He won’t marry me. AIBU?

[anonnancy]

Hi all.
From reading other posts similar to mine I suspect I know the answer to my question!

I have been with DP for 7 years. We have a beautiful 20 month old DS and he is the light of our lives. We own our home (both names
On the mortgage) and split bills fairly based on how much we earn (I do earn more than DP so I pay more to make it fair).

But he just won’t put a ring on it!

I love him very much, and when I probe him about it he just says “he can’t give me the wedding I want” (not sure what sort of wedding he thinks I want because even I don’t know that!) and I respond “it’s not the wedding I want it’s the marriage”. Still no proposal.

I’ve joked to have no more children until I am married. Seems to have little effect!

I didn’t think I’d be that bothered, but out of our group of friends we are the only couple still not married. I’m starting to get upset when I see friends or others I know that are getting engaged, because I am not. I know that sounds so pathetic! I just want to be his wife and he be my husband, but do I sit and wait for it to potentially never happen?

I certainly don’t want to feel like I’m forcing him down the aisle and I’d like him to marry me because he wants to and he sees his future with me. I don’t want him to propose because he thinks it’s what he should do / because he thinks I’ll leave otherwise.

I just feel a bit deflated by it all really and starting to struggle handling my emotions surrounding it..

I am very aware I probably sound like a needy / spoilt wench! Just need to vent to people who don’t know me I guess!

@Dontbeme

I actually earn significantly more than he does (around £10k more a year). He pays the mortgage and a few finance-y bits or any home Reno bits we do, and I pay utility bills / food bill / child care / car loan

He has stitched you up like a kipper OP. He has paid into the asset that means long-term security and you have ploughed your money into disposable items that mean nothing. If you or he walk he will have evidence to show He has paid solely for the house and can argue that you made no contribution, everytime someone asks on here about moving a bloke into the house they own the advice is always have him pay bills, nothing towards the house to avoid a claim on the property. You walked right into it.

Eh? They both own the house, doesn't matter who pays the mortgage, they still get half of the equity each if they split. Some of the stuff on here is mad.

@thepeopleversuswork

It's very telling. As I said, they're bitter and jealous. If they were happily single - or in a relationship but very happy to be unmarried, they wouldn't be so nasty about married women (and marriage.) If they were happy, they wouldn't feel the need to berate other people, and their life choices.

I'm not berating anyone for their choices. I've said marriage is the sensible option for a lot of people for practical reasons. And I certainly haven't been nasty about married women.

But I just don't agree with you and I think insisting that anyone with a different perspective from you is automatically "bitter" and "jealous" is a sign of a weak argument.

I am genuinely very happy single -- much more so than I was when I was married. I can list all the reasons here but this is all irrelevant anecdote.

More generally my perspective on marriage is this: its a very useful insurance policy to protect the financially weaker of the two partners (usually, though not always, the woman). If seen in this context its a good tool.

But the miasma of social baggage around marriage in my view lead to a lot of very rose-tinted spectacles and poor planning. Men and women go into it with certain expectations about needs which they think will be met and very often those expectations are mismatched. In particular men not always but very often expect their wives to be their domestic helpmeets, nannies and admin assistants and don't pull their weight with these elements of family life, leaving all this to the woman. There are exceptions, but these seem to be in the minority.

This works well up to a point when the woman isn't working. But as increasingly women come to earn at parity with their husbands, yet still pick up all the slack domestically, a lot of those women come to feel resentful of the deal they are getting.

This doesn't happen in every marriage but its common and its not just me who feels like this, there are 7 or 8 posts on this board on a daily basis about this.

You don't have to agree with me on this but I'm well within my rights to feel like this without being shot down for being bitter of jealous or told I'm in denial.

In any case, none of this is relevant to the OP's situation.

But this has nothing to do with marriage. It happens across relationships regardless of marital status! It's that which I find very odd. A decade or so ago when living together wasn't acceptable it was common for men to 'flip a switch' upon marrying. But now plenty have been together for years. People not only continue to stay with men who subject them to all the wifework but even have kids with them. So when they have already done all of that - why the skittishness of 'marriage', which by that point is solely a legal contract? That's also what the OP is getting at.

