About the whole 'marriage thing'?

[plummanjelly]

I've name changed for this because it's gonna be super outing.

I'm 27 and partner is 30. We've been together 7 years, since very early 20's. Quite a laid back relationship for most of the time (given our young ages, tumultuous early careers, time out for further study etc.) but in the past year has got a bit more serious (on my insistence - his philosophy is just to let things happen in their own time). I've moved into his flat (rented), attended some family weddings etc.

All this time we've got on well, we connect, understand each other, he's a huge feminist (important to me) and generally have a great laugh. He's generous, kind and supportive, his family are lovely.

EXCEPT - its been 7 years, and since we're happy and definitely know we don't want to break up or see other people, I think it's time we got married. I don't know what else there is to wait for. I'm in a good place career wise, and while there may still be some change and uncertainty (heavy travel, extended foreign postings to very challenging locations), I think this is something we can tackle together. Likewise with his career, there's a lot of uncertainty coming up but I'm happy to support him financially (if required) and otherwise and am confident that he'll come out well on the other side. Marriage will change nothing in our relationship until kids, it's just something I'd like to get out of the way sooner rather than later. We both want to have kids only after marriage, and I'd ideally want to start a family in my early 30's.

He's absolutely adamant that he will not get married right now. He feels that he's still growing as a person and doesn't want to set anything in stone just yet. He also wants to sort out his career before 'settling down'. He seems to think marriage will change something in our relationship fundamentally, that he won't be able to take risks like starting a business etc. He's also concerned that I don't want to move back to his hometown (middle of nowhere) and that I may wish to take up foreign postings and he'd be compelled to accompany me (I'm happy to move alone for periods of time). He's a believer of things happening naturally and believes that one day he will magically wake up knowing that that time is right to take the plunge. He cannot say when that time may be. 2 years ago it was in two years, now its in another 2 years etc. etc. When I bring it up, he's understanding, but can't offer any solution other than why can't we just enjoy the now instead of stressing about the future.

I'm in a state of eternal frustration because of this. I could bite the bullet walk out of an otherwise good relationship and start again, but I just can't bring myself to. I could stay and most likely remain unmarried and childless well into my 30s, also a crap option. I'm not willing to try ultimatums or emotional blackmail (suggested by friends who have successfully used these tactics) because a) it won't work and b) even if it did I really would rather not drag someone kicking and screaming down the aisle.

WWYD

You mean it's outrageous that the partner who stayed home raising kids does not actually want to move out with only their shirt on their back and live under a tree? Bitch.

Quite!

Are people serious about engagement before moving in!? No man or woman in their right mind would agree to that, surely.

Yes they would - I honestly am not sure I would have bothered to get married to the boyfriends I lived with. Not proud of this, but to me at the time they were just people for now, and I assumed that they felt the same way unless I heard different.

When I was ready to settle down I was conscious that I didn't want a partner to see me as "just ok for now" so I didn't move in without a ring.

Are people serious about engagement before moving in!? No man or woman in their right mind would agree to that, surely?
Absolutely. When I bought a house with now-DH it was a bigger risk for me than him for various reasons. I wouldn't have taken that risk without an assurance that he was totally committed. Although it has to be clear that an 'engagement' to me means starting planning a wedding, not just a ring and no date set for years on end.

Op, you don’t want to marry a man you have to coax/threaten/browbeat into it, and you don’t want to marry a man that doesn’t know what he wants, he doesn’t know if he wants marriage, then he doesn’t know if he wants kids, then he doesn’t know if he wants an affair before it’s too late etc etc.

Life is tricky at times, you need a robust and loyal partner, not someone that’ll watch you cry and tell you it’s sad if you break up but there it is. Yes he’s not a monster, but he is toxic for you - all this energy spent on him when he’s not investing in you.

I’m pushing 40, I can’t think of a single friend who’s been in this situation where it’s all worked out really well. So many friends who waited too long. Not one where they waited and it all came good.

I’m sad for you, but I hope if my dds ever get in this situation they have the courage to cut their losses quickly. My lovely dh never ever mucked me around saying he wasn’t sure, not for one second.

You have to live together to know if you enjoy living together in the day to day reality before deciding to be with someone forever.

No you don't. You just need to know each other well enough. Where he puts his socks is irrelevant as long as we're committed and have the same values. Some toothpaste in the sink is hardly going to change anything.

Interesting different views about living with people.

