To call off an engagement but stay together

[Lidale]

Is it weird? How many people have done it and if so did you ever end up with a happily ever after down the line with the same person?

We did. Had been together through uni, got engaged and bought a house to do up but still lived with parents. I was in my first proper job and felt I was ‘missing out’. My fiancé (as he was then) agreed we’d call off the engagement to see how things went, but I was the one not sure, he was steady and just waited out my wobble. We still worked on the house but went out separately sometimes, I was a selfish dick to him, the me of now wouldn’t like the me of then. A year later we (quietly) got engaged again and married a couple of years later. Been married 24 years now, two grown up kids. Hadn’t given it a thought for years, don’t know if he ever thinks about it, I hope not.

I understand what you mean, OP. I had friends who'd lived together for years but hit a bad patch — which all relationships go through — and my friend's DP thought that proposing when things were really shitty would prove his commitment. My friend wanted to see if they could work through their problems before committing. When she said that she'd like to wait her DP took it badly — it was his solution to their difficulties. So she said yes and then later called the engagement off because, like you say, it seemed to be entangled with negative stuff. A couple of years later they went off and got married quietly one day, when they were both in a good space and ready for it.

IMHO, marriage is all about commitment where both of you are 100% certain you are doing the right thing for the right reasons. What I take from your comments " I still intend to be married, whether to him or not", is that you are more taken with the idea of "marriage", not the fact that you are freely choosing to spend the rest of your life with your partner, another human being.

In those circumstances then if I were your partner, I'd be the one to end it.

Sounds a bit dramatic. I've been engaged for 10 years with no plans to get married yet, if I called the engagement off I would be ending the relationship.

So she said yes and then later called the engagement off because, like you say, it seemed to be entangled with negative stuff.
Yet they stayed together, so their whole relationship was (and will be forever) entangled with the negative stuff.
It's baffling how so many people have a childlike belief in somehow being able to blank out whole swathes of their experiences and starting over as if they hadn't happened, like life was one giant Etch a Sketch.

I wonder how life pans out for them in the long run when they realise they can't alter the past?

Surely having a child together is a much bigger commitment than a marriage.

People who are married and have children.together are however far more likely to stay together than people who are not married and have children together. It’s often linked to socio-economic factors.

I don't think the OP is talking about erasing the past. Just that neither of them were in the right headspace to get engaged at the time, she soon realised that through arguments and secrets emerging etc., and called it off because getting married in those circumstances was not a good idea.

I also don't think this was a well-meaning but bungled attempt at a proposal. It sounds like an attempt to hold onto the relationship through a rocky patch, throwing out something -anything- to try to salvage things. Not a declaration of love and intent, coming from the heart, with a will to share the rest of their lives together. I think OP is pretty sensible not to want a marriage based on "oh this'll do" rather than "this is what I want"

They're now in a better place. And yes, engagements are called off/weddings cancelled sometimes without it being the end of the relationship. It happens. I think you both need to be in a place where you can talk about marriage sensibly and enthusiastically (This is what I want - yes me too - shall we have a big wedding or slip off to a registry office?).

I have a friend who got engaged, called it off and got engaged again - it didn't encourage people to share their joy; they had an engagement party the second time and people weren't much interested. An engagement is saying 'we're ready to make a life long commitment to one another, so to break it off kind of defeats the purpose. To get re-engaged and expect everyone to share your joy is a bit eye-rolly

So the idea is to get un-engaged and getting re-engaged when you're in a better emotional place. Not sure how that changes or undoes any negativity but ultimately, in the kindest possible way, no-one else cares and how common it is is neither here nor there.
If you both want to do that, just crack on. Quietly.

Loads of long relationships survive rough patches — work stresses, family stresses, financial stresses, wandering eyes — and recover and go on. Do you seriously think that those of us who've been together 20 or 30 years or longer don't have bad patches when we can't bear to be around each other? Some of us get over them, recover love and respect for each other, and carry on.

It was the engagement ring and the proposal that came right in the middle of the difficult stuff in the case I cited. It was as if my friend's DP thought that an engagement ring would make everything all right. Like a plaster over a major wound. Which is why, after first of all agreeing and then feeling coerced, she broke the engagement off. They stayed together, sorted things out and eventually decided to marry. I don't imagine this is an unusual situation at all.

People don't blank unpleasant things out. They take their time to process and integrate them, they work on stuff, maybe they have therapy, and they move on. Do you really think that all those couples who've held together through thick and thin manage it just by pretending the difficult stuff didn't happen? How do think people keep going after a major bereavement or similar? They don't blank that part of their life out, they live as people who slowly learn to bear the sadness of bereavement and go on.

Not sure how that wall of text relates to breaking off an engagement because there were negative associations with the proposal so you can have your happy ever after when things are nice and rosy again? 🤷🏻‍♀️
People staying together through difficult times or carrying on after a bereavement is so not the point 🤦‍♀️

i also saw engagement as a long term plan - we will be together for the long term. Therefore we can do one legal entanglement (marriage) or do wills etc to cover each other (both have assets)

but it is a statement of saying its long term, whether that ends in marriage or not. Therefore getting un-engaged would say to most people - you do NOT see a future.

It's absolutely the point. You wrote about people having to lived with blanked out areas of their lives when things had gone wrong. I was pointing out that we don't just blank off bad things. We find a way of integrating them and living with them and we move on.

You have completely missed my point (again), but whatever... 🤷🏻‍♀️

Just as an FYI, arranging wills, joint assets etc. while you are a happy couple is not the same legal protection as marriage. If you are planning or likely to be the lower earner or stay at home parent during your lifetime, being married does give you more in terms of legal and financial protection than any other arrangements.

And of course in contrast, if you are the higher earner or have the assets, you are probably best off not marrying.

(It's easy to marry when young and broke but once older, with assets marriage is a really unattractive option -pretty much a very expensive gamble as it's what 50% divorce rates?. Not worth doing "for love" one may at say)

@SwishSwishBisch this is a really beautiful and smart perspective of things, thank you for that! Honestly reading your response made the fog lift from my head over the situation. I knew something was bothering me about it and didn't quite sit right. And it's true we don't need to go back to go forward. I just don't see how we can undo an engagement, so the idea of instead working towards the wedding date seems more fitting! Thanks again

It would be interesting to see how length of relationship and whether the children were planned impacts this statistic.

Obviously a lot of children born outside marriage are born to parents who maybe never wanted a LTR, maybe intentionally weren’t getting married, maybe it was an unplanned pregnancy and so on.

However, if you took two couples who had been together 10 years, cohabiting for 7, one couple got married on year 4, the other never, I bet you wouldn’t find much difference in the split rates.

Plus, staying together isn’t actually the measure of a happy household. We shouldn’t really be putting “stay together forever” as a goal, because often it’s better for everyone to go your separate ways.

Tbh, OP, your journey started several years when you had a child together. I personally view having a child with someone as a far more serious commitment than getting engaged or married, because you’re tied to each other for life through your child.

I wouldn’t overthink your engagement. If you want to get married in the future, do; if you don’t, leave things the way they are.

My DH proposed to me while we were eating sandwiches in the car- we’d gone walking and it rained. I think he may not have finished chewing either. 😂 It was naff, but 25 years later, we’re fine.

Judging by all your updates:
You shouldn't get married.