As an aside there's a fair balance of the 'my man is useless help' posts between married and unmarried women. The issue as I said earlier isn't marriage. It's motherhood. You can't just up and leave even if married because you're forever bound together by children. If people didn't want the burden of such expectations then they shouldn't have had kids.

@TractorAndHeadphones

It’s a fair point. The same dynamics crop up In unmarried cohabiting couples and obviously you are better protected if you are married.

I suppose what’s problematic for me about marriage is that it’s often presented for women as the ultimate goal for their lives and a lot of women attach an almost religious significance to pursuing it and quite often this colours their judgment about what’s best for them.

But my argument isn’t really anti-marriage per se. It’s more that I think women tend to get a fairly raw deal with cohabitation.

[quote thepeopleversuswork]@TractorAndHeadphones

It’s a fair point. The same dynamics crop up In unmarried cohabiting couples and obviously you are better protected if you are married.

I suppose what’s problematic for me about marriage is that it’s often presented for women as the ultimate goal for their lives and a lot of women attach an almost religious significance to pursuing it and quite often this colours their judgment about what’s best for them.

But my argument isn’t really anti-marriage per se. It’s more that I think women tend to get a fairly raw deal with cohabitation.[/quote]
We're thinking along the same lines - I agree that social pressure is a reason for marriage (people saying 'all my friends are getting married or engaged etc etc'), people want a nice wedding like everyone else, maybe they rush to achieve it instead of considering whether the guy is right.
I however think children are more problematic than marriage.
Women may get a raw deal with cohabitation but there's nothing to prevent them from walking out provided that they're financially independent. Again it's children that get in the way.

Also how clued up is he generally? I worked with a man who had 3 children with who I assumed was his wife but they weren’t actually married so he was able to bin her when he met someone he preferred without a backward glance. No liability to the woman who had bourne him 3 kids and kept the home fires burning for years. He was a family law solicitor and knew exactly what he was doing. Odious man.

@thepeopleversuswork

Why do you want to get married if you earn more than he does? You have dodged a bullet I think.

Does that advice apply to men and women?

@AICM

Yes. I’m not a fan of marriage really as stated upthread.

I think to the extent it serves any purpose really it is to protect women with young children against the risk their partner will bugger off or die.

Its purpose is to protect the weaker partner in the partnership. From the perspective of the wealthier partner it’s rarely a good deal.

Men tend to do better out of it then women though because they get all the domestic work.

But looked at in the cold light of day it’s a big risk for anyone earning decent money.

[quote MyPatronusIsACat]@mydogisthebest

Childfree couples are far more likely not to divorce and to have long happy marriages.

Utter hogwash.

What Christmas cracker did you fish that out of? Or did you see it somewhere once, in a naff woman's magazine, or on a shit website, or (the most likely scenario,) did you just make it up?

You can't present your opinion as fact. You also don't know every person in the world, so you can't claim that childfree people are much happier than people with children.

I suppose you'll tell me loads of people you know tell you they regret having their children. Funny how loads of childfree people seem to meet soooooo many parents who regret having their children. [/quote]
There have been plenty of surveys done that show unmarried couples with children are more likely to split up than married couples with children. I certainly did not make it up.

Also lots of surveys that show childfree couples are more likely to be happy than those with children. Of course it makes sense. Children put a massive strain on a relationship especially if it is not really solid and happy in the first place.

As it happens I have had quite a lot of people tell me if they could go back in time they would not have children. Again, that is pretty common knowledge. You only have to look at the posts on here from women who regret it. There are whole internet groups set up for woman (and men) who regret having children and, again, plenty of surveys show the numbers are pretty high. Of course quite a few would never admit it so the numbers would actually be higher

@thepeopleversuswork

Why do you want to get married if you earn more than he does? You have dodged a bullet I think.

My husband earns 3 times my wage. Does that mean he took a bullet?