Most people seem to drift into it. There isn't any kind of commitment often, beyond a 6 month rental contract. There's separate finances and a sense that either can walk away if they want to. And often then the rental contract is renewed and again and then perhaps they talk about buying somewhere - bigger commitment, but it's not a forever commitment and people often buy with at legal contract (can't remember the terms) where they are joint tenants not tenants in common so they each have a share - it's not a together commitment in the same way as the other one.

And when people have started their living together in this non-commital, drift kind of way, it's often harder to move things forward - to engagement or marriage or kids - because often one person likes the fact they have the full 'living together' relationship with all the benefits, plus still a chance to get out if they decide they want to, even if that isn't a very serious thought, but they like the option. It's pretty common for this to all happen when people move in together pretty young - marriage and kids seems far off and unrelated to what is happening with moving in.

Perhaps it's slightly older people, or those who've been through what I describe above who have experienced the drift and difficulty in moving to the next stage, who are a bit more rigorous with the terms of moving in together. If you have decided you want a relationship which will end in kids or marriage or both, it's fine to make clear that you will only be moving in if the other person has agreed to kids or you have got engaged or both. The other person doesn't have to agree to this - it is their choice - no-one is forcing them. It's a honest way to approach things, rather than moving in and then announcing they must marry you. Quite simply, the other person has to decide if they want to be with you forever at the point of moving in, rather than possibly years later down the line. It's quite viable for people who are at the stage of long term commitment - perhaps later rather than early 20s.

I've known a couple of people do this. One had a long term commitment phone boyfriend before who she had lived with for 5 years and she wanted to get married and have kids and he couldn't decide and dragged his feet (fine) and in the end she walked away after about 7 years. When she started her next relationship, when after 6 months, living together came up, she made clear what had happened previously and that she wanted to be engaged first and to know man wanted kids. He understood the score. They waited another 6 months because he wasn't sure at that point (fine) and then they did get engaged and move in together and were married the following year and had a kid the year after that. She wasn't willing to move in with someone where the relationship might drift again and her chance to meet someone who wanted what she did was reduced and chances of having kids due to time perhaps lost.

Isn't it fair enough to say you don't want to move in together unless you're engaged, if you're very clear and the other person doesn't feel pressurised?

People who can't imagine this scenario or imagine any man being willing to consider it - I wonder if either you are very young, which makes all this understandable, or if you haven't really met many men who are into long term commitment or move in circles where most people just don't get married?

And lastly, for the OP and all those like her who find they are in a long term relationship which has come about through drift rather than a joint decision to commit for life (and it is this which is needed, and is not so easy to pin down when you already live with someone) then I would think very hard about what you want. And I would communicate it very clearly and out a timescale on it. It's not an ultimatum - it's making your wishes known clearly. And then man has time to think and decide. It will be his choice. And if he can't commit andbyoubneed that,B then walk away. And perhaps next time, consider having that conversation about commitment, marriage and kids before moving in, not 3 years later.

I do know someone who was with her bf for 7 years from early 20s, or even late teens, and they did get married ( he proposed) and I think that 7 years from age 20 is very different to 7 years from age 30- you are still growing up in your early 20s. The difference between my friend and the OP is that they both wanted the same things. They were totally in sync.
OP- it's already been said, but you sound interesting, driven and adventurous. Him, not so much. Idiot that he is he seems prepared to let you go, so do something he's not expecting-GO!
You won't beleive this but 27 is about the best age there is. Go abroad, see what's out there. Have a couple of flings with men you wouldn't marry in a million years. I promise your perspective will be very different after a year.
And as for men and marriage; married men are actually the happiest and live longer than single men. They tend to be well looked after, and when they do get divorced are much more likely to remarry quickly.

It's just a shame so damn many of them worm out of paying for their kids (hence the vast majority of single parent families being in poverty).

What @ChocolateWombat said. Sad to say I think many men don't see why they should buy the cow, when they can get the milk for free.

OP WWYD?
@plumandjelly; your life, your decision ultimately.

I say this with love as a late 40's woman. I have seen men who did not want to get married in the next few years, dump me and marry another woman within a year - it wasn't that they didn't want marriage, they just didn't want it with me. I have a friend who waited with the wrong person and ended up spending a decade with the wrong person. This happened to her twice.
She asked me why it was that I was married with kids and she was not and I said that in my 20's I was ruthless and if a man was not interested in marriage and kids, I moved on - I was also dumped by a couple. She always waited for the man to change his mind - they never did. I met my husband when he was in his 20's and he was quite willing to talk about marriage and kids and commitment - he didn't feel he had to do something amazing first. So I'm afraid my advice to you is to leave, there is loads and loads of time and you will meet someone else. But you have to make time to make that happen. I am also career focused but I realised that if I wanted marriage and kids, it had to happen before I was 30 - as in I had to have started on that path. It took me 4 years to have baby number one, and another 4 years to have baby number 3 so there is not really as much time as people like to tell you. Decide what you want for you and if he does not want that, find someone who does.

