to want my boyfriend to propose to me

[woahthere]

We have been together for 8 years. I love him very much. We have a lovely little boy together and he is a great father to my other 2 children. I am very very lucky, BUT, I wish that he would propose, we have discussed it and I know he is quite a quiet person and i have said that if we got married we could do it low key because i know he would hate the whole big shebang. AIBU to want to make it official. I feel let down that all of my friends, his brother etc are getting married and I still never get that feeling of joy of having been asked. Every special occasion I hope that he will ask me and he never does and secretly it really hurts.

emsjy,given you effuse about marriage and it = commitment,then one could arguably say that is your projection.your subjective pov

of course it is

on a discursive medium such as mn we all subjectively express our pov,shaped by experience, and culture and beliefs. so you see your firmly held belief,and the defence of it,is your projection

that's how mn works

left on shelf is deeply sexist implies. a best before date on looks,fertility. and is universally applied to women.how bizarre to measure woman's usefulness by her marital status. no shelf obviously infers, a good un, snapped up, of worth

left on shelf inference is useless, unable to get or convince man to marry her. and left on shelf is expiry of usefulness

on a comedy note I have relatives who call it living in sin and are black affronted, and I expect they reckon I have a shelf wi my name on it. next to spinsters corner

I was joking about being left on the shelf

I'm not actually married

thanks, wrong end stick
I do know folks who say it though.but they are ole tickets

How are you fixed financially if you split up?

That's probably the main issue here, that you need to make sure that your financial interests are taken care of. From one post of yours it sounded like they hadn't and that it was being treated as a bit of a joke. The question would be who's joke.

One possibility about why he won't marry you is that he's keeping his options open, especially if you could lose out in the financial stakes.

at all the judgypants.

I wasn't married when I had my two children. Not because he didn't "love me enough" or "deem me worthy" of marrying (yuck!) but because sometimes you can't plan these things - pregnancy happens!

We had every intention of getting married, we did and still are. Very happily in fact. But so what if we hadn't?

If you think the man you're with is a bastard you will need legal protection from, why marry him? Leave him!

Because if you leave him before you're married you could be left with nothing because he's taken everything.

Interesting debate - here's my POV:

I was always opposed to marriage for feminist reasons BUT I knew that it was very important to my oh and I already felt a long term commitment to him so when he asked me to marry him (after five years of co-habiting) I agreed (after thinking it over for a little while). It wasn't 'a proposal' - he had forgotten that I was meeting a friend after work, my mobile battery was dead so he couldn't find out where I was, he got worried, and when I got home I was greeted with "Where were you? I was worried! Will you marry me?" (And my instant response was something along the lines of "I TOLD you where I was going, you berk.")

I never had an engagement ring (although, 14 years later, I do have a lovely set of three stacking rings for my right hand, one to mark the birth of each child - much more meaningful IMHO). We were starving artists at the time so had v cheap wedding rings which we replaced a few years later when we had more money.

Our plan for the wedding was to go to Marylebone Registry office followed by a picnic in Regent's Park (bring your own picnic). My parents offered to pay for a wedding that they could invite elderly relatives to so we ended up having something a little more formal than originally planned, although we still eschewed many of the familiar elements of a wedding - no religion, 'giving away', white dress, table plans etc.

I kept my name at first and he kept his but when we decided to have children we wanted everyone to have the same name so we double barrelled. The children are capable of working out what to food they marry. They might follow the Spanish model where everyone is double barrelled and upon marriage the woman keeps her mother's half of the name, the man keeps his father's and the two make a new name - or they might follow their great-grandmother's example - she had a triple-barrelled surname!

I would have been perfectly happy to stay unmarried and just arrange wills etc. The wedding day was nice, but just one day. It did 'feel' different to have made that commitment, but I think I can see both sides of the meta- marry/don't marry discussion.

In your particular situation, Woah, having been the reluctant party, I see two possible explanations: either you haven't made it clear how very important it is to you, or he has a reason not to marry that is strong enough for him not to care about how remaining unmarried makes you feel.

My oh didn't threaten to leave, or cry, or make a legal argument for marriage. He asked me to make a commitment that was vitally important to him and, because I loved him and felt committed to him
already, I felt that his feelings on the matter should take precedence.

Time for a heart-to-heart...

But if a couple are unmarried, how could he take everything? Why couldn't she? Unless they are his assets, of course!

I'm no legal expert KarenMillenCoat but I think things like pensions would be considered "his" if they split. So potentially an unmarried sahp could have forfeited 15 years of earning their own pension, whereas if the couple are married, then it would come under the divorce settlement.

