AIBU to give DP proposal ultimatum?

[justhayley]

Horrible title but.... iv been with DP for 8 1/2 years I'm almost 30 and we have a 15 month old DS. DS wasn't planned (but very much wanted & loved) however ideally I didn't want children until I was married.
I really think DP should be proposing. We've spoken about marriage but when it comes to this subject we both seem pretty crap at communicating.
DP has never said he doesn't want to marry me but after this long and a baby I'm starting to wonder what the hell he's waiting for.
He's in he military and 2 years ago said once he finishes his training we would get engaged. His training finished a year ago and still I don't feel like he's even planning to ask me. In a way I feel like he lead me on a bit.

I don't want him to feel pressured to propose - I want him to do it because he wants to. Evertyime i decide to talk to him about ut i feel like im pressuring him and it makes me feel crap.
However In a way I feel like I also don't want to waste anymore time with someone who just may never ask.
Marriage is important to me, I'm the only person out of all my friends thy isn't marries or engaged and iv been with DP the longest.
His most recent excuse is Money. I'm not buying it. Yes we are not rolling in it and do not have enough cash for a big dream wedding and a
tiffany engagement ring, but we are not so hard up we couldn't pull something lovely
together without going into masses of debt or breaking the bank. I want a marriage not a wedding.

I'm feeling a bit torn should I consider leaving DP and eventually finding someone to be with that wants marriage, start putting some pressure and ultimatums on him, or just stay in what is actually a happy relationship, but risk never getting married & ending up resenting him for it.
What do you think?
Opinions please x

I'm not married. I've been with my partner for over 30 years.

I think that counts as a committed relationship.

It's not that it doesn't count as committed if you're not married, but if one person desperately wants it, it is a big deal.

It is the other person really wanting it thats a problem here.

Yes, msrisotto, I do agree with that. It's not something that can be unilaterally agreed by one party. If DP had wanted to get married I would have done but it wasn't something that was massively important to me, but he had very strong opinions about it and we discussed it sensibly, I understood his reasons, and decided that I would rather be with him than be married to someone else.

So I guess equally if one person desperately doesn't want to get married then it is also a big deal, and it's unfair to force them into a marriage they don't want.

What Thurlow said. Unmarried couples don't all consist of a woman languishing around longing for an engagement ring and a man who's settled for second-best.

Some of them just don't feel it is something that matters one little bit.

I think that's the problem. If marriage is something you see as important, then you think it is important for everyone. Therefore, if a couple aren't doing it, you will assume it's because one of them doesn't want to marry the other one.

But for a lot of couples, marriage doesn't feature on their relationship radar. It's just not something they're arsed about. And, if they're anything like me, they're bemused by people constantly telling them that they really must do it.

It's like a woman I met at a baby group who spent the entire session telling me that I absolutely must Steiner educate. She thought it was so important that she couldn't possibly work out why I wouldn't do it, and kept questioning my motives. Since Steiner education isn't something that has ever featured in my life or plans, I couldn't understand why she thought it was such a big deal.

It's just a completely different world view.

I can see that, but advising op to leave a happy relationship because he hasn't proposed is ridiculous.

Surely most adults would just discuss their future together and not give ultimatums.

just because he doesn't want marriage doesn't mean he's not committed to her.

I agree kungfu. And lots of women tie themselves in knots trying to secure some sort of guarantee which marriage does do when the children are small etc. But really it is always the woman trying to get herself set up in case their is a disaster the men just don't. What excacly could happen to me if dp and I split and we aren't married My life apart from being heartbroken would be unchanged.

Yes Thurlow, exactly. On big issues like this, when you disagree, no matter which way your preference is - wanting TO get married or wanting NOT to get married, then you have a problem. It's a shame but I guess it's a non negotiable that you need to figure out as early on as possible to avoid years of unhappiness.

But I do agree that if it's important to one person and not to the other, then there is going to be a problem.

Ultimately someone will have to give in. There's no compromise to be had. I suppose if the non-marrier's reasoning is just that it isn't important to them, then they should probably be the one to back down for the sake of the relationship, if it's otherwise good. If they have fundamental objections to the whole concept of marriage, then that's a bit different. If they actively don't want to get married, then it comes back to whether the marriage is more important than the person.

