Men who refuse to marry the mothers of their children

[SparrowNest]

You see that so often on here. I don’t mean couples where both parties are happy to marry, but ones where the man refuses despite their partner desperately wanting it, or else strings them along indefinitely.

Is there any reason at all, other than that he doesn’t want to have any duty to provide her with financial security for if they break up? So not only is he already thinking about potentially leaving, he’s happy to fuck over the person he ostensibly currently loves if they do break up.

My AIBU is that I don’t understand why women tolerate it. I suppose the ones being strung along have just been lied to, but having children is actually the bigger commitment in many ways. You’re joined for life. It seems so nasty to be prepared to do that, but not offer your partner the security and commitment they want.

I don't understand why mners seem to be married or no so many women married to men who do nothing at all at home whilst the women supposedly do everything but bring most of the money.

This is so far from my life. All of my family/friends do share it all. Women work PT and then go FT and husbands share the work at home and with the kids.

The only comes I know that don't operate that way are those where the woman insists she wants to be a sahm or work PT even when tasks are shared.

There are regular threads where women are advised not to marry when she comes with most of the money in the relationship, yet when it's men, it's almost a crime.

I agree that women have full control of the choices and life they build for themselves. Waiting desperately for a proposal and then getting pregnant hoping this will trigger it sometimes work, sometimes doesn't and in that case, the woman is to blame for the outcome.

@sjxoxo

if it’s all our responsibility because men have been written off as useless; who are we having kids for?

It's a really really interesting question and I'll fully admit it gets lost sometimes when some feminists consider these questions. To have an incentive to contribute in a meaningful way men do need to feel valuable.

I have to admit I have pretty much written men off as useless in terms of my own experience. Not useless, but definitely inferior. I adore some men and very much want to have them in my world and my life but I am absolutely certain I am superior in every meaningful way to every man I've ever been in a committed relationship with. I know I can do a far better job of raising a child and earn more money than these men and I'm more organised, more together, more creative, kinder, more empathetic, better at maintaining my friend network, looking after people etc. Some of them may be better at some specific competences than me but I'm a much more rounded, better person.

Arrogant, probably yes, but having to sort your own shit out time and time again when they leave you in the lurch and realising you can always do it far better than they can will do that to a woman. Particularly when the logic for deferring to the concerns of someone who just isn't pulling their weight or supporting you at all just falls apart.

You're right that feeling contempt for men is not a great way to build a society which values their contribution or encourages them to make a positive contribution to the family in the first place.

But whenever this comes up on these threads the inevitable solution seems to be pushing men back into more traditional "masculine" roles, encouraging them to feel more valued in the family etc (which tends to end up pointing to more breadwinning). I'm not sure that kneejerking back to these very binary gender roles is a great idea either. I genuinly don't know what the solution is. I'd genuinely love to hear how men could be encouraged to grow up without having to be the sole breadwinner. I've yet to find a compelling model for this.

I think it discourages women from chasing financial and personal independence. We should have more support for mothers on a societal level like free or cheaper childcare and workplace flexibility - marriage shouldn’t be seen as the safety blanket for that because in reality it often isn’t.

Absolutely. In today's society in the UK though it is still common and expected that mothers take time off, mothers stay home or pack in their career in favour of a little term time only part time job. So it's mostly women who lose out.
And yes, if you are an average WC/MC couple with maybe a mortgaged house, car and modest pension to share, you would be in a better position if you were married, but the position is still not great, if the sole/main earner walks away and no longer contributes.

I've lived in Sweden for a while. People really don't get married there any more, but it's not a problem either. First, the joint home and domestic goods acquired during cohabitation will be shared even if you're not married.
But more importantly, most men take paternity leave and an active role in their DCs lives. Most women continue their careers. In case of separation, 50-50 is the default and and it is not socially acceptable to walk away or be a disney dad who sees his kids once in a blue moon. Whereas in the UK it is still fine to leave your 'old' children with your ex-wife, pay 5 quid per week and still whine about that as well.

@AlDanvers

I can't really answer yabu or yanbu.

There's loads of different situations. There's many were the women have been strung along. But many where the men have never mentioned it or been clear they don't want it. But the women carry on assuming or hoping it will happen.

But also, you can't control your partner or force them to marry you. You can control your own life AND nor set up home and have kids with someone who you aren't married to if its important to you.

Fwiw I don't think it's always the men don't want to provide. The flip side of that is that women only want to marry to be provided for....surely that's not true.

There's nothing wrong with not wanting to be married.

And anyone with sustainably more in assets than a partner really needs ro think about getting married. Though I believe people should have to get independent financial advice before agreeing to marry.

The first post on this thread nailed it!

YABU

The bigger issue is giving up work or reducing your hours when not married but have children. That just seems so unwise…..

@Comtesse

The bigger issue is giving up work or reducing your hours when not married but have children. That just seems so unwise…..

Yes that is absolute nuts. No-one should do that.

Yes this is happening to me right now. It's making me hate him

@Comtesse

The bigger issue is giving up work or reducing your hours when not married but have children. That just seems so unwise…..

Lol

@georgarina

I have an uncle like this. My aunt has three children with him, they've been together for around 20 years, live together, and she once even bought herself a ring and a wedding dress. But he refused to propose. Just avoided it, even though she so desperately wanted it and once threatened to leave. I really have no idea why.

Do you really have no idea why he didn’t want to marry your aunt?

The answer is obvious. He doesn’t love her enough to want to marry her and thinks that somebody better will come along. Sorry to be blunt.

