To wonder where the joy is in forcing someone to marry you?

[Fanfeckintastic]

This is probably going to sound awful and I'm so sorry if I offend!

A lot of my friends at the moment are getting engaged which I do think is lovely, but the vast majority have been trying to twist their DPs arm about it for at least a year+, a lot have been given ultimatums etc which I personally wouldn't be able to bear, I can see why if the woman wants to wait until married to have children etc and totally understand marriage is important to many people but personally I just think having to practically force someone to ask you would put a very bad taste in my mouth. But each and every time one of these guys propose to my friends, I genuinely am absolutely pleased for them, have even shed a tear of happiness knowing how much said friend has been waiting and worrying.
What I don't think the guys have been bargaining for is how fast said friends would start planning weddings and organising things. I get the impression these guys thought maybe the ring was buying them another couple of years but in so many cases I've seen friends enter wedding competitions, enquiring via Facebook about certain venues etc within days of getting the longed for proposal!
Why is it so often the women driving these things, does it not take the joy out of it?

AIBU for feeling this way? Do I sound jealous? I honestly don't think that's it at all, it just sometimes feels like watching a car crash about to happen!

Great posts Morris Zapp and SGB.

There's so much about this issue I don't get either - wishing and waiting for a proposal instead of having a discussion with your partner for example. The whole 'engagement' concept is so Jane Austen. People who say they have long engagements because of finances - please tell me you haven't wasted money on an engagement ring? I don't get engagement rings either, more sexist rubbish.

My sister was with a guy who she issued ultimatums to - she wanted a proposal, she wanted a ring that he had spent at least 3 months salary on and she gave him a 6 month window to sort it out. It was utterly insane. She didn't get any of the things she wanted because he was clearly not on the same page. Fine to want to get married - not fine to demand a proposal and to be made to feel like youre living in a fairytale.

I don't understand the attitude of am I just someone to pass time for a while? I bet men never say this. Yet there are probably just as many women who feel that way. This thread is tragic in many ways all the wishing and waiting to be asked. It is a financial transaction when all the confetti is done and if you feel you are at a disadvantage because you aren;t married then you should both talk about it or maybe get yourself into a situation where financially and career wise you are not reliant on the whims of another to have a good life

I don't think that there is anything wrong with your friends issuing an ultimatum regarding marriage if that's how they feel. They are just letting their boyfriends know that if they don't want to get married they would prefer to move on before it is too late to have children.

You may like to think that the men have had their arms twisted and don't want to get married but I'm sure that if they really didn't want to they wouldn't.

I met DH on holiday, he proposed before we came home, so 14 days after we met. We have been married 30 years this month. I couldn't have put up with someone who procrastinated and put off asking me.

It was the other way round for us. I had a bit of a disastrous first marriage and was very concerned about protecting myself financially and DH was a bit younger than me. After 5 years together DH sat me down and said we either had to consider marriage, buying a house together or he would understand I didn't want that sort of commitment again and move on with no hard feelings.

It gave me a bit of a wake up call really, and I was pleased when he proposed a couple of months later.

It's not always a bad thing.

Celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary this year and I am really glad we did.

I'm going to be horribly sexist now and say imagine a 'typical bloke'.
He's been living happily as a couple with his partner for a few years. They have a child or two. He couldn't be any more faithful and comitted in his behaviour than he already is.

The stereotypical wedding seems to involve thousands of pounds, a year or 2 of stressful planning, being asked to be interested in napkin choices and party favours and then there's bride zilla possibilities. What's really in it for him.

I'm not surprised a fair few of them aren't keen. Maybe if they could just skip straight to the being married and ditch the palaver. ...?

I have never really understood fancy weddings.

I agree with you op. My friend is engaged to a guy that she has two children with. I asked him (before they had children) when they would be getting married and he replied 'never!' and actually got a high five from his best mate.

Sometimes the engagement is just a pacifier.

My best friend persuaded forced her fiancé to tie the knot despite him vocalising massive reservations. It hasn't ended well. Her opinion on men is that they don't know what they want, they need manipulating. This from a woman who I admire and is normally really rational every other aspect of her life. The need for marriage brought about a strange side to her.

Wonders if Fanfeckintastic knows the same couple as me?

My friend is engaged to a guy that she has two children with. I asked him (before they had children) when they would be getting married and he replied 'never!' and actually got a high five from his best mate.

I wouldn't take that type of comment at all seriously though. He just didn't want to discuss it with you (and why should he?).

The scary thing is it seems really common not to take these guys opinions seriously?! Curiosity has said that he vocalised reservations to her best friend. Why on earth would you just skip over all that and say Ah he wasn't serious. I think that's a major issue here, people not thinking men know what they want and just need a little "push".

Well to be fair, they could just stand up for themselves.