I think the OP also needs to be clear whether the ultimatum is being issued because this is so fundamental to her life that she is willing to walk away without it, or whether it's being issued because she thinks her DP will give in.

there not their

Mine too, noddy. I'm a lawyer and DP works in a finance-related industry and is also one of the most sensible, cautious people you could meet! There is no aspect of our affairs that isn't absolutely water-tight.

But people still tell us we need to get married for legal reasons and ask daft questions like whether my name's on the house.

It is always the woman who is asked. I think when you deciding on life long partners you should choose someone that you can trust implicitly without marriage. For some reason that feels secure to me. My mates dh hired a great lawyer and tbh she was nowhere near as well off after as she thought so no woman or man should count their chickens. My dp and I would both be able to sort ourselves out in terms of a home etc so I see no problem. Don't rely on another person in that way and you have no worries. I have been in and out of hospital throughout our relationship and sometimes dp has supported me but i would live without it

I think it's very different if you're in a relationship where neither of you are that fussed about marriage. But if you know how important it is to your partner, and you still refuse to get married then I think it's fair to question that person's commitment. Of course, you really strongly objected to marriage then that's different, but it doesn't sound like, from what we've been told, that the op's dp does - and if he did he should have made that clear long ago, not waited 8.5yrs and 1 child later when she has to force it out of him.

I only know of one couple where the woman has given the man an ultimatum about marriage. They'd been together since uni, they talked about marriage often, it was important to the woman but not so much to the man. When they were 26 she told him that if they wanted different things maybe they shouldn't stay together. He proposed but they never got married and 3 years later they are giving it one last try before going their separate ways. The man told me recently that he just went along with the relationship because he's crap at making decisions .

So I don't agree with ultimatums, but I do think you should discuss it again and explain how important it us to you and your dc. If he still isn't willing then yes, I would question his commitment.

I think ultimatums are a bit cringey too you might always think you forced the issue and if marriage has a romantic connotation for you that may be lost

I think that if your DP really cares about you Op , then he would want you to have the security of marriage, purely from the perspective of him being Forces.
You should sit him down and explain properly why you want this.
I dont know why your dc has your Dp's last name though, especially if having a different name to your child bothers you ( and it would bother me).

There is only one answer, ask him to marry you!!! Then you will get your answer! Yes or no , at least you will be able to plan xxx You dont have to wait for him to ask you!

I have no doubt that many couples who have been together for a long time without marriage are very committed to each other. But I would think that in those cases they are both sure they don't want to marry, as some posters have described above (I also wouldn't imagine many are/were in the Forces where untimely death is going to be very much at the forefront of your mind).

Unfortunately, however, if you're not married the chances are you'll break up before your child is grown up. The quote below is from this article (I have not looked at the actual ONS statistics though and would want to look at them too given that the report was written by 'The Marriage Foundation'):

^The report, which analyses figures from the Office for National Statistics, found that 93 per cent of couples whose relationships are still intact by the time their child is a teenager are married.

It calculated that out of a typical group of 100 16-year-olds, 45 of them would have experienced a family split, while 55 would still be living with both parents.

But only four of the 100 teenagers would have unmarried parents who are still together by the time they are 16.^

Oops italics fail, sorry!

If you're more bothered about being married than being with your partner then you should question your motives. Maybe this isn't the relationship for you.

Agree with landrover. Just bloody asks HIM.

It's 2013 not 1913!!!!

Do you want to be married more than you want to be with him forever? That is what it could come down to.

Me and DP have been together 22 years; four kids, two jointly owned properties, 50% shares each in our business. I just asked him if he thought we should get married. "Yeah if you want to" he said.
Somehow I don't really think it's a burning issue for either of us.

Look, neither my partner and I are arsed about marriage. I don't care if we never marry, it isn't important to me.

However, if he came to me, and really wanted us to get married, I would do it. For him, because getting married would mean more to him than not getting married would to me. Does that make sense?

Regarding the posts that say that if you don't get married within the first couple of years, then it's not happening, I think it really depends on the circumstances.

DH and I met when we were both 20 and 22 was to us a ludicrously young age to get married. We ended up doing the deed when we were both 28.

DH knew that I wanted to be married for various reasons but as his parents had split up when he was young, he was a bit wary of the institution of marriage. However, being married wasn't a dealbreaker for us as it is to the OP.

In the end, DH proposed to me whilst on a surprise holiday to Florence. My reaction was: Are you fucking joking me? Who says that romance is dead?