Thinking about it some more, I'm not sure how it would work if the house was just in his name, and furnished etc via his wages.

Does the other party have any claim to that - they have fulfilled their part of the partnership by providing the childcare to enable the other partner to go out to work to fund it all, but as there is no legal basis around their relationship I am not sure how the sahm stands.

Who owns most assets?
Who earns more?

Has he said why he doesn't want to get married? He obviously loves you and wants to be with you, so is it just the whole 'event' thing that he doesn't want to do?

Op you have said that you feel you lack security in the event of a split.

Can you see that exactly this ( hopefully unlikely ) scenario is a strong reason for him NOT to marry?

Ah, thanks Basted, I hadn't considered the SAHP aspect, was coming at it from my own perspective as we bought the house together with equal deposits and both continued to work full time after DC. Can see how easy it would be to screw over the SAHP if that wasn't the case, though!

Yes, I've known a couple of SAHMS who were basically left homeless and without assets because they had no claim on the house (which was bought with deposit from the male partner and mortgage paid from his salary). But another friend was in the same financial situation, but was married, so was able to stay in the house and have the mortgage paid and get a share of the pension, because it was agreed in the divorce.

I think women often assume they will put in equal shares and continue to work FT and if that happens, cohabiting can be fine. But things can happen to change those plans (amongst my friends: DC diagnosed with SN, elderly parent needing care, childcare not working out, or falling ill so they can't continue to work FT). That's when the protection of marriage becomes all the more important.

Totally agree after 3 years of marriage my sil has had to give up her job as a lawyer after she had twins so no longer putting in to the mortage if he were to leave and they were not married she would be f*ked

Are you getting married because other people are married?

There's another thread on this same issue at the moment,
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1371893-To-not-see-the-point-in-getting-married?msgid=29210651#29210651

in which I just posted this summary:

1. If one unmarried partner dies, the other cohabiting partner will not automatically inherit their partner's assets. Anything inherited through a will (if there is one) is subject to inheritance tax - spousal exemptions do not apply as they would if you are married.
2. Cohabiting partners are not automatically entitled to a share of their unmarried partners's finances after a split and have no legal rights to their partner?s pension after they die.
3. If a cohabiting couple split up, men do not have an automatic right to see their children, and women are not be entitled to any kind of financial support.
4. Cohabitors don?t count as legal ?next of kin?.
5. A cohabitor does not receive state bereavement benefit or a state pension based on a percentage of their National Insurance contributions as a husband or wife would.

OP maybe you can turn this round as being for his protection too.

If somethign were to happen to you then without a will your DCs would inherit your share of your home, now if two of them are not his bio children, then presumably your ex as their father could force the sale of the house as he would have full custody of them?

Or worse still, move in, in order to look after them (as it is now partially their home)?

she's asked - he declined
she's cried,huffed,made it clear her preference is marriage
he's not taken her up on it
for what ever reason, the groom isn't willing

how is long talk
leap year
cards on table....
going to change any if this

positives are
she says he's top man
lovely kids

no point banging on about getting married...doesn't look likely

Um, scottishmummy, please quote me where I have 'effused' about marriage? Don't make things up as you go along.

I have simply said that it represents a specific commitment. It is a legally binding state. That's just a fact. It isn't subjective at all, I'm afraid. Your legal position as a married couple if you split is fundamentally different from that of a couple who choose to remain unmarried. Of course there are certain steps you can take to try to make the position equivalent to a married couple, but you cannot (for example) create an inheritance tax exemption, or an entitlement to pension sharing. Do you not understand that? Perhaps you are simply ignorant.

Also, I am not defending or advocating marriage. I couldn't give two hoots if you or anyone else prefer to remain unmarried. It doesn't affect me in the slightest and is absolutely none of my business.

So she should chase marriage for its contractual/legal binding/government benefit side?

Not sure I see how this is relevant to the OP...

effusing about entanglement,meeting mr right and marriage= commitment
was pretty effusive
as was legally binding hoops

I haven't said anyone should chase anything. There were an awful lot of posters claiming that marriage was pointless. I was merely stating (as other posters have done) that it does offer protection on a death or a split and that marriage is not equivalent to cohabitation from a legal perspective.

The relevance is that the OP is not being unreasonable to want to be married because there are benefits to being married rather than cohabitees. The thread is entitled, 'AIBU to want my boyfriend to propose to me'.

For the record, I do not think the OP should 'chase' or otherwise try to coerce her DP to marry her. It seems from her replies on the thread that she has no intention of doing so either. Saying that there are benefits to marriage is not equivalent to saying that the OP (or anyone) should 'chase' marriage.

Hope that helps.