Breaking up is difficult. It’s supposed to be that way because there should be some sort of bond in a relationship or else it wasn’t much of a relationship to begin with. So obviously breaking an engagement is a hundred times more difficult.
It is not only ok to break an engagement, it is often a smart and necessary thing to do. And it happens far more often than most people realize. Approximately 20% of all engagements are broken before the wedding. Judging by the 50% divorce rate, many more engagements should have been broken.
When Mary became pregnant with Jesus, she was engaged to be married to Joseph. At that time an engagement was a binding contract and to break the engagement Joseph would have had to divorce her as he contemplated doing before Gabriel spoke to him. There is no such binding agreement with an engagement today.
Even if a couple has had sex in anticipation that they would be married, this should not be reason to get married. While sex before marriage is a mistake, it should not be compounded by going into a bad marriage that will likely end in divorce.
Breaking off an engagement should not be taken lightly. It becomes increasingly complicated as wedding plans are made. But if there are problems in a relationship before marriage, those problems will not be solved by getting married. Instead those problems will only become amplified as a couple shares every aspect of their lives together.
Every effort should be made to reconcile problems in a relationship before breaking off an engagement. If you are able resolve your issues you’ll learn valuable problem solving skills that will help you in your marriage. Every relationship will have problems, so just because there is a disagreement in your relationship, it doesn’t mean that your future marriage is doomed. But you should never ignore problems and just assume that they’ll go away. They won’t.
No relationship is perfect but if things can’t be reconciled, the worst mistake that can be made is to drag those problems into a marriage. Breaking off an engagement is a difficult thing to do but it will save a lot more heartache in the future.