DP of two years still isn’t sure about marriage

”I think we all know a good few men who at one point ‘weren’t sure’ and messed a DP around for 6 years for him then to be engaged within 12 months of their break up.”

Absolutely, this is as certain as death and taxes.

I think we all know a good few men who at one point ‘weren’t sure’ and messed a DP around for 6 years for him then to be engaged within 12 months of their break up

yes, crazy how often this happens. Every man I know who has said they 'don't believe in marraige' or the good old 'it's only a piece of paper' have strung their partner along for a number of years until they fall for someone and marry within months. So many men with women that they think will just do for now because it makes life easier for them to be living with a girlfriend

It’s no less than any man would do.

Please don’t encourage the OP to waste her best years.

Ideally she would just ditch him after his non committal deer in headlights response, but in reality she will not be able to practically or emotionally, for some time. So the best solution is for her to look out for her own needs. She doesn’t owe her DP anything or need to ‘be true to him’ after he has shown his disinterest in marriage.

Put yourself and your future children first OP.

i am sorry but if you had of sat down and said that to me after two years into my relationship i would also have been like a deer in headlights. And i speak as a women. To me two years is still relatively new to me and i am enjoying the relationship and getting to know someone. i hadn't even gone abroad on hols with my now husband, which by the way we only have just got married after nearly 18 years together and only got engaged 4 years ago. We moved in after 4 years together and have been through alot since but actually marriage was never discussed really. Was shocked when he proposed ( no way did i put pressure on him at all, hadn't really thought about it). That was also during a time everyone around us was getting married and having babies, but we were and still our happy with our lives. As people say is is children that has you asking this question ? Are people asking you questions about weddings etc ? Are you getting pressure from family and friends? If this is the case you need to sist down and have a serious chat with your boyfriend. Listen to him what he wants aswell as what you want. This is your lives not anyone else's. i do remember quiet vidvidly about 6 years into our relationship that one of my boyfriends cousins( female) believed totally that all women should be married by time they are 30. She was shocked that i didnt agree with her. To me i felt things happen for a reason and enjoyed life as it came

Are you for real?!

Stay in this relationship but date? This is just ridiculous. Plus, the caliber of any potential suitor happy with knowing OP is in a relationship will be pretty dire.

Sounds to me the OPs DP is being realistic and sensible.

Doesn’t want to marry you.

he’s a rabbit in the headlights because he probably thought he had a bit longer without you rocking the boat. His cosy home might be at risk now. He literally
got a woman to play house with him without having this conversation at all.

2 years is plenty long enough for a man in his thirties to know whether or not he wants to spend his life with you. Men will waste women’s time because they can. If he wants kids and marriage, he knows full well he has 10 years minimum to make his mind up. It’s why they continue to date like students, avoiding difficult conversations because they don’t have to have them. And women don’t instigate them because they are far too concerned with being chill and not ‘scaring them off’.

I think we all know a good few men who at one point ‘weren’t sure’ and messed a DP around for 6 years for him then to be engaged within 12 months of their break up.

I would listen to your gut carefully.

I think if he was indeed looking terrified I would be thinking he isn't sure about what you have and would be wary.

Ploughing ahead and having children witj a man who isn't committed enough to marry is madness.

I think women who are brutally honest with themselves, what they want and what are deal breakers for them, do best in the long run.

Sticking around, compromising on your dreams, hoping they will marry you is for women who often bitterly regret their choices.

Value yourself, your dreams, your deal breakers.

Best to move on if he isn't on the same page IMO.

Set yourself a deadline, say 6-12 months where you will continue to cohabit, but make your own secret plans to go it on your own and date as much as you can during that time as you might meet someone better. If, within that timescale your DP proposes, you can consider whether you do actually want to marry him. But more than likely, you will meet someone else who is more keen on taking the same life path as you.

This is awful advice - you are advocating that she go behind her partners back and secretly date other men?!! FFS if she's prepared to do that then the relationship has zero basis of trust to begin with!? Obviously please don't do this OP.

Remain truthful to your partner and yourself OP. If you genuinely love and want to marry him then that is your honest feeling and you shouldn't feel you have to pretend otherwise to play it cool. If he doesn't feel the same way then yes you will need to move on.

Don’t make the mistake I did.
Start dating now. You’re single until your married.
Try your best to find a better option - someone who wants to marry you and not have to coaxed into it.
If you own a house together, etc. it’s difficult to suddenly break up and more than likely you will wind up 38 and no further along with him. And don’t give in to temptation to baby trap him either.
Set yourself a deadline, say 6-12 months where you will continue to cohabit, but make your own secret plans to go it on your own and date as much as you can during that time as you might meet someone better. If, within that timescale your DP proposes, you can consider whether you do actually want to marry him. But more than likely, you will meet someone else who is more keen on taking the same life path as you.
Dating options diminish the further into your 30s you go and I swear to god, men can smell the desperation off a single woman. When you’re “attached” you come across as far more desirable, so use that to your advantage to upgrade.
Good luck!

For me, if someone didn't 'know' within two years, I would move on.

I don’t know why everyone is trying to invalidate the OPs feelings. She’s met this guy and they are both in their 30s and have probably experienced other relationships prior to this. If she feels she wants to commit after 2 years then that’s a totally valid and reasonable feeling. Why waste your prime child rearing years with someone you don’t know wants a long term relationship with you?

I’d have thought that by late 20s you’d know within a few months that you might want to marry someone, and then you give it a bit more time to be sensible. Looking at my friends, 2 years to engagement seems usual.

