He said yes then asked for more time

[excuseme678]

After several years I decided to take the bull by the horns and I asked my partner what he thought of us booking a registry office for a year's time from now. We don't have the money for a big wedding and I'm honestly happy with a registry office.
Age isn't on my side unfortunately.
He said 'yes that could be good'. I asked him several times, are you sure? I don't want to pressure you, are you certain?' He said yes.
I was crying tears of joy, I asked him if I should tell my family and his etc. And he said yes.
We were hugging and I was so happy, I didn't know if this day would ever come.
I said to him one last time, as long as you're certain you're ready, you can have time to think about it if you want.
He said 'actually, can I have time to think about it?'
I said yes that's fine, and asked him to tell me next week.
I'm actually not sure how to feel now, he already knew I wanted to get married and I'm scared he said yes because it's what I wanted to hear. What do people think, I'm just really not sure what he'll say. I feel embarrassed tbh.

Is he normally indecisive, erratic or unpredictable, OP? I mean, is this in character for him or not?

Don't wait for him. I had a similar situation with an ex, we got engaged and then about 6 moths later he asked to get "un engaged" - I was devastated and humiliated as he had let me believe he was on board. Looking back his reluctance was evident, I was just living in false hope despite a relationship of several years. Get shot of him. It will hurt like hell but less than if you let this carry on and erode your self esteem. I met DH not very long after I let go of the ex- I dread to think how unhappy I would have been if I hadn't done the hard thing at the time.

https://www.freedomprogramme.co.uk/

Never too late to leave and learn about putting boundaries in place to protect yourself. Do not buy property or have children with this man.

I know someone who recently broke up with their bf of a few years because she is 32 and he wouldn't commit to having children. She knows what she wants and is determined to give it her best shot even though there are no guarantees outside the relationship.

I know everyone is different and that choice wouldn't be right for some, but in general, I think you are more likely to find happiness in life by making active decisions rather than passive ones like waiting around.

@excuseme678 I don't think you should wait around in case he changes his mind, but I do think you should wait the week you originally said for him to make up his mind, otherwise that's changing the goalposts you have only just set. When you do have that discussion next week, I think you should frame it around your desire to have children.

My perspective might be slightly different as I'm in a same-sex relationship and we chose to have a civil partnership rather than a marriage. But when we made that decision, it was because we'd been living together for a while, were older than you, and had gone into the relationship with different views on whether to have children or not. At the point when we both agreed we wanted to try for a baby, that is when we also decided to have the civil partnership.

Anyway, I am mentioning this because (a) I think your desire for children is the more important factor here, but also (b) I think 'Marriage' as a concept has a lot of cultural baggage and meanings attached to it, and maybe your DP actually does love you and want to have children with you, but is struggling to see himself as a husband and your relationship as a marriage. And maybe you also have ideas about what 'marriage' means beyond a legal safety net for having children and they don't quite match up with his ideas about your relationship. So I just wanted to suggest a counterpoint to 'commitment = marriage and you should leave him if he's still not sure' and say maybe he is committed to you but still finds the idea of marriage difficult and maybe can't quite work out why. Obvs you still shouldn't wait around indefinitely, but you may be able to reframe the conversation about it so it's more of a practical step on the way to a family life you're both choosing?

Well his prevarication has worked - he has kicked the can down the road. He now has a year to enjoy your cosy nest whilst thinking he won't be hassled by you as the subject is now closed for at least a year. He also has time to consider his options, perhaps he'll use the time to find another nest to jump into and leave you blindsided, or pull the same yes but no stunt in a year's time whilst all the time you will be working hard showing him what a prize you are so that he'll hopefully deign to marry you. Next year when you broach the subject again he may say yes but then say he'd really like to be the one to propose and wants to surprise you, or he'll want a big wedding that requires saving for, he needs to build up his career/business before TTC and on and on....

If you really want children you need to pin him down on that. He may be an avoidant type and you may need to be prepared to walk. Don't let your chance of children slip away. I know you probably love this man but you can't wait around.

