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I Loved Him. So Why Did It Take Me Eight Years to Marry Him? · Health, Life & What’s Next

• 0:00
  Welcome to Health, Life and What's Next.
• 0:03
  with Dr.
• 0:03
  Jennifer Ginty.
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  This is the podcast where we explore what it really means to live well through honest conversations about health, life, business, and everything in between.
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  Because remember, healing is about more than medicine.
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  I'm so glad you are here.
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  Let's get into today's conversation I love him.
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  We have built a life together.
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  We have a daughter.
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  We bought a house.
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  We have history and still.
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  It took me eight years to walk down the aisle.
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  At one point, I even canceled the wedding.
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  And I know what some of you are probably thinking,"All right, Dr.
• 0:47
  Jenti, what happened?
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  Was there any infidelity?
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  Was somebody cheating?
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  Does somebody not want to commit?
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  Was the relationship secretly falling apart?".
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  The answer is no.
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  And I think that is what makes this conversation more interesting because we tend to believe that when somebody keeps postponing a major decision, there must be some dramatic reason behind it.
• 1:13
  Sometimes the thing standing between you and the life you say you want is much quieter.
• 1:19
  Sometimes it is fear, control, identity, timing, money, work, uncertainty, and a very intelligent woman like myself can give you 10 perfectly reasonable explanation for why now is not the right time.
• 1:37
  I'm gonna be a little vulnerable, and this is a question that has been asked by so many people, if we are gonna move forward in this new podcast, the direction of this podcast, I wanna be honest.
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  I am showing up every week, sharing things with you that you might not be able to, hear from doctors, or maybe you're thinking of it, or maybe you see a trend.
• 1:59
  I want to deepen the conversations that we have in this podcast.
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  So I could give you the polished story, but that would defeat the whole purpose, right?
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  This is Health: Life and What's Next with Dr.
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  Genti, where health meets real life.
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  And today, real life is messy, to give you some context I just recently got married July 11th, 2026, and I posted, a few clips online on my social media, and I've received a lot of congratulations, views, like, kind words.
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  People were just, like, supporting us, celebrating us, which I love all of that.
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  But I also receive questions i've been engaged for eight years.
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  They wanna know, why did it take you eight years to walk down the aisle?
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  So before we get to the why and all the excuses, first, I wanna tell you that I met Jack, my husband now, in 2016, and our relationship was not some perfect fairy tale.
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  I wanna be honest with you.
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  Hopefully, there will be no judgment here, right?
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  We love each other, but we fought a lot at the beginning of our relationship.
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  There were seasons where we were deeply connected and seasons where we frustrated the hell out of each other.
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  We had to learn how to communicate, how to fight differently.
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  We had to grow up in certain areas, at least I know I had to, and eventually we built a real life together.
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  Not an Instagram perfect relationship, like a real one.
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  One with responsibilities, with bills, with a child involved, a home, a career, stress, two personalities, two histories, two people trying to figure out how to build something together without losing themselves.
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  The love is real, but so was the work.
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  Nobody told me I had to put in work.
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  And I think that was one of the things that scared me the most, because I had spent most of my adult life learning how to succeed by depending on me, on myself.
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  I put myself to school.
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  I figured out all of the things.
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  I went through medical training myself, I built a career.
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  I built a clinical practice, a very successful functional medicine practice.
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  I was able to figure out all the problems.
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  I handled all of it.
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  I had created an identity around being the woman who could figure things out, and that identity served me extremely well until I entered a part of life where doing everything myself was no longer the goal because there was somebody else involved.
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  Marriage was scary to me in a way that building a business was not, and that might sounds crazy because building a business is terrifying.
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  I'm not saying it's not.
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  Because you can lose money.
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  You can make mistakes.
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  You can hire the wrong people.
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  You can have months where the numbers make you question your entire existence.
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  But there was something about business that still felt comfortable to me because I was in charge.
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  If something went wrong, I could fix it.
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  I will always find a solution.
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  I could work harder.
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  I can change the strategy.
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  I can stay later.
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  I can hire another coach, another program business rewarded the exact qualities I had spent my whole life Developing, which is control, independence, drive, problem-solving.
• 5:19
  Marriage was like those are great, but we are going to need some other skills, too.
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  Like compromise, because when you marry, you have to compromise, you have to have patience, you have to trust, and you have to be vulnerable.
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  Letting another human being affects your plan.
