To consider marrying this man?

[PotentialTrophyWife]

Bit of an unusual one, so I have name changed.

I am a never married, childless woman, coming to the end of healthy fertility. I've been in relationships, but never found the one. Don't believe in soul mates or anything like that and have a very practical approach to dating and love.

I'm from a modest working class background, but university educated and have a reasonable income, which I obviously would like to be more.

I had always wanted to get married and have children, but it just never happened. And I thought it wasn't going to, until this offer came along.

My best friend from university has asked me to marry him. We've kept in great touch all these years, and we enjoy each others company immensely. We have holidayed together as friends in the past and I value him a person. There's just not romance. But I would consider marrying for companionship in old age.

However, his offer is a little more enticing than just companionship. He is from a very upper class background and marrying him would basically render me a kept woman. I'd keep my job obviously, but I would be living in luxury. He has property all over the world and we'd be living in a country estate in England. I could have anything I wanted if I accept his offer.

He's asked me to look at this like a business arrangement, neither of us want to enter old age alone and we are great friends.

If companionship was all this was, I'd probably say yes straight away. The extreme wealth and lifestyle change is what is holding me back. I would be mortified if someone suggested I was a gold digger.

Does anybody have any experiences of marrying for reasons other than love? Arranged marriages and such? This feels like I'm arranging my own arranged marriage!

No, don't marry him! Not yet. Assuming you aren't writing a really bad free kindle download, you haven't got time at 42 to be faffing around organising weddings. Seriously, look at the stats. Come to some financial agreement, sleep with him or borrow his sperm, have the baby and then decide what to do.

Like Edam, I think there's definitely some missing piece of information from one source or the other.

• A man who fancied you would go about things more conventionally, unless there was a good reason not to. He's also called it a "business arrangement". (But you kind of do fancy him, which is the main reason why I think it could end in tears.) So we're looking at reasons why a man would marry a woman he doesn't fancy.
• The "companionship in old age" story doesn't wash with a man in his 40s (if he is indeed your contemporary). If he's in his sixties, then maybe just about.
• If it's an heir he's after, then sorry, but marrying a 42 year old woman isn't his best bet.
• If you know him so well then you might have some notion as to whether he's gay or not.
• If he needs to produce a Lady Of The Manor in order to inherit, then I could see why it might be you that he'd turn to, if he's trying to at least make a marriage tolerable. However, I'm surprised that he hasn't explained this to you. "I need a wife to inherit, you want a child before it's too late - let's help each other out" isn't the most romantic of proposals, but at least it would have been honest.

That scenario could go OK, but as he doesn't fancy you, it could lead to a lot of pain if he met someone in the future that he did fancy. Or if you met someone with whom you could have a real relationship. 42 is a bit young to dismiss the possibility of a love relationship, even if children might not be a possibility.

My best bet is it's either a novel or something financial. If the latter, it worries me that he isn't being completely straight (?!) with you about his reasons. So I'm with Beta - you need serious legal advice as to how you'd really stand financially.

She will lose him, temporarily, as a friend, during the first pregnancy, of twins.

Then, they will be reunited . . . love prevails. He just didn't realise it, in over 20 years! He is stupid as well as very rich. He had his business head on, and the Pippa Middletons were nowhere to be found.

A night of passion, boom! Another set of twins, such people don't have fertility problems, prematurity or worse yet, disability caused by prematurity or low-growth like that poor woman who had a baby at 43 and he had the mental age of a 2-year-old though he is 10. Or an only child.

We are talking 'children' here. But no way they are going to boarding school! We will be like 'Our House', but with money.

There will be problems, most likely with his parents, hers are busy doffing their caps, or conveniently dead. Perhaps there is a mother, of good, modest stock, no Deans and Claires from Scunthorpe.

They will be overcome, because he didn't chose the younger trophy.

Hope you're not planning to become JK Rowling out of this, OP, sorry, she was actually quite original, single mother living in council flat in Leith that she was.

Please don't pinch my outline, I stopped writing for Avalon over 20 years ago.

Trilogy if it takes off!

Rather vague descriptions of the OP, natch, but enough hint of beauty or above-average looks. Few lovers, this one never went mad after a divorce or breakup of a long-term relationship and pulled some random from a pub and woke up not knowing where the hell she was or had any contact with drunk mates at a naval base where they pull into port.

And no other, troublesome children. No way. No him. If so, they are dead, tragically.

Went to uni, tick. You can't have someone not university-educated! That would be too common.

What happened to the OP? Did she / he run off back underneath a mossy rock by a bridge?

She is writing! :o.

Ooo, OP, I have a daughter, olive of skin and of good working-class stock, though I come of middle-class stock. She was born at Edinburgh, but brought up in the Highlands of Scotland. I had another, she had hoped to marry her sweetheart, with eyes as blue as the sky and chesnut curls to die for. And his mother is the richer, though he knows no father besides his step-father. His mother is 42, too. Can you write us a plot? She is beautiful and blonde, with cornflower-blue eyes and a great job. She went to uni, too.

