To find it hard to get excited about engagements nowadays

[Vintagejazz]

Inspired by another thread - but just wondering if engagements nowadays mean as much as they used to? Most couples nowadays are already living together, paying a mortgage, have kids etc by the time they get engaged...

And so many engagements seem to drift on for years and years with no plans for a wedding at all.

So AIBU to find myself just feeling a bit meh when I hear of engagements nowadays (although obviously I smile and say all the right things) , whereas years ago it seemed more exciting and like a big event in someone's life when they announced their engagement?

I don't know, I was talking to DH about this the other day. We were discussing whether having a baby or getting married was the bigger commitment.

We both agreed that having a baby was in actual fact a much bigger commitment, practically speaking, but the important thing about getting married is that it's a positive and active step. Moving in together, having a baby etc can all be very passive and a reaction to circumstance.

Certainly this has been the case in the lives of some of our friends and family; a baby has been conceived and the couple make the best of it and move in together and by default become an established couple.

When DH and I agreed to get married, it was after many years of being together and living together, and it was with a plan to have children and remain together forever. I'm not saying this isn't the intention of people who don't get engaged/married before kids, but there must be at least some of them who are just going with the flow.

I know what you mean to an extent. When I was engaged my family commented: 'people don't get engaged these days, they just move in and get married"

With my new partner when we get engaged it will be special to us (even if it's not to others)

I suppose a lot of the "excitement" about it is because most couples live together before getting engaged and may already have children so by time they announce their engagement it's not a big deal as they are already committed to each other. (If that makes any sense)

When I was growing up the "natural order" of things was engagement, marriage, children. That's all changed now. I don't see the point in getting engaged if you already have children with your partner.

I agree Jennifer. When I was growing up an engagement usually came as a bit of a surprise, a wedding date was set for shortly afterwards, and the newly married couple set up home together for the first time. So an engagement was a really big deal. Nowadays it often seems a bit pointless. If a couple have been living together for ages, share a mortgage and are rearing a family, it's hard to get excited because he has bought her a ring and they have some vague plan to get married in the future.

My circle of friends is a bit different, as not all of them were living together when they got engaged and none of them had dc or a mortgage. I didn't live with DH until we got married, so getting engaged was a big thing for us. Although I don't really get excited about engagements or weddings either and I never really have!

YANBU, but then, I also mentioned finding them a bit meh on the other thread too

I didn't want an engagement ring before I married my husband (just as well as my husband did a complete impromptu proposal).

I do have one somewhere from the fiancee I had years ago, before he left me for another woman. He was the one who had driven the whole unexpected proposal himself and bought a ring without my knowledge. In retrospect, I did dodge a bullet so I can't feel that bad about it.

So my thoughts on engagements are probably skewed from past experience, but I simply can't get excited by them, beyond 'oh that's nice, congratulations'. I do like weddings though

Everyone is different .

I agree that once you havea child together an engagement can seem irrelevant.

I think it comes down to in the past living together without being married was frowned upon.

I can still hear my now deceased great aunt referring to some relatives as, living over the brush.

Always made me chuckle.

Well I agree weddings are also difficult to get too emotional about anymore. You used to have that sense of a couple starting out on their shared life together, about to create their first home and with children yet to come. It felt really momentous and special.
Nowadays it's really just a formality and a party, in a lot of cases.

Unfortunately it is also a fact that roughly half of the weddings you attend will end in divorce.

I know it is a miserable thought but I think it every single time someone tells me they are getting married.

Of course I smile and congratulate them but the harsh reality is still there.

I've just got 'engaged' to my DP. We've lived together for 7 years, have a 3yo DD and another DC on the way soon. I maintained that 'being engaged' was sort of superfluous and that we were just a couple who were already committed for life who were now formalising that by getting married. But all and sundry around me tells me I AM ENGAGED and is is SUPER EXCITING! (Which it is, obvs, but I assumed only to me not to other people)

I like the description of moving in/having kids as reactive and getting married as proactive because that does chime with our experience.

YANBU. I think I hadn't realised until I joined Mn the numbers of women who were (to me very strangely) trying to nudge a reluctant partner into some kind of fake-surprise proposal when they had been cohabiting for years and had several children.

I understand the desire for the legal protection of marriage, of course, but the entrenched desire for the kind of 'romantic surprise down-on-one-knee with a rose and a ring box' that might work if you were a newer couple who hadn't already made the massive commitment of living together and children is plain odd to me.

As is the situation that also comes up often on Mn where the (again often longterm cohabiting and with children) couple have long since agreed they plan to marry, but aren't somehow 'engaged' until a ring is produced and some kind of proposal scene staged, which on here often also seems to involve hints and nagging. That makes zero sense to me. If you've agreed you're going to marry, you're engaged, for heaven's sake. Or the 'we're going to get engaged on Valentine's Day/my birthday/Christmas' line...