He is making excuses. There are so many solid legal and practical reasons to get married esp when a child involved. Not wanting to get married says a lot a lot about hiw opinion of you. Cost is not an excuse - can do it for just a few hundred pounds.

@HarrysChild

Financially speaking, yes, he did take a bullet. Marriage is very expensive if it goes wrong. Hear me out I know there's more to it than this but on a purely financial calculation marriage is like gambling for the higher partner.

But for men the calculation is usually worth it. In return for this they get the fidelity of their wife, their children looked after and their home maintained. Allowing them to carry on doing what they do without having to worry about that distracting, boring, domestic stuff.

For a woman who is working equally hard it makes no sense to get married because she is very unlikely to be getting the same level of domestic support from the man (and possibly not getting the fidelity either).

Marriage is at heart an insurance policy for women for the time when they are physically unable to work, or against feckless or lazy men who disappear, cheat or die.

That equation doesn't work when you reverse the roles and have a hard-working, high paid woman with a man.

Unless he's one of a vanishingly small number of stay at home fathers, the man is not going to end up caring for the children in the event of a split and he almost certainly isn't doing as much domestic work as her. So there is no sense or moral justice in a high-earning woman signing up to a deal which more or less guarantees she will have to pay out half of the value of her assets if they split up.

@thepeopleversuswork We both work FT, me NHS him banking. We share the domestic load, although i do do slightly more of the cleaning, and he does way more school drop off/pick up than me as he WFH and I have a crappy commute. He does have a raw deal and if he was a woman people would be telling me I am a cocklodger!

[quote thepeopleversuswork]@HarrysChild

Financially speaking, yes, he did take a bullet. Marriage is very expensive if it goes wrong. Hear me out I know there's more to it than this but on a purely financial calculation marriage is like gambling for the higher partner.

But for men the calculation is usually worth it. In return for this they get the fidelity of their wife, their children looked after and their home maintained. Allowing them to carry on doing what they do without having to worry about that distracting, boring, domestic stuff.

For a woman who is working equally hard it makes no sense to get married because she is very unlikely to be getting the same level of domestic support from the man (and possibly not getting the fidelity either).

Marriage is at heart an insurance policy for women for the time when they are physically unable to work, or against feckless or lazy men who disappear, cheat or die.

That equation doesn't work when you reverse the roles and have a hard-working, high paid woman with a man.

Unless he's one of a vanishingly small number of stay at home fathers, the man is not going to end up caring for the children in the event of a split and he almost certainly isn't doing as much domestic work as her. So there is no sense or moral justice in a high-earning woman signing up to a deal which more or less guarantees she will have to pay out half of the value of her assets if they split up.[/quote]
A-fucking-men!!!

Spot on.

[quote HarrysChild]**@thepeopleversuswork* We both work FT, me NHS him banking. We share the domestic load, although i do do slightly more of the cleaning, and he does way* more school drop off/pick up than me as he WFH and I have a crappy commute. He does have a raw deal and if he was a woman people would be telling me I am a cocklodger![/quote]
@HarrysChild so in your case its a reasonable trade-off and he sounds like a good man with progressive values: and he may do a lot of pick-ups and drop offs but you're doing a lot of the domestic work. And there are more and more men like this and hallelujah for this.

But these men are still outliers. The majority of men do a fraction of this domestic/childcare/mental load and most of them regard getting married as the price of doing business to get someone to do this for them.

I realise there's a lot more to marriage than this for many people and a lot of people feel its about commitment and love and a stable environment for children. And fair enough if that's what you feel.

But although marriage makes less and less sense for working women, a lot of them still think its the gold standard and they do it often for the wrong reasons (status/"love"/desire for a wedding/family pressure etc).

I'm just suggesting that in a lot of these cases if women to a lot of soul-searching and are truly honest with themselves they will realise it's actually a pretty shit deal for them. And that they should go into it for the right reasons (ie to protect themselves financially), or not at all. If we could remove the romantic aura around marriage we'd do ourselves all a big favour.

@MyPatronusIsACat

2 of your posts directly contradict each other.

‘Most people disagree with you’

‘You can't present your opinion as fact. You also don't know every person in the world’

So which is it?