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  Staying in a conversation where you would rather walk away.
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  Accepting that you can love someone but still get angry with them.
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  Realizing that partnership does not mean everybody does things your way.
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  That is different, because you cannot CEO your marriage.
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  Trust me, I tried.
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  Ask Jack, okay?
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  Somewhere along the way, I think I started choosing the business because the business felt easier to control.
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  Every time marriage came up, I had a reason.
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  Every time we had to get married, I had a reason, and these were very good reasons in my head.
• 6:11
  To myself, I'm like,"Yep, that, those are important reasons." The most dangerous excuses are not ridiculous, they are reasonable.
• 6:19
  At one point it was,"This is not the right time." Then COVID happened.
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  "Well, obviously we cannot do it now." Then the world started opening back up.
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  "Okay, but now the business needs attention.
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  Then we should probably save more money because wedding are expensive." Then I came up to- with,"I have too much happening right now," or,"I'm stressed," or,"The business is going through a transition.
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  I want to be able to enjoy the process.
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  Maybe next year we'll get married." I could always find something to postpone And entrepreneurs are especially good at this because the business will always give you another reason.
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  The business will never knock on your door and say,"Well, Dr.
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  Jencie, everything is perfect now.
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  Payroll is handled forever.
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  Revenue is guaranteed until you die.
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  Nobody will ever quit, or you'll never have to fire a human at all.
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  No unexpected expenses will ever occur.
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  Please go enjoy your personal life," okay?
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  That memo never arrives.
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  That knock, I never received that knock at my door.
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  There will always be another goal, and I began realizing something uncomfortable.
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  The business needed me, but I also needed the business to need me because work gave me somewhere safe to put my energy.
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  If I was working, I did not have to sit with uncertainty.
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  I could call myself productive instead of scared, and nobody questions a successful woman for working too much.
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  In fact, they applaud you.
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  They're like,"Oh, look at her over there.
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  She's focused.
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  She's building something.
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  I'm so proud of her." But sometimes I was also hiding.
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  If I'm being honest with you, I was hiding.
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  So then at one point, I canceled the wedding last year, 2025, when I realized, oh my God, this is happening, People booked the rooms.
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  I canceled the wedding.
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  And that forced me to confront something because once I stepped back, I had to ask myself, What exactly are you waiting for?" And people ask me, and even Jack asked me, he's like,"Babe, what are we waiting for?
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  Seriously, what needs to happen?
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  How much money do we need, right?
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  How successful does the business need to be?" How calm does life need to be?
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  How certain do you need to feel?
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  What exactly, what set of circumstances will finally say,"Yes, I'm ready to have this wedding"?
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  And I could not answer any of those questions, because every time one condition was satisfied, I created another condition.
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  That is when I started realizing maybe the problem is the timing.
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  Maybe the problem is me needing certainty before I'm willing to move, and that was hard.
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  That was really hard.
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  Because I had confused control with safety for a very long time.
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  And when the wedding became real, my anxiety increased.
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  Instead of recognizing this is a major life transition, of course I felt something.
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  It's uncomfortable.
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  My mind did what a lot of anxious, high-functioning people do.
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  It started investigating.
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  What could go wrong?
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  What am I overlooking?
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  What does this feeling mean?
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  Maybe we should wait.
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  This is a sign we should not do this wedding.
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  Maybe this is not the right time.
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  And I had to learn something I wish more women talked about Not every uncomfortable feeling is a warning sign, okay?
• 9:48
  Sometimes you are uncomfortable because you are changing, you are growing, you are evolving.
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  Sometimes you are anxious because you can no longer stand at the edge of your life and talk about what you might do someday.
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  You actually have to choose, and choosing closes the door on the fantasy that you can control every possible outcome.
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  I think independent women struggle with this more than we admit.
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  We celebrate independence, and we should, because this is awesome, but there is a version of independence that becomes a prison, It says,"I don't need anybody.
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  I'll do it myself.
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  Nobody does it the way I do.
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  Let me handle it.
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  I got it.
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  And eventually, you, you really do have it.
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  You have all of it.
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  You have the responsibility, every decision, the problem, the mental load, and then you're miserable because you are carrying a lot, and when somebody tries to take something off your plate, you're like,"No, no, no, no, no, don't do that.
• 10:47
  Don't worry about it.
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  We got this.
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  I got this." We say we want help, but we want to supervise the help.
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  We say we want partnership, but we still want to veto power over everything.