ChocolateWombat

I do see what you are saying, I just don't think I would have been able to accept DH's proposal having not experienced what it's like to live with him for a while. Perhaps it's because I was burned with an ex who lived in another country, who I saw frequently and loved deeply. I used to spend weeks with him at a time, but it was only when we actually moved in that I saw how he really was (and it was not good). I also had a friend who was obsessed with the idea of not moving in until engaged (and actually made me feel dreadful about doing that), but lo and behold she ended up doing the same after her (now fiance) made it clear he wouldn't be committing until he knew what life with her would be like.

Before I moved in with DH we had discussed where we thought things should go, and were on the same wavelength should everything proceed as expected. THIS is what I think is important, knowing you are on the same page. It makes it more obvious in situations like OP's where someone is just wasting your time.

Since there are a billion stories about men withholding a marriage proposal only to propose to another woman the next year because he clearly didn’t like the original that much, here’s what happened to my male friend:

He was seeing a woman for 6 months when she threw a huge tantrum on an overseas trip because he hadn’t told her he loved her. She didn’t want to wait etc, so threatened to break up with him. They did take a break for a while then got back together.

Within a year of being together she was all tantrums and tears because he hadn’t proposed. He told her he loved her but wasn’t ready to get married yet.

5 more (long) years of tantrums later, living together and supporting her financially while she chased her career dreams, when he had saved for a house deposit he was ready to propose. They took an overseas holiday where he planned to propose at a beautiful Italian beach location, but her usual tantrums ruined what was supposed to be a beautiful moment so he didn’t propose during the trip. More tantrums.

In the end he just proposed on a normal night out at the theatre. She was thrilled of course. She spent the next 6 months designing the perfect diamond ring, had it made, flashed it about and then... had an affair with a sleazy guy at her office and told him all about it. Happily he’s had the sense to leave her.

He wasn’t being malicious or cruel, just trying to enjoy their lives together while he made sure they were financially secure. He desperately wanted children but due to her (lack of) career she wasn’t ready. He was always honest with her about it and she’s left him at 40, wanting children and now needing to either start chasing after you get women or giving up his own dreams entirely.

Excellent post from ChocolateWombat.

I understand people saying they demanded commitments (engagement, marriage, etc.) but I don't think it's fair to pin everything on this. You can get married and move in together and the guy can still up and leave. My ex was more eager to get married than I was, we had long talks about what we wanted out of life and seemed on the same page. And then something changed after marriage and he didn't want kids.

Sometimes people just change. I think it's worse when they don't know themselves or what they want. To me, this is one of the worst types of people to be in a relationship with. You don't have a concrete reason to end the relationship but at the same time, their actions do hurt you.

If my ex had told me that he didn't want children, I wouldn't have married him. If he had said it during the marriage, I'm not sure what I would have done. But it might have led me to leave sooner.

I don't know what the answer is for the OP, and I hope she's okay. After reading some of these stories, I feel like I have a relatively happy ending!

I know you've been asked this, but are you sure you're right for one another?

I had a similar situation with a guy I had been with since I was 21. After a few years, I was upset he hadn't proposed, he was one of these 'marriage is just a piece of paper' types and kept using it as a stick to beat me with.

After we broke up, he kept telling me he was planning a proposal (was he bollocks). Looking back, the relationship wasn't right, and in the subsequent years of being since, I learned so much about myself and what I wanted.

Fast forward to my 30s and I'm dating my now husband. He had been single for well over a decade but I made it clear I saw marriage as part of our future. I also was very clear I'd be willing to walk away.

Like you, explained I didn't need a ring or a fancy proposal etc. The lovely grump went out and had a ring designed and made for me, and gave it to me over a glass of red in front of the telly

To people who are saying she needs to set a time limit or boundaries - I had a friend who did this (I want a proposal by XY date or I am leaving.) He proposed. They planned a wedding, He called it off a few months before, mortifying and heartbreaking her. You can't MAKE someone do what they don't want to.

Of course not. The point of setting an ultimatum is not to force the guy to do something he does not want to do, the point is to get a clear answer either way.