Marriage does protect the weaker partner and when you think about it, it's not in lots of men's financial interests to get married.

Maternity leave / part time hours / childcare costs etc mean women are often low earners. In my case there were houses / property involved. Unmarried men can still walk away from their responsibilities relatively unscathed.

Whatever, when someone gets engaged, you normally ask if they have set a date. More out of acting interested than anything else.

That girl has been engaged for at least tens years now and was desperate to get married.

Me and DH always joked about marriage, I'd drop hints, leave magazines lying around with picture of gorgeous engagement rings in them etc but it was all done in complete jest. We both knew we were going to marry each other at some point so my subtle clues were just lighthearted. However, when he did actually propose I wasn't expecting it to happen then at all and I was actually quite taken aback

We booked the venue 3 days later and we got married within 5 months.

I believe a couple 'just know' if they have a future together and if that's the case then the proposal/wedding isn't seen as a huge issue because it's just the next logical step in their relationship.

I honestly can't imagine a man proposing and getting married unless that had always been his intention anyway. Ok, a woman may want to rush things along but I don't think they are forcing their partners to do something they ultimately don't want to do at some point anyway.

Whatever, when someone gets engaged, you normally ask if they have set a date. More out of acting interested than anything else.

I might ask my friend but I doubt that I would ask their partner.

The scary thing is it seems really common not to take these guys opinions seriously?!

I do take their opinions seriously but I just don't necessarily think they always give their true opinion. I assume that if someone is getting married they actually want to do it.

Ah, I see where you are coming from now. It was just bad wording of my original post. I was on good terms with both at the time as the guy was my now ex boyfriends best mate. If that makes sense.

Writer, I wouldn't have thought it possible to 'force' someone until I witnessed it. The guy was torn between wanting to be with her and liking the idea of being a free spirit (arty type). Can't give much more detail as it will out me (and them!), but I almost never went to the wedding as it felt weird thinking this is doomed and really hoping it wasn't.

The thing I've seen a subtle trend for is a man and a woman being together but not married for years, no DC because he isn't ready, she puts up with it because it's not on to pressure him. They end up breaking up and the next year he's getting married to some 25 year old who's pregnant with his twins. Meanwhile the ex-P is 41 realistically has a very slim chance of meeting anyone before her fertility window has closed completely.

That may be a bit of an exaggerated scenario, but I do see it happening more often. I think it's a combination of young adults, especially men, being infantilized, and men not really understanding fertility. Just because Halle Berry had a kid in her mid 40s does not make it average.

But everyone stays so young these days...it's not considered odd for 30 year olds to live like students.

Cheerfulyank, I have seen that an awful lot too. Not really sure on the reasoning behind it though. I could easily name four guys with quite a different age range that have done this. The reason for splitting was always needing space and time to be by themselves/find themselves. Then married and with child within a year.

I think this isn't really about the wedding. It just publicly highlights underlying relationship problems involving communication and general commitment that you wouldn't normally know about.

The guy was torn between wanting to be with her and liking the idea of being a free spirit (arty type).

He still wasn't "forced" to get married though. He could choose to get married or not just like everyone else.

The fact is that men don't have to worry so much about being too old to have children. Inevitably therefore some men will put off getting married or having children and will always see it as something that can be done one day in the future. It doesn't mean that they are ambivalent towards their partner or that they didn't intend to marry them one day anyway. They may have been forced to do it sooner than they would have liked but so what?

Another thing that seems to happen with some men is that they will stall on marriage for a while then 'give in' - but every time they have a row they will say to the woman, 'Well you were the one who wanted us to get married...'

To be fair, I think a lot of people get married out of inertia on one side and desperation/conformism on the other. If you're a fairly 'normal' (heterosexual, monogamous, steady job, lower middle class or aspirational working class) person surrounded by similar people, there's a spell in your late 20s, early 30s where everyone around you is either just married, getting married, or expecting their first DC, then you tend to want to follow suit. Sometimes, one partner's entire motivation is just that it.s oh well, time to settle down and s/he is OK, will do, probably wouldn't get much better elsewhere - or it's desperation not to have to 'start again'.
And some of these marriages do OK if expectations were average on both sides from the beginning (no violence/.drug abuse/wierd sexual fetishes you don't share/get along comfortably enough and have similar ideas about having DC). Some go horribly wrong, usually because either one partnerstarted out being a lot more madly in love than the other - or because one partner never did care that much about the other but couldn't be bothered to move on.

And some of these marriages do OK if expectations were average on both sides from the beginning (no violence/.drug abuse/wierd sexual fetishes you don't share/get along comfortably enough and have similar ideas about having DC). Some go horribly wrong, usually because either one partnerstarted out being a lot more madly in love than the other - or because one partner never did care that much about the other but couldn't be bothered to move on.

That's probably true of all marriages though.