• 11:00
  We say we are tired of doing everything, but part of our identity is built around being the woman who does everything.
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  That was something I had to heal from.
• 11:11
  The belief that needing nobody made me stronger, the belief that sharing control meant losing myself, the belief that if I could predict and manage everything, I could prevent disappointment, and marriage exposed all of that Because marriage is not,"I surrender my identity." Marriage to me is that I'm still me, but every decision cannot resolve around me anymore, and that is different.
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  And here's the part I really did not expect.
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  The closer I got to happiness, the more I could sabotage it.
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  We talk constantly about fear of failure.
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  Nobody talks about fear of getting what you actually ask for.
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  Because getting it means things change.
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  Getting it means you have something to lose.
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  Getting it means you can no longer live inside the identity you used to survive.
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  I spent years being the independent doctor, the entrepreneur, the woman building her own thing, the woman handled her business.
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  And then life was saying,"Well, okay, you built it, but are you capable of actually living inside the life you created?" That question hit me hard, because there's a difference between building a good life and allowing yourself to experience one.
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  I was fantastic at building, and I still is.
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  Enjoying it, being present, let life being perfect and still good, that required different muscle.
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  And eventually something shifted.
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  There was not one magical morning when I woke up and thought like, I've healed every fear.
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  Marriage sounds easy now." Absolutely not.
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  The shift was simpler.
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  I realized I was tired of letting fear make decisions for me.
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  I was tired of moving the finish line.
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  I was tired of saying I wanted something, I wanted to marry him, we wanna be together, and then creating another condition before I could have it.
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  And I realized something else.
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  I could spend another eight years waiting.
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  There would always be another reason, another excuse.
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  So eventually we made the decision.
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  We sat down.
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  I'm like,"Okay, I think we're ready to do this." He's like,"Yeah, I'm ready to do this." And then we planned the wedding on a much shorter timeline than I ever thought I would.
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  And ironically, after eight years of wanting more, having less time helped me more Because I did not have 12 months to overthink every details.
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  We had to decide this, that.
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  We had family supporting us., It was, like, everything fell.
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  Everything just happened beautifully, and that was healing, too.
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  Everything did not have to be perfect.
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  I had to keep telling myself that.
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  Everyone did not have to agree.
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  Every possibility did not have to be explored.
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  I did not need complete control in order to have a beautiful experience.
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  I simply needed to participate in it and allowing it to happen.
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  And now, now that I'm married, one of the things I appreciate most is the respect and partnership inside this relationship.
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  Not perfection, but respect.
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  There's something different about knowing this person knows me.
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  Not the Dr.
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  Jenty, not the business owner, not the woman who can walk into a room and take charge.
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  Me.
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  And we have huge, and we had ugly moments, beautiful moments, arguments, growth, pressure, life, and we are still choosing to figure it out.
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  That means more to me than some fantasy of having relationship where nothing ever goes wrong.
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  Because I understand marriage differently now.
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  Marriage is not proof that you found the perfect person.
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  It is a decision that two imperfect people are willing to keep doing the work, and that is what changed for me.
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  I stopped asking, how can I know nothing will go wrong?" And started asking,"Do I believe we are willing to work through what comes?" And those are very different question All right, so strangely, this experience has made me understand some of my patients differently too.
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  I have women come into my office.
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  They want to feel better.
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  They are exhausted.
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  They want their energy back.
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  They want answers.
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  They want the health, the bodies, the brain back, and I believe them.
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  But sometimes wanting the outcome and being ready for everything the outcome requires are two different things.
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  And I'm not judging anyone, I'm not shaming or blaming,'cause I know it because I did it.
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  I've, exactly, I just explained to you.
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  You can want healing and still postpone the appointment.
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  You can want more energy, but refuse to change the schedule that is draining you.
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  You can want less stress, but continue saying yes to everything.
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  You can want your body to change without wanting your life to change.
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  And sometimes we tell ourselves,"I'll do it when things calm down.
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  I'll do it when I have more money.
• 16:09
  I'll do it when the kids are out of the house.""I'll do it when I have more time." I hear it all the time from my patients, that they have been struggling for years, but there was never the perfect time to work on their health.
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  Because that is exactly what I did with my marriage.
• 16:24
  We are all capable of postponing the thing we say we want, because the work attached to it feels so uncomfortable, feels hard, feels the results are unknown, Healing asks something of you.
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  Marriage asks something of you.