The problem with men is when their partner become so fixated about it, it inevitably raise the 1ueatiin whether they want marriage more for their own security and comfort than their love for him, and therefore lead them to question how committed they are and whether they might just go with half the assets he mainly or solely brought to then go for a man she truly loves.

If you start questioning the main incentive that leads your partner push for marriage, it's not surprising it ends up making them reticent.

I didn't want to get married. Personally I thought it was a lot of faf and money for one day. The planning consumed our lives at one point and we went into quite a bit of debt afterwards which really impacted the next few years of our lives. Was nothing to do with not wanting to provide my now-wife with security.

Getting married and having a massive wedding with a huge loan are 2 totally different things.

@vivainsomnia

The problem with men is when their partner become so fixated about it, it inevitably raise the 1ueatiin whether they want marriage more for their own security and comfort than their love for him, and therefore lead them to question how committed they are and whether they might just go with half the assets he mainly or solely brought to then go for a man she truly loves.

If you start questioning the main incentive that leads your partner push for marriage, it's not surprising it ends up making them reticent.

But marriage is literally about security: that's all its about. I can understand men being apprehensive about being taken to the cleaners in a divorce. That's why so many of them don't want to do it.

But the bottom line is that if you expect a woman to give up her job and thus her financial security to care for your children there's a quid pro quo.

The solution is to make it much easier for women to work and support their own children, taking the financial pressure off the man somewhat. But a lot of men are not comfortable with this because it requires a much greater input on their part into childcare and the maintenance of the home. They need to learn that they can't have it both ways.

@BillSmithson

I didn't want to get married. Personally I thought it was a lot of faf and money for one day. The planning consumed our lives at one point and we went into quite a bit of debt afterwards which really impacted the next few years of our lives. Was nothing to do with not wanting to provide my now-wife with security.

You don't need all that to get married. I know people who went to the registry office wearing casual jeans and t-shirt and just had their parents there for witnesses.

@BillSmithson

I didn't want to get married. Personally I thought it was a lot of faf and money for one day. The planning consumed our lives at one point and we went into quite a bit of debt afterwards which really impacted the next few years of our lives. Was nothing to do with not wanting to provide my now-wife with security.

You didn't need to have a big expensive wedding if you didn't want one.

I can't believe some posters are still glibly insisting that you should insist on marriage before kids. Yes, it's the ideal scenario, but you are not taking into account that women have a small window of fertility.

Once you're firmly ensconced in a relationship and you're in your mid twenties, without an agreement to marry, but a mutual desire to have children, it's a hard choice:

Leave, find a man to marry and then have kids? Ideal solution but your eggs could get past their use-by date

Stay, have kids and hope for marriage? Puts you in financial jeopardy but at least you have a better chance of offspring.

@CinnamonJellyBeans

If "offspring" is what you want above all else and your partner won't marry you then the choice is to leave and go it alone or stay but insist on continuing to work. In this scenario a woman should never stop work.

[quote LuluBlakey1]@TrishM80 'Aw, what a beautiful romantic story.....!'

Not.[/quote]
That's kinda what I was getting at.....!

Yes indeed @thepeopleversuswork

Do not reduce working hours, pension contributions or pay > 50% childcare. Do not take a less good job that offers child-friendly hours so you can do the pick ups, drop off and holiday care.

Stay, have kids and hope for marriage? Puts you in financial jeopardy but at least you have a better chance of offspring.

Well in mid-20s I'd go. Mid-30s, if everything else is fine, stay. But insist on having childcare and housework shared equally, make sure you do not give up your career and earning potential and don't add all the wifework to your workload. Oh and give the children your name, of course

I can't believe some posters are still glibly insisting that you should insist on marriage before kids. Yes, it's the ideal scenario, but you are not taking into account that women have a small window of fertility.

Can’t you? If marriage is important to you, then it is perfectly reasonable to take the position that you won’t be having children until you are married.

The thing I find difficult to believe is that anybody would think, “ooh, biological clock, tick tock, I know, I’ll put myself into the power of a man who won’t marry me and has one foot out of the door then spend the next twenty years unhappily hoping for a proposal”.

Once you're firmly ensconced in a relationship and you're in your mid twenties, without an agreement to marry, but a mutual desire to have children, it's a hard choice:

I’m not sure there’s any way around this. Life isn’t fair, sometimes you can’t always have exactly what you want when you want it, and sometimes the choices are difficult. Difficult choices don’t excuse you from making good choices. If motherhood is your priority over marriage then surely part of being a good mother is ensuring you could provide the best family for your child even if your relationship doesn’t work out - not simply hoping that things will work out and doing quite frankly dumb stuff like giving up your career and, when things don’t work out, acting as though you never had any real choice in how you did things.

And yes, I know that some women are higher earners than their partners. They are the minority, though, and we all know it.

How many threads do we see on here where a woman has compromised her career, or worse still given it up to care for children, and isn’t married although she would like to be? The man, in most of these cases, has given vague assurances of marriage ‘some time in the future’ but later becomes evasive and resorts to the “just a piece of paper” and “aren’t we fine as we are?” arguments.

In the very worst cases, the woman isn’t on the deeds to the house and is extremely vulnerable.

I do agree that whatever a woman chooses whether that's to have a baby unmarried or hold out for marriage knowing fertility declines with age it's always better for it to be an informed choice. It's not great how many people passively sleepwalk into giving up jobs or paying off mortgages for men that won't marry them.