Your friend may have been mortified by being left in such a way, but she is still better off than if she'd hung around with the guy year after year and only realized he was a time-waster another 10 years later, when her chances of finding a new relationship and having kids may well have been fading fast, depending on her age.

You can get married and move in together and the guy can still up and leave.

Absolutely, but you'll have a degree of financial and legal protection (assuming you're the lower earner, or the one who would take the financial hit from having children). Plus it is the only real measure we have of legal commitment to someone. It can be dissolved, which is as it should be. But it is a way of demonstrating to someone that, as far as we can ever know anything in an unpredictable world, they are prepared to make this commitment to you.

Are people serious about engagement before moving in!? No man or woman in their right mind would agree to that, surely? You have to live together to know if you enjoy living together in the day to day reality before deciding to be with someone forever. I think this is a deeply unreasonable idea.

That's how I did it and how most people used to do it. And people still get divorced even if they have lived together.

One thing that comes across in this thread is that marriage is a lot more popular with women than men.
You have to wonder if this would be the case if in the 50% of marriages that end in
divorce, 70% of proceedings were started by men and instead of women and if women instead of men frequently ended up living in a bed sit while paying for him to live in the family home with the kids while dating as many women as he fancies.
Just a thought.

if women instead of men frequently ended up living in a bed sit while paying for him to live in the family home with the kids while dating as many women as he fancies.

The whole point of marriage was to protect women from just this kind of thing - having no protection after having kids and allowing dad to fuck off and fuck around as he pleases.

I'm a feminist and I honestly, truly don't understand women who object to marriage on feminist grounds. Yes, it began in a patriarchal context but our legal system began in a feudal one...the systems evolve with the times! I can't see anything feminist about bearing a man's children while not insisting on any commitment or protection and leaving yourself open to being left high and dry.

@children

I know a good few divorced couples. Not one divorced man I’ve ever met has ever lived in a bedsit. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I don’t think it’s such a common scenario that it’s the main reason men are less inclined to marry in the first place, (if indeed they aren’t inclined to marry that is; of all my couple friends, only two are not married / divorced. The vast majority are, or have been and are now divorced / separated).

Personally, I think it has little to do with marriage and much to do with women who give up their financial independence to follow him, his career, etc. even before they have children when they throw it all in to become SAHM. Money and the ability to earn it is power. Yes, marriage might give you small pickings while the kids are young, but many posters here still have to give up homes because they can't afford the mortgages, argue with men who hide income so they don't have to pay for their kids and ultimately end up impoverished and with their earning capacity reduced when their children are older or have left home. Also, I know plenty of women who were burned by marriage because he took off their income, half of their homes, inheritances and/or she ended up paying off his gambling and prostitution debts.

Fuck that shit.

According to the ONS, there were 239,020 marriages between opposite-sex couples in 2015. This was lower than the previous two years, but it's still a significant number. I cannot prove it, but I will bet that most of those marriages were proposed by men and I really don't believe they were all strong-armed into it.

I also don't know any divorced men who live in squalor. For the most part, their earning capacity was completely unaffected by having children and the amount the CMS demands they pay in maintenance is, er...affordable (although to be fair, most of them pay as much as they can because they're good dads).

Exactly @sparticus. I say that as exactly one of the women you describe! It’s a far greater risk for women financially than it is for men. Really hate the implication that poor men are frequently being taken to the cleaners by their evil wives. What a crock of shit. In every divorce I’ve witnessed (all between opposite sex couples so far), the women seems to end up with the shittier end of the stick. Not always in a major way, most are doing fine, but certainly have at least a slightly worse deal; more bills to pay, more of the boring day-to-day childcare and their earning potential is reduced as a result of them having to focus on dcs. It’s a huge risk doing what I’ve done to stay with my dh. If, (god forbid), we ever split, I expect that what I will be entitled to will be a million miles away from “this has gone too far”, “poor men stuck in a bedsit while I’m living the life of Riley and also somehow finding the time to fuck everyone I meet” territory. —MRAs— people have some funny ideas.

I say that as exactly one of the women you describe! It’s a far greater risk for women financially than it is for men

When I was at university in the 80s an older woman returning as a mature-age student said to me "if you give up your financial independence you are only one man away from welfare". She was divorced and struggling to bring up her sons with an Ex-Prick who was still financially abusive. In my life, I had the chance to hitch myself to a man with massive earning power, but this would have meant giving up my own earning capacity (it came with travel to places I'd be unlikely to get work). I said 'no'.