I have 3 friends who spent their best years dancing attendance to men they hoped would marry them and/or have DC with them, sacrificing their own finances and time for the men's careers or supporting them whilst they retrained or worked building up a business with but it didn't happen. All the men had affairs with much younger women (from their workplaces)who got pregnant and the men married them as "they couldn't abandon the mother of their child." My friends were 38, 40 and 41 when these events happened. Heartbreaking. One man managed to convince my friend that he would never want children and that he hated the concept of marriage but assured her that he would never leave her and she should spend money looking great and wearing designer clothes, going on holidays as that was a better way to live a life. No amount of swanning around in Vivienne Westwood could repay the heartbreak of him knocking up and marrying a young waitress in the restaurant that she had bankrolled and worked long hours on top of her regular job in for free.

Men who have integrity in their relationship don’t make their partners feel like this. Even if he was ambivalent about marriage, a loving man would understand how important it was to you and it wouldn’t be a big deal.

It made my heart sink when you said you’re a ‘people pleaser’ - I just think women who with this mindset totally fuck themselves over. And for what? A selfish man? Wake up op.

Well it is November, so why not wait until January to see if he gets you an engagement ring or announces it or whatever over Christmas. That would be a traditional time for engagements. If he is still dithering, then decisions need to be made in the New Year I think. Time to move on.

I wonder if he is financially secure with plenty of assets etc., and maybe you are not as equally financially secure? Therefore he may view marriage with trepidation in the event of a divorce. He may still love you but not want to lose his financial independence.

@excuseme678

You haven't made it clear in any of your posts about how he feels about children and if you have had a chat about a timeline particularly regarding your fertility.

If he is equally non-committal about that, you need to dump him straight away.

You need to ask and be clear on what you'll do if he is evasive.

Your fertility timeline should be the timeline. I know too many women who 'waited' and then they were late 40s and childless because of their feckless 'D'Ps

You have acted reasonably and rationally OP.

You deserve a future plan - and he needs to be honest.

I would say to him:

-do you actively, really want to get married
-do you want children
-what exactly is going on here, we've lived together 3 years already, getting married to me is the joyful and natural next step

He owes you a full and honest explanation of what is going on.

And you MUST quit people pleasing TODAY
Ex people pleaser here. Start putting yourself first.

Oh, and if you are doing reg office, there's no need to wait a year. Not much planning needed. I got married an a reg office decades ago - we ended up waiting 2/3 months or something like that.

Time is on his side, not yours. And you've already wasted 3 years on someone that won't even commit to an engagement let alone children. You're looking at him as the man you want him to be, not the man that he is.

Start extracting yourself from this relationship - emotionally and physically. It's the only way that you'll be a mother, however painful that is to address.

You don't have the time to wait around on a man who doesn't want to marry you/commit to you. Marriage legally covers a lot of bases. He doesn't want to marry you. Move on.

I was in a very similar situation but in my case we lived together for 7 years and were together for 12, from my early 20s. Always thought he was the love of my life. And it was mutual. However, he was fine letting things stay the way they were, whilst I wanted to get married, have children. Especially after I turned 30.

We would go through cycles where I brought up the topic of marriage regularly, to “giving him space” for months and nothing changed. He assured me he loved me but just wasn’t fussed about marriage, wasn’t sure he wanted our lives to change by having children, couldn’t give me a timeline. It hurt that the fact it mattered to me, clearly wasn’t important enough for him. In the end I got so sick of the dynamic of always pushing and asking and going over the same conversation over and over again that I saw no other way out than to break up with him.

By that time, I had emotionally distanced myself so much that for me there was no way back anymore. Of course that was the moment he did a full 180. Begged me to take him back, willing to do whatever. Let’s get married, let’s have a child…But I just didn’t believe in it anymore and I felt I had worked so hard to create the emotional distance I needed to break away I didn’t want to undo it all. I am now married to someone else and have two children. I have no regrets, apart from not doing it sooner and having the conviction to stand up for my needs earlier. I know our issue was mainly one of communication, shared ambitions and compatibility. So it would have come up in other ways sooner or later anyway, even if I had gone back. But it wasn’t easy to say goodbye to someone who I had such a strong connection with and who I still, to some degree loved at the time.

All I would say is, have a proper conversation with him, about what is important to you. Be strongly committed to that but not to the outcome you want. Be ready to walk away if you feel your needs won’t be met. Your happiness is not dependent on him and you can’t force him to do what you want. But don’t let him keep controlling the situation and make you feel like the needy one. That is not a healthy power balance to have in a relationship and you deserve better. All the best!