Getting engaged is a private matter. If people want to do it then great, but I cannot do that whooping stuff as I'm just not made that way.

My lovely sil has two kids with my brother, a mortgage and a dog. Yet she was giving it big handflaps when he 'proposed' to her. Nice to see her happy but really, Wtf.

Did she think prior to the 'big ask' that they were in a casual relationship?

Womrn

When I was growing up the "natural order" of things was engagement, marriage, children. That's all changed now. I don't see the point in getting engaged if you already have children with your partner.

This ^^

The weirdest engagement party I was ever invited to, was a couple who had been together for 9 years and had 3 kids.

Nothing wrong with it of course, but it just seemed odd.

I remember a long thread on here about a year ago about couples announcing their intention to 'get engaged' at Christmas/on holidays etc. and querying how that made any sense as they had obviously already decided to get married so were already engaged.

It ended quite badly, with one poster very publicly flouncing off Mumsnet, if I remember correctly.

Friends of mine that have got engaged recently have all had it in mind that they will be married within a year, even though both couple I'm thinking of already live together. I've found that exciting for them because the main event is happening soon.

I know another couple who have been 'engaged' for two years, the wedding isn't booked and they aren't planning on getting married until 2016. This woman bangs on about her wedding, and has been for two years now, but I really can't bring myself to be excited for them just because the wedding is so far away it seems pointless to be engaged just yet.

In my mind there are two types of engagements. Engaged to be married, as in two people get engaged and say they planning to get married in summer 2016 or just engaged for the sake of it. If you get in engaged but are not planning to get married then I don't see the point and think they don't understand the whole concept of engagement.

I feel that way about babies now which is a bit sad. Unless it's family or a really really good friend.

I know what you mean. I'm always pleased when my friends get engaged, but more because I know that they are pleased than thinking it is a big life event.

We went to a wedding very recently of friends who have been together 14 years and have recently bought their first house together. Even the bride and groom said they thought a traditional wedding, with all its connotations of joining two families together, starting their own family etc, was pretty silly in a situation like theirs. But actually, somehow by them acknowledging this and then planning a wedding that was more about a fantastic party for their friends and family, rather than focusing on the "Mr and Mrs" bit of the wedding, made it the best wedding I've been to in years.

I'm always a bit about engagements that seem to be just for the sake of it. I know RL gets in the way and sometimes people get engaged and it takes them much longer to plan a wedding than they expected - though in that case I do start wondering whether it is the marriage they are interested in, or the wedding day. I'm sure everyone would love their dream wedding but surely being married is the point of it all, so if you can't afford the castle, is that enough reason to put off the marriage?

I do know one couple who have been engaged for nearly ten years now. I think they did it to take their relationship 'to the next level'. Bit odd, that.

Now that the engagement, marriage then children seems to have gone out of the window for many then I don't think engagements are exciting news. Most are either because the girl wants a ring and then play bridezilla or just turned adults who get engaged to every partner.

Saddest of all are the celebrities who get engaged to every single guy they go out with, usually after a relatiionship of about two months. A year later they've split up and a few months later they're 'engaged' to someone else. Coronation St stars seem to be the worst for this. I wonder do their PR people encourage it to get them on the cover of OK, Heat, etc?

The more of this thread I read the weirder the word 'engagement' seems.

I was put off a bit by the trend for getting engaged in sixth form as a commitment thing before university - that isn't the point of an engagement! If you asked if they were planning on marrying before they went they looked a bit shocked. Surprise, surprise, none of them are married. One couple's still engaged, but most split very quickly.

However, I have become less grumpy about it as some of my friends are now doing it 'properly' ie. actually having a wedding afterwards!

Oh, and none of my friends have had children yet, and only a handful live together, so it probably is more of a 'thing'. I agree it's a bit strange when you've lived together for years and have children! Getting excited about being married, yes, but not the actual engagement.

Oh, and none of my friends have had children yet, and only a handful live together, so it probably is more of a 'thing'. I agree it's a bit strange when you've lived together for years and have children! Getting excited about being married, yes, but not the actual engagement.

YANBU but the engagement may mean a lot to the people involved.

DP and I were together for a very long time before a ring was purchased, largely due to circumstance meaning 'a wedding' wasn't a priority.

When we were settled and went ring shopping it was a big thing for us because we'd had to focus on expensive crap and practicalities for so long. It was lovely to do something that was just for us. I felt we were committed before but I felt happy to have a public declaration of that commitment afterwards.

Of course everyone then expected us to run up the aisle (which was the plan), but shit happens and we haven't. Our estate and circumstance makes it financially unimportant right now but we would be in more of a hurry if that was a consideration, obviously.

That said, didn't have an engagement party or expect engagement gifts after 10+ years cohabiting (we got a couple of small gifts but it certainly wasn't expected). We got 'officially engaged' for us. In our minds we were committed well before that.