Does a promise to marry count as a marriage?
I’m a convert to Catholicism and had a question about something from before I became Catholic.
Several years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I made a private agreement that if COVID lockdowns returned, we would get married. We also discussed engagement several times during the relationship. However, we never held a wedding ceremony, exchanged vows formally, involved a church or civil authority, or considered ourselves married in any real sense. We also discussed engagement several times. The relationship ended years ago.
Now that I’m dating again, I’ve started wondering whether that sort of agreement could have any significance in the eyes of the Church, or whether it’s something that would require an annulment or other action before marriage in the future.
My intuition is that this was not a marriage at all, but I wanted to ask whether I’m thinking about this correctly from a Catholic/canon law perspective.
I'll confess that I'm primarily asking out of anxiety from being reminded of this agreement I made, and it being an impediment to getting married in the future.