Not strictly the same situation as I always knew I didn't want to get married, but there was a point where I knew I wanted to commit to DP for the long term and I'd say that came around 4-5 years in. Absolutely not at 2 years, it still felt very new at that point and we hadn't moved in together. I was a textbook commitment-phobe in my 20s though (and, a decade on, obviously a reformed one).

I think two years is fairly early, personally. I don't think you can necessarily get to know someone inside out in this amount of time.

If you want children and want to be married before you have them I can understand how you might want more visibility though.

There’s no set amount of time needed to decide whether you’re right for each other. What matters is that you’re on the same page and it doesn’t sound like you are. What was he doing in his teens/20s if he’s in his 30s and still needs time to experience life?!

Perfect age and time, it doesn’t get “better”. It’s up to you if this is a deal breaker.

I get you. I knew I wanted to marry my dh well before 2 years were up and we freely talked about 'when we are married' and 'when we have children's during that time. When you know, you know. But I still had to wait another 2 years before he would agree to marry me. The difference was he was in his early 20s when we met and was still only 26 when we married. I'm not sure your dp has the excuse of youth on his side.
I also agree with others that it depends on whether you want children or not. I wouldn't personally recommend anyone has children with anyone who won't commit to marriage. So if children are important to you, he needs to either shit or get off the pot.

It sounds to me that you've both had a busy few years with close bereavements, new jobs etc.

Tbh, I'd wait for the dust to settle and experience a more relaxed/typical type of relationship for a while.

As PP have said, I wouldn't be having any DC out of wedlock.

You are certain you want to marry your boyfriend and nothing wrong with that. Your boyfriend isn't nearly as sure as you and wants to wait to see if he does want to marry you in the future.

It is up to you whether you can live with that uncertainty. You do sound overinvested, or at least much more invested than your boyfriend is.

and that “perhaps in the next couple of years” he will want to.

This is a holding response. It’s a bit more honest than the threads you see on here of “we’ve been engaged for x years but he won’t commit to a date”, but it is what it is. And, harsh though it sounds, it’s not the overwhelming “yes, you’re the one” you were hoping for.

As others have said, the crux of the matter is whether you want kids. If you do, I’d have a conversation on that basis - “that’s fine, but I definitely want to have kids and 35/36/37 (or whatever) is my cutoff. So let’s talk about this again in 3/6/12 months and if you don’t want to get married, then I don’t think this is the relationship for me in the long term.” You don’t immediately burn your bridges, but you take back control of the timeline. “Perhaps in a couple of years” is indefinite; the last thing you want is to be strung out until you’re 40 and then see that he’s not for keeps.

2 years is plenty of time to decide if the other person is the one they want to be with. Not being sure suggests an element of being in a place holder relationship or the other person never wanting to marry, but not being open about it. I would push for honesty. but that's just me.

I think a couple of years is a decent amount of time to have discussions like this
I was with my partner for around this amount of time when I started wanting to know what our future plans were
We were looking at places to mortgage and something in me didn’t want to take this step before discussing children or marriage

I think if you are wanting children in the future I would need an answer on this after a couple years together due to fertility declining after a certain age. I worried I’d be with someone who didn’t want children and found out too late.

I would tell him that you see marriage in your future (next 2/3 years or whenever you feel like you’d see yourself married) and that it’s important to you. Then see what happens over the next year or so, if you’re still in this position next year then maybe go from there and make a decision. IMO you want your partner to propose and marry you because he wants too and not because you’re on at him and he feels like he has too otherwise you’ll dump him (not saying you’d do this)

My partner never thought about marriage and didn’t want children before he met me. We had a discussion before we moved in, he said he wants kids with me but not yet. He wasn’t sure on marriage yet. We have lived together 1.5 years now, married on our 4 year anniversary and have a baby on the way.

You mentioned house renovations, do you own a home together? If so that's a big commitment so surely you must have had some conversations about what you want your future to look like at that time? It's possible he doesn't believe in marriage or doesn't see it as necessary, but felt put on the spot hence vague mutterings about "perhaps in a couple of years". But that doesn't mean he doesn't imagine spending the rest of his life with you. How much it matters depends on your priorities. You need to have an honest conversation with him, which goes both ways, and try to find out how he really feels rather than him saying what he thinks you want to hear.

As a pp said, the key thing is if you want kids. That`s the crux of it

Absolutely this.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of women are socially conditioned to avoid talking about commitment with their male partners for fear of 'scaring them off' or 'coming on too strong'. The whole social norm around marriage for example, women are expected to wait passively for the man to decide he's ready, he proposes rather than it being a mutual decision, and then you can marry. A woman saying to a man 'right, I'm ready to get married, what about you?' is frowned upon. So a lot of men have the idea that it's their decision and they can hang around for months/years before making a decision.

So I'm not surprised that people get into serious cohabiting relationships without having talked about what they want from their lives, and when. Marriage, kids, where to settle down, and so forth. That is all so important to talk through before moving in together, you'd think!

Similar position here, I was 28 and DH only 24 when we met but I was clear in the first date or two that I was keen on having kids within the next few years and only wished to get into something serious with a partner who was looking for the same things. But then that's because I felt I was too old to drift around falling into serious relationships, giving exclusivity, with people where there really wasn't going to a future. By 28 it was time to either stay single and look for the right person or only consider a relationship if we were both on the same page about the future. No pressure, not saying 'new guy, I want your babies!' just saying 'I'm looking for this within the next few years, and I'm only interested in dating someone who actively wants the same'.

Curious to know what discussions OP and her boyfriend have had around marriage and children up until now.