As for suggesting anyone who doesn’t embrace being ‘given away’ by one male to another as the ultimate relationship goal is a bitter, single hag. 🤣

Good to see some strong feminism on MN.

[quote thepeopleversuswork]@HarrysChild

Financially speaking, yes, he did take a bullet. Marriage is very expensive if it goes wrong. Hear me out I know there's more to it than this but on a purely financial calculation marriage is like gambling for the higher partner.

But for men the calculation is usually worth it. In return for this they get the fidelity of their wife, their children looked after and their home maintained. Allowing them to carry on doing what they do without having to worry about that distracting, boring, domestic stuff.

For a woman who is working equally hard it makes no sense to get married because she is very unlikely to be getting the same level of domestic support from the man (and possibly not getting the fidelity either).

Marriage is at heart an insurance policy for women for the time when they are physically unable to work, or against feckless or lazy men who disappear, cheat or die.

That equation doesn't work when you reverse the roles and have a hard-working, high paid woman with a man.

Unless he's one of a vanishingly small number of stay at home fathers, the man is not going to end up caring for the children in the event of a split and he almost certainly isn't doing as much domestic work as her. So there is no sense or moral justice in a high-earning woman signing up to a deal which more or less guarantees she will have to pay out half of the value of her assets if they split up.[/quote]
That’s true. For British citizens it’s only certain tax advantages that can’t be replicated with other legal arrangements.

I’m a high earning woman, but foreign so some of these legal things don’t apply to me. Luckily DP is a high earner and has significant assets of his own so marriage will work for us but if he wasn’t I’d remain unmarrried. No way am I letting a man have half my assets (especially as he’d be treated with sympathy as the lower earner).

[quote HarrysChild]**@thepeopleversuswork* We both work FT, me NHS him banking. We share the domestic load, although i do do slightly more of the cleaning, and he does way* more school drop off/pick up than me as he WFH and I have a crappy commute. He does have a raw deal and if he was a woman people would be telling me I am a cocklodger![/quote]
You do equal work. That’s not being a cocklodger! A lower salary doesn’t mean that you have to do more or the work. A part-time job, yea, but not a lower salary. I presume you work for the NHS as a HCP and not a receptionist/admin staff (in which case ‘NHS’ is misleading) which means you’re as driven as he is, just in a ‘noble profession’.

A cocklodger is someone who expects their FT working wife to do the majority of the work simply by virtue of having a vagina. That’s it. MAJORITY. If the load is equal it’s absolutely fine.

I love dh we have our family together.

I'm now not able to have more dc etc.. But as a first marriage id throw everything into it and if it doesn't work I'm not sure I would get married again.

More than than anything merely to protect my assets for the dc and I would hope dh did the same but obviously he could have been more than dc!!

where is op?

But this has nothing to do with marriage. It happens across relationships regardless of marital status! It's that which I find very odd.
A decade or so ago when living together wasn't acceptable it was common for men to 'flip a switch' upon marrying.
But now plenty have been together for years. People not only continue to stay with men who subject them to all the wifework but even have kids with them.

Yes - I have never in my life heard of a man who was a devoted partner and father while living with his girlfriend and their kids, then suddenly started leaving all the chores and childcare to her once they got married. If a man sees a wife as cook/cleaner/nanny, he'll see a live-in girlfriend exactly the same way.

@HarrysChild

Yes. So did mine. All we can hope is that they don't regret it...

[quote Dogsandbabies]@toconclude think what you like of my comment. I personally I find the notion that all women benefit from marriage and dependent on a man both offensive and ludicrous. I am encouraging my daughter to be independent, equal and happy rather than to marry for security. [/quote]
No one is saying "all women" benefit from marriage ( it's cost my sister £170k!). But there simply are certain legal protections and for many mothers. ( note I say mothers) this can make or break their lives. What if your daughter has a disabled child, as I did? What if a partner dies? In a 'two salaries to pay the mortgage' world, there are practical considerations.

Oh, and it's perfectly possible to be equal AND married.