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  Growth asks something of you.
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  You do not only choose the result, you choose the responsibility attached to the result, and that is the part nobody puts on the vision board.
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  So when people ask,"Why did I take eight years?" Or, why did it take eight years?" The answer is complicated.
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  Because COVID played a role, money played a role, the business played a role.
• 17:04
  Our relationship had difficult seasons.
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  We fought, we made love, we had things to work through.
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  Life happens.
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  Those things were real.
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  But the deepest reason is that I was scared.
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  I wanted certainty.
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  I wanted control.
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  I had built an identity around being independent, and every time the next chapter required me to loosen my grip, I found a respectable reason to wait, until I finally realized fear was never going to volunteer to leave.
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  I had to stop letting it run my life I did not walk down the aisle because I finally became fearless.
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  I walked down the aisle because I became willing to move while some fears were still there.
• 17:49
  And maybe that is the part of the story that has nothing to do with marriage.
• 17:53
  Maybe you are not postponing a wedding, maybe you are postponing your health, your business, tough conversation, the appointment, boundaries,, the next version of your life, and you have reasons.
• 18:04
  I'm sure it's good reasons, We think to believe everything that, that every reason we have is good.
• 18:09
  But I'm not telling you your reasons or excuses.
• 18:13
  Some reasons are well, some delays are necessary, some opportunities should be declined, but there's a question I think we all have to be brave enough to ask.
• 18:23
  Is this reason still protecting me from something real, or is this protecting me from having to change?
• 18:30
  That was the question I had to ask myself all at the end of last year to arrive to the decision,"Yes, let's go.
• 18:37
  Let's do this." Because at some point I realized I was not waiting for the right time, I was waiting to become a woman who could guarantee that nothing would hurt, nothing would change, and nothing would be outside of my control.
• 18:51
  That woman does not exist, okay?
• 18:54
  I'm telling you it does not.
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  So I stopped waiting, and I walked down the aisle as myself.
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  I'm still ambitious, I'm still independent, I'm still building, I'm still growing, I'm still learning.
• 19:04
  Okay?
• 19:05
  I'm still wanting everything to be done my way occasionally, But softer in some places, more honest with myself, more willing to share the weight, and more willing to let myself have a life that I did not have to control completely in order to love.
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  That may be the real healing.
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  Not become fearless, not become dependent, not become somebody else, but just recognizing when the strength that built one chapter of your life is becoming the very thing preventing you from entering the next one.
• 19:38
  So maybe the question is not, why haven't you done it yet?
• 19:44
  Maybe the better question is, what part of you is afraid of who you will have to become once you finally do it?
• 19:51
  Because sometimes we are not postponing a wedding, right?
• 19:54
  For you, it might not be a wedding, it might be healing.
• 19:56
  Like I said, business decision.
• 19:58
  We are postponing the version of ourselves that can no longer hide behind the exam- the same excuses, and that was the truth I finally had to face.
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  I did not need more time, I needed more honesty.
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  I needed to stop waiting for fear to disappear before I gave myself permission.
• 20:15
  So after eight years of finding reasons to wait, I finally stopped asking whether I could control what came at.
• 20:24
  I decided I would rather risk living the life I wanted Because at some point, I realized the biggest risk was no longer getting married the biggest risk was spending another year letting fear make my decisions Maybe the question is why haven't you done it yet.
• 20:41
  Maybe the better question is what part of you would have to change if you finally do it?
• 20:47
  Because sometimes we're not postponing a wedding, right?
• 20:50
  We're postponing the change that we so need.
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  Okay?
• 20:53
  So I needed to stop waiting for fear to disappear before I gave myself permission to live.
• 21:00
  So after eight years of finding reasons to wait, I finally stopped asking whether I could control what came next, and I decided I would rather risk living the life I wanted than spend another year being protected from it.
• 21:16
  I hope you find this podcast valuable so after eight years of finding reasons to wait, I finally stopped asking whether I could control what came next.
• 21:26
  I decided I would rather risk living the life I wanted than spend another year being protected from it That is fantastic.
• 21:35
  You completed another episode.
• 21:39
  So thank you for spending this time with me.
• 21:42
  If today's conversation gave you a new perspective, I hope you carry it with you into the rest of your week.
• 21:48
  If someone you love needs to hear this today, share this episode with them.
• 21:54
  Until next time, take good care of yourself.
• 21:57
  I'll meet you back here for our next conversation.