us and send us them. And then, yeah, I would be totally lying if I said I didn’t get some real satisfaction, I guess, or like, validation from posting the best one on social media. You’re already feeling this total high from getting engaged, and then it’s intoxicating seeing all the likes and comments from people.”
A couple of days later the pair returned home, still on cloud nine. They came home to flowers on the doorstep, and then another big bunch was waiting on her desk at work, from her colleagues. She met up with friends after work for a glass of bubbles, and again with others the next night – although, unfortunately her new fiancé couldn’t make it.
“Man, I was such a high,” she says. “It’s a bit of a blur. I remember I had what I thought was kind a joking go at Tom, about how quickly he’d come back down to earth while I was still floating around on this engagement high, but it wasn’t something I gave any thought to. Like, that’s the norm, I figured. Engagements do seem to mean more to women, so it’s normal we’d celebrate and it be a big deal for longer than men.”
But, unfortunately for Marnie, there did seem to be more to it for Tom. When she really looks back at it, he seemed just as happy as her during the holiday where he proposed, but he quickly came back and got stuck into work and – if anything – he seemed more stressed and worried than before they left for Fiji.
At first, Marnie figured it was just work. “We’d been away for a week – I thought maybe he had a lot to catch up on,” she says.
But, he was suddenly distant – and hard to pin down. “I barely saw him during that first work week,” she says. “Yeah, I went out after work a couple of times, but he worked late the others.”
Marnie tried to make plans to have dinner with her family to celebrate the engagement on the Friday night, but he had a work commitment. He told her he’d offered to help a mate move house on the Saturday – he’d committed to it a couple of months earlier and didn’t want to let them down.
“I was still in the bubble,” she says. “I just wanted to be around him and to celebrate.”
On the Saturday, he didn’t come home until 11pm – way later than Marnie expected him. “I was pretty pissed at him when he got in the door,” she says. “I’d made him dinner – he’d obviously had a couple of drinks, but said he’d been helping with the move and was exhausted and just needed to go to sleep.”
The next morning when Marnie woke up, Tom wasn’t there. He left a note saying he’d gone for a run.
But when he came home, about 10.30am he walked in wearing jeans and a t-shirt, with his head down, unable to look Marnie in the eye.
She had no idea what was going on – and no idea he was about to drop a bombshell.
“He looked like he’d been crying, I was so freaked out,” says Marnie. “He sat down on the couch and I, like, had my arm around him, telling him everything was okay, and then he said, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t get married to you.’”
At first, Marnie didn’t seem to be able to even absorb the information.
“I kept rubbing his back, going, ‘you’re okay, everything’s okay’ and he had to be like, ‘you’re not listening, I’m sorry, I’m leaving, we’re not getting married.’”
As Marnie began to understand what he was saying and that he wasn’t joking, she asked what the hell had changed in a week. Tom told her that coming back home he’d realised it was a mistake and unfortunately he knew that it wasn’t the right thing for him.
“Not to be too dramatic, but I felt like I was dead in that moment,” says Marnie. “Nothing would compute, I couldn’t take in the information, it was horrible – too horrible. I must have called my mum and she came – he pretty much left straight away.”
The next few weeks are a blur. Marnie’s mother ended up calling her boss and requesting that she have a week off.
“I remember feeling absolutely humiliated,” she says. “There was the pain of the relationship ending but also this massive humiliation – I had just told all these people about the engagement. It was on social media, I’d been out celebrating! Within 10 days, it was all over already. I don’t remember doing it, but I remember the going back and forth about whether to do it – I took down the engagement post from Instagram a few days later.”
Marnie says going back to work was horrific, but everyone was very supportive.
“I’m really close to one of the girls, so I asked her if she could delicately let people know the situation, so I didn’t have to deal with people’s comments or questions,” she says. “She was amazing. She told everyone in my team and said yip, tell her you know at some stage, but then let’s move on – let’s not keep talking about it, she doesn’t want to be treated differently. Most of them handled it perfectly – they sent emails before I came back to work saying they were sorry to hear my news and they were there if I wanted to talk or get out for a walk around the block at some stage, but they’d take my lead and only talk about it if I brought it up. That made the return so much easier.”
Marnie and her ex only spoke a handful of times in the aftermath – to split up their belongings and to try to talk through things, although Tom didn’t seem to be able to offer much explanation for what had happened.
“I was driving myself mad about it,” says Marnie. “How could everything change so quickly? How could he do that to me?”
Six months later though, Marnie had her answer.
Tom was back with his ex-girlfriend – the one he’d had a nine-year relationship with.
“I was on my phone late one night and I got a message through from a girl I didn’t know,” she says. “So, she was the girl who dated Tom between me and his ex. She’d seen him and his ex-girlfriend together that night at a restaurant. She thought we were still together and that I should know about it. She told me that when she dated him, they were together for six months but she broke up with him because she found out he’d cheated on her… with the ex.”
Marnie was horrified, but says the message ended up helping her get closure and move on.
“We’ve ended up becoming good friends,” she says. “She’s a cool chick and we have heaps in common. We caught up for a drink and it was so nice to have someone who had been through it with him too. And I think knowing that he went back to his ex made it easier in my mind to get through that time. It was the not knowing and just going over and over things in my mind trying to understand what happened that drove me crazy.”
Marnie doesn’t know exactly what happened, but she assumes now that Tom’s ex-girlfriend got in touch with him after seeing the proposal, wanting to get back together. “That woman has some kind of hold on him,” says Marnie. “She has played with him for years, by the sounds of things, and doesn’t actually want him, but doesn’t want him to be with anyone else. She’ll no doubt break up with him again sometime soon.”
Now, Marnie says she’s come out of the fog of the break-up and is feeling more optimistic about the future.
“I’m still so angry at him for the way he went about doing things, but hey, he wasn’t the right guy for me,” she says. “Hopefully the right guy is though and when we’re ready, we’ll meet.”
