To want him to want to marry me

[SuziSecondLaw]

My dp has said he'd get married if I want to. Which is fine, I guess we probably will some day, our toddler dc has his dad's surname, so I'd also like the same surname really.

I've never cared about getting married, still very much not interested in the wedding part, but when I met my dp it kind of clicked for me why people get married..

Am I being unreasonable to want my dp to feel the same, to actually want to be married to me?

So you are up shit creek if you split. See posts on relationships board for women who have made decisions like you and then ended up in awful mess when split.
If you are unmarried you need to sort housing situation - why isn’t it jointly owned and work full time.

I knew so many men who "did not believe in marriage", right until a woman they actually wanted came along. At which point unmarried partners were ditched, together with children, pets, mortgages etc. And the wedding happened within months.

Forget about the romance side of things. You need to either get married to protect yourself financially or start working FT so you can build a career and, critically, a pension. You and your DP would have to contribute to the childcare costs.

If you carry on as you are and split up in 10/20/30 years, you won't be entitled to any of his pension or house and it will be very late to start building your own financial independence.

so it clicked when you met him, but you proceeded to make your self financially reliant on him and bear his children for him, without it?

no, yanbu to want marriage. But unfortunately you have no bargaining chips here. As a pp, set a date, say you want to marry. Best case scenario, he goes along with it and you get the protections and legal status you deserve. Worst case scenario, he drags his heels, makes excuses and you realise that you have built your life around someone who doesn’t want you as his wife.

FGS !! Just READ some of the gazillion threads on mN about having kids and relying on a PARTNER rather than a HUSBAND.. !!!

Yet MARRIED !!

Oh no just set a date and do it or you'll be one of those mums on the relationships board in a couple years trying to find out what you're entitled to as DP has run off to marry someone else and you'll be shocked to realise nothing. You'll have given your best years to raising a family and walk away without a penny or a home, just saying.

I think it depends whether he doesn’t want to, or if it isn’t necessarily a priority for him in order to feel committed.

I know that being married is more important to me than it is to DFiancé and if I didn’t want to get married we probably wouldn’t be. DFiancé and I have had a very honest conversation about it where he has explained that while he is indifferent to the idea of marriage in general as he doesn’t feel he needs it to feel committed, he does want to love and be with me forever so if I need marriage in order for that to happen then yes, he wants to marry me to facilitate the life we both agree we want.

So we are getting married and he’s actually very excited about the whole thing!

This

If he didn’t want to marry you he wouldn’t have said ‘I’ll marry you if you want’. I think you should go for it 😊

You can’t make him feel something he doesn’t feel so from that point of view, yes YABU.

However he’s said he’s willing to do it so I would be getting married asap if he owns the house and you only work part time, otherwise you’re potentially very vulnerable if things don’t work out.

You have put yourself in an incredibly vulnerable position.

You have significant income or financial independence. You have no house to your name. You are living in someone else’s house, looking after children and relying on that person for money - and this person’s legal obligations to you are zero.

you have no claim at all - to his money, his savings, his pensions, his house - and to top it - you don’t have this for yourself either.

this isn’t a romance or passion problem. You have a much more serious issue here.

Oh no i wish I hasn't mentioned the word romantic now.. It sounds cheesy. What I meant was that I've always understood the logical/legal/protection reasons people marry, but when I met him I also understand why you'd look at a man and say hell yes, this is the one I want forever, I want his name, and a ring and all of the rest of it.

Also, I totally understand those mentioning the financial/legal concerns with not being married. As I said, he absolutely would get married if I really wanted to. I just want him to really want to, too.. It's daft I guess.

Why on earth would you give your child his name and not yours if you weren’t married anyway? That’s madness.

Ah, OP, there's nothing wrong at all with wanting to get married for romantic reasons! It is why most of us get married, I think. I wanted to get married, because to me, a lifetime commitment means marriage and fortunately DH felt the same way. If he didn't, I'd have felt exactly the way you do now. You don't really want to be exchanging those vows thinking 'he's a bit ambivalent about this 😕', do you?

@girljulian I think most unmarried women do? It was very normal in my social circle - I was the only one who gave our children my name.

I didn’t want to get married but my partner did.As it was important to him we got married. We have now been married for 21 years. My aversion to marriage had nothing to do with my feelings for my partner and was more related to my feelings about the institution. We have no children as I never wanted any. If civil partnerships had been available for straight couples I would have been happy to do that.

Interesting! It’s traditional to give the child the mother’s name. None of my friends gave their child the father’s name unless they too had taken his name.

OP you need a full time job and investments of your own not marriage to a man who doesn't care about your financial security!!

DH and I were friends for years before we were a couple, he used to say he would never get married etc. Once we started dating he stopped saying it as much, but when we got to the point of moving in I said to him there was no point if he was still anti marriage as I wanted children and would not have them without being married. The commitment and single family unit was important to me. He said at the time that he knew this and was looking at things in a different way to how he had in previous relationships. Couple of years on we got engaged, he proposed. A little while after we got married he said to me, I got married because I wanted to not just to suit you (me), but I didn't feel strongly about it, if you were anti marriage I would've thought I'd be happy not getting married, but now we are there's just something I really like about it and I'm really glad we are married, he's now the one who gets excited about our anniversary!
If he's willing to get married OP and it's not begrudgingly, you might find he gets it more after the fact. My gran would've said don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

I've always had my own financial security so those things weren't factors for me, but I'd definitely recommend it to any woman thinking of giving up work out putting her career on hold to look after children. Romance needs to go out of the window then.

WHY WHY WHY are people in minority economic positions STILL doing the cohabitation thing ??

Until the law changes DO NOT HAVE A BABY WITH SOMEONE IN A MORE ADVANTAGEOUS POSITION !!

Sounds like you've vocally not valued marriage and your partner agreed with you, now want your partner to agree with your change of mind?

You might have to both agree with what marriage means to you both first - you can change your name without marriage, or be married without changing your name. You can sort out financial, economic, security issues without marriage too - marriage is more than what you describe to many people.

At the stage you are at living in his house with a child I think you are past romantic notions like proposals. Surely it’s a pragmatic let’s get it booked in same way as you went to register baby.
If he’s willing then I’d get sorted asap as you are extremely vulnerable. If he’s not then at least you know and can act accordingly.

Thank you. Must admit I never thought there was anything wrong with it, until I read the replies on this thread 😆

hell yes, this is the one I want forever, I want his name, and a ring and all of the rest of it

Never wanted anyone's name. I have my own. But that aside, fair enough. Get married then. He's not refusing to and you'll be in a far more secure position.