Before I Say Yes: How Liven Helped Me Understand Whether I Was Ready for Marriage
Hello, I’m Anna. And I have always known that I wanted to marry and start a family, not despite but because of my love for my career and my passion for traveling. And yet, relationship after relationship, I have been putting it aside, as if I wasn’t sure. The older I got, the more serious my relationships became. Then, just before I began to think about entering the dating world for the final time and finding The One, I realized that, perhaps, I wasn’t 100% on board yet.
It became such an obsession that I caught myself in sleep procrastination, waking up anxious at night, and even missing out on social connections with my friends. I needed to understand what I was looking for. And I did. Thanks to Liven, I became ready to find the right partner. And now, I am happily engaged and have only the best hopes for life.
About Liven
Let’s start from the simple question: “What is Liven?” — and I’ll cover some basics about this app.
I found Liven after browsing social media. I was just googling “Am I ready for marriage?” and “How do you know when you want to commit?” and Liven just popped out. That’s how I found out that it is a self-discovery companion for people like me. It believes in taking control over one’s life and tapping into one’s authentic self. In many ways, Liven teaches people to shed the expectations of others and look at themselves as they are.
Liven has these tools:
- Mood tracker
- Self-guides
- Routine builder
- Background sounds
- AI assistant Livie
- Tests.
Why I Was on the Fence
Although I have been passionate about marriage for almost my entire life, my relationships just… kept flopping. Sometimes, I was pushing my boyfriends away (sure, there were a few bad apples, but most of them were very decent people), and I was keeping my distance. I was always nitpicking our relationship in my head. After a few years of being together, I began to feel restless.
I didn’t have a strong network as a kid, and most of my friendships fell through after several years of uni. While I love my parents dearly, I have had a rocky relationship with my mom. She has always been a strong and generous woman, but life was tough for her, and her first husband — the one before my dad — didn’t turn out to be a great match.
After examining these pieces of the puzzle, I was even more baffled. I had a few people to be painfully honest with and needed someone loving in my corner. So why didn’t I want to find the man who would understand me?
How I Began to Notice the Patterns
When I started using Liven, I stuck to the mood tracker and habit builder (or a to-do list). I decided to add a few positives to my life and used the dopamine menu from the habit builder, which became my go-to for bad days. I also added a few tasks, such as “Go out on Saturday,” just to keep myself open-minded.
However, I believe that the first step toward realization was my experience with the mood tracker. In it, users can log their feelings throughout the day and, by doing so, become more aware of what they experience in certain situations. After two months of using Mood Tracker, I noticed that the majority of my negative moods correlated with my family visits and my workplace Friday meeting. My mom kept talking to me about marriage. She always told me about how important it was to find a good man. Strangely enough, I noticed that I was sad every time after that. Nervous. Even disgusted.
How I Dug Deeper
I received my personalized course from Liven after taking a quiz. It was a smooth process. The plan I got? Great. My findings about what pains me? Not so much.
Liven is pretty clear about its philosophy: what we feel directly depends on the thoughts in our head. And this, of course, is related to our behavior. After reading through Liven’s short pieces every day, I discovered a lot about myself. I found out that I have several cognitive distortions that directly stem from my past experiences.
I wanted to marry, yes. But underneath that? I had these deeply ingrained beliefs:
- “I should either have a perfect man to marry or none at all.” — This, I learned, was an all-or-nothing viewpoint.
- “If such a wonderful woman as my mom didn’t have a reliable husband at first, my own life will be a nightmare. No one will want to be with me.” — This I identified as catastrophic thinking.
I realized that these stopped me from finding the right person.
Where I Am Now
I do a lot of self-work. I have regular talks with Livie, Liven’s assistant, when I’m having doubts about whether I’m behaving irrationally again. But I’ve also decided to find a therapist, and she laughed when I told her all about my cognitive distortions and views, saying that I was very much self-inquisitive.
While it was a slow process, I managed to tackle these perceptions. After several months, I started to go out and date again. It was nervous, but every time I felt panicked, I kept analyzing and addressing potential mental barriers. It’s a tough process. It requires a lot of honesty and a willingness to be vulnerable. But I wanted to stop this constant worry in my mind.
And now, almost a year after using Liven, I am engaged to the most adorable and kind-hearted man in the world. And it’s exactly where I want to be, with a person I love with all my heart.
Conclusion
Sometimes, when we don’t know what we want, we might be living someone else’s truths. When it comes to such crucial, life-changing events, being on the right path is critical. And now, with Liven, I understand the person in the mirror. And I am ready to build the next stage of my life with confidence and hope for the future.
Written by: Rebecca Miller
