Maybe instead of being afraid of walking down the aisle without him knowing, you should be afraid of walking down the aisle without YOU knowing why you did it. If you don’t understand why you did it before then, I would suspect that it is possible that you might do it again. Maybe it was, in fact, just about one crazy night. I don’t deny that possibility. But the whole “‘til death do us part” kind of warrants an investigation that ends with a more definitive answer.

It’s tough to be a woman today, when societal pressures to marry are so strong that the line between what one really wants and what society really wants is blurred. It’s not your fault: We grew up with Barbie, the seemingly-independent blonde bombshell, but playing Barbie was never quite complete without Ken. So, I can understand that when a man you love asks to spend his life with you, your first inclination is to say, “Yes.” But the question becomes, what are you saying yes to? Is it the relief that you are not going to have to go it alone, or is it that this is the person you have always dreamed about sharing a life with?

I have known a lot of people who’ve cheated on partners that they loved deeply. At first, the cheating seemed like it was independent of what was going on in the relationship. However, in hindsight, they all came to the same conclusion; the cheating was symptomatic of something deeper that they weren’t aware of at the time. Even though they loved their partner and thought they could be with them forever, something inside knew better and acted out. Call it what you want—subconscious, intuition, gut feeling—but sometimes that little voice knows better than we do. And if cheating is out of your personality then it might speak volumes about your relationship with this man. Alcohol might have been the catalyst, but something else was operating underneath.