What shall we do? The girl is slim of build but grows tall, with long, straight hair and good features. Her nose is my envy, it is the double of Kate Middleton's. This girl can do all kinds of things, sew, play, cook, dance Highland, even play footie.

I have also a son, very big for his age and fierce, born Highland.

Let's write! My only girl left is a year younger than the heir to the Duke of Argyll, whom she met has met twice, the first at a festival, and played like the children they are for hours. She is as dark as he is. They played tig and all manner of games. He liked her and she liked him. And still does.

Let's start with them meeting at uni, too . . . LOL.

She will be at least 5,000 miles away from here if and when she reaches such an age, if not before, to attend military academy to become an officer and a doctor, as she wishes.

This what smart women do, so they don't have to wait till they are 42 to write some half-baked novel.

R, I called to her, to go home after playing with him. Come away! We need to get the bus back our way. It grows late, the boy needs to go to his nanny. Come away, daughter! NOW!

His father was around to raise his eyebrows, and my accent is American and heavily Southern.

Let's write about how they meet . . .nowhere but there.

I would in no way have her anywhere near that boy or any other until she was such as she wants to be, an officer and a doctor, for all her curtain of hair and ability to play and sing in a way to break your heart.

'Kept'. That is for her hamster. So you have a poor plot for a bestseller, OP. Because in these times a person doesn't need a Knight in Shining Armour but a Valyrian steel sword.

There is no one who lives to age 42 who does not do with a degree of wisdom.

So write another story, if you wish to sell, and even if you do, it will be for very little.

I don't know - Annie Proulx didn't write a book (or publish one) until she was 53 or 54. Some writers are later starters. But not this one. The OP's post is utter drivel.

Maybe its an errant A level student.

This situation sounds v familiar. I know a man of a similar age who has recently made a commitment to a girl like you (especially if you've changed a few details & exaggerated some of his). I am wondering how well she knows him currently whilst wishing him well. So OP if it's you trust your instincts and make sure he's told you everything about the past - especially if you haven't known him since he was in his early 20s. I wish you well.

Was the 'girl' 42, Hamish?

Or is this really the daughter of the ultra-rich father, Emma, age 26, about to marry the Marquess of Bath's heir?

Yes, certainly. I would have reservations, too, about a man whose father is a jumped up whore who left his wife my mother to put up with his whoring, surely.

In fact I would tell him to go to whatever hell there is, probably none, and shove his money up and his things up his arse.

But that's just me, a ghost writer who can sniff out a bad plot no one will buy a mile away.

Not sure re: exact age of girl/woman but yes roughly 35-42 or so. The man is certainly rich - self made father & mother's family similar but extraordinarily so. He is, however, certainly not aristocratic but might appear so to some. Probably a different situation...

I hope this isn't real, expat's Mills and Boons plot is far more entertaining!

Hamish, there can't be too many of those in a year! You know him! How exciting. I admire your gentle allusions to murky secrets; you must be the ideal person to sit next to at a wedding.

I'm sure Expat can work with allusions and some flowery language - but do let us know if your pal's emotionally unstable twin brother disappeared under circumstances never fully explained, about twenty years ago?

:) If him he is a very nice guy, she doesn't know him quite as well as she says and her background is far from a run of the mill one by most people's standards (although not necessarily 'posh'). I would tell her to listen to her gut and have a few heart-to-hearts. If her I think she genuinely loves the guy but has a few niggles.

Hmm. This hasnt been taken down by MNHQ.

Maybe, maybe we, well me at least, owes the op an apology?

I think, in amongst the frivolity, there are some genuine answers to an unusual question.

Hamish - are you the man in question?

No but I knew him well - or someone who sounds similar. Curious to see if OP returns. Probably scared her half to death if post is genuine & I'm on to anything.

'Knew' him Hamish, or knew him? Was everyone on to something?

Have we established what novel it is yet?

You sound lovely, so does he. As you both age, friendship and companionship come to the fore and will remain forever, sex starts taking more of a back seat. Marry him. If you hang around waiting for a soulmate you could both be heading for a lonely old age. I guess many single mother MNetters thought they had met a soulmate, but were sadly disappointed when no loving conpanionship materialised.

Are you saying that the failure of some love marriages justifies saying "Marry him" to a woman who has been invited into a "business arrangement" without a believable explanation as to why?

Sorry, Hamish - that was a bit direct.

What I'm asking is, do you think it is a cover up for something?

How many marriages, based initially on mad, passionate love, end up bitter and acrimonious anyway?!
We just don't worry about it as we're in our happy bubble at the time!

It may end badly, it may end well. It sounds like you'd have more regrets later, if you say no than if you say yes...