Are you happy you're engaged or happy you're engaged to him?

Give him time, just not forever. Only you will know if his heart is in it, we can't do that for you. It took my partner many years to propose but I never questioned his commitment to me, he just wasn't ready. If however you do have doubts then perhaps explore why.

@Ticketyboo123 let me guess - he is also married with kids?

Any man who strings you along for years with no intention of ever marrying you isn't worth your time.

Please don't wait around for him OP. He does not deserve you AT ALL.

The thought of you washing his pants and doing his dishes while he muses about whether in fact you are up to standard for the longterm for a week is bad enough but a YEAR?? No way.

What exactly will change between now and then? Is he holding out for something better? Is he giving you a "trial run" to see if you're good enough?

Seriously this breaks my heart. Kick him out and find a man who cannot wait to marry you and give you babies.

You've lived together for three years now. If he doesn't know now, he never will.

Cut your losses with this man - yes you love him, but he doesn't love you enough to commit to you. Right now, he's just an obstacle to you finding a man who wants the same things you want - this one doesn't.

I've noticed that not a single poster, or not many at all, have told me to just wait around for him to change his mind.

No, because this scenario isn't exactly uncommon, @excuseme678. Unfortunately it's not something MN has never seen before, along with an insight into the situation a few years down the line when women are stuck in this situation after having children, often having also given up their careers, and find in the event of a relationship split they have very few rights over the property or financial assets of the relationship.

Some have fewer concerns over this if they've kept an independent career, but in some sense it's usually the female having to make certain sacrifices.

If marriage was something that important to me I would ask, and have a frank discussion about the future we envisaged as a couple. However, I certainly wouldn't beg. If he doesn't think you good enough to marry if this is important to you - I was delighted to marry my DH who wanted this more than I did - then you deserve better from the relationship.

No don't wait for him at all past your deadline - so many men do the future faking thing.

I ignored all conventional advice and was upfront with DH at 18 about what I wanted he either wanted the same or not - trying to make sure we had same aims - we married at 26/28 and had first child 28/30 - I'd have been felt betrayed if he'd messes me around - though timeline was flexible - but he was even more keen than me to marry - the kids I think he could have waited longer for but listened to my needs/worries/concerns and he was fine with timeframe we chose.

I think some people are misunderstanding the one week vs. one year thing. OP has asked her DP to set a date for their wedding in a year's time, and has given him a week to make up his mind. If he's willing to be honest about the fact that he's not sure, I don't think he's necessarily going to jilt her at the altar if they do set a date.

I do agree though that when they have the chat in a week's time about whether or not they both want children together, she should ditch the year-long engagement idea.

@excuseme678 I’ve got slightly more positive stories.

At least three of my friends gave marriage ultimatums to their then boyfriends when they were in their late 20’s / early 30’s. One good friend told her bf, I’m not going to spend any more time on this relationship if we’re not getting married. It’s now been 30+ years, 3 kids and 5 grandkids of a v happy and successful marriage. Same with the other two. Sometimes men need a push.

However, I also suggest you don’t continue to ask ‘are you sure’ as the psychology research says this actually introduces doubt in the mind of the person you’re asking. They begin to ask themselves, am I sure? Same with asking someone, do you love me? So if he comes back positively, leave it at that and practice thinking ‘he’s lucky to have me’ in your own mind!

Came on to say exactly the same as @MargotBamborough - the advice to make things happen is ALWAYS given when the ‘why hasn’t he proposed’ question pops up. OP - you’ve done the right thing, but please listen to your gut and if it’s not happening, move on and give yourself a chance to find what you want with someone else. Good luck!

I’ve never been proposed to. I have been married for over 40 years though. We just talked about what kind of future we wanted and decided like adults. I mean, it could be argued that we weren’t really fully fledged adults, but we were both on the same page and luckily stayed that way. It’s the wanting the same thing that’s my point there.

@excuseme678 you talk about if there’s another man in the future, that makes it sound like your partner’s less Mr Right and more Mr Right Now. Are you sure you’re not stuck in a groove, conscious of that biological clock?