Won't marry or commit financially

[Charlotte778]

My partner and I have been together almost 10 years. We have a child together and I have an older child from a previous relationship.
I moved into his home after a year of dating.
Hes a good man and a good father, but doesn't accept my older child as his own.
The main issue is him denying marrying me.
When I get down to the nitty gritty, it's purely financial. He doesn't want to share or lose the home he has bought and paid off. He makes silly excuses like he doesn't want a party with a load of my family he barely knows etc. He shouts that women get everything in a divorce!!!
I've offered to sign a contract, a pre nup or whatever, but he gets angry and defensive about it. I want to marry for love and our future...
So nowI have no husband and zero financial security and he holds all the cards. This attitude has caused me so much unhappiness and it's changed how I feel about him.
I don't want his house, I want the father of my child to want me to feel loved and secure.
I work hard and earn a decent income. I buy everything for the kids and contribute to household maintenence.
Have I wasted 10 years auditioning for a role he was never going to give me?
Should I move on with my life as marriage is something I've always wanted and now I'm in my late forties....
I feel he's busy feathering his own nest and lost sight of what is actually important....
AIBU? Should I just be grateful for my family?

Yes exactly, as this is a house they've lived in for about a decade together, they have a shared child, and she says she's contributed, I would guess she'd have a big claim if she were married. So I can see why he doesn't want to get married. I would never want to be in her position, it's shit and I'm sympathetic, but this is why you should be very cautious before having children unmarried if you don't have your own assets and don't do anything to build them in the years to follow.

I also wouldn't want to be in the position of building up an asset only to lose half of it to someone who didn't pay as much towards it, which is why I wouldn't get married in her partner's position.

Her shit of a dp has been feathering his nest nicely with op doing the heavy lifting producing children for him risk free, no doubt the housework and cooking, sex and all the extras of wife work and he sits handsomely mortgage free!!
It is incredible to me that anyone can’t see this! It’s unfair, it’s unjust and she has already massively lost out. Op should be planning how to recoup everything she has sacrificed and some.

Why is it unfair? OP chose to move in and have a baby with her DP before marriage and knowingly potentially forfeited any long term financial security by not getting married.

OP’s DP has done nothing wrong - she didn’t insist on marriage first. Saying OPs DP is a sh*t is very unfair.

I guess if you have no assets whatsoever and are on benefits it might not matter as much to be married. But if you own anything at all it is foolish to sink your life into someone else’s investment.

Op could have bought a house that had increased in value substantially in that time.

Op could have married someone that cares about her security and now have assets and a future.

If you can’t see why she has majorly lost out, then I can’t help you - I blame the education system. The lack of cognitive thinking is staggering.

OP how much equity is in the BTL property you own with your partner?

You are relying on marriage for your future security and happiness and he does not want marriage. Not accepting your child as his own is a very clear message. If you want to stay with him you should accept his decision and make other arrangements for your own financial security and that of your children. However I think it's also important for you to make sure that your first child does not feel insecure or rejected by this man.

This is really interesting, thankyou so much for sharing! It seems Australians are incredibly sensible xx

OP has agency. She chose to stay in this relationship because it suited her apart from not being married. She clearly loves him, and I imagine that financially they have a very nice lifestyle. She’s perhaps (understandably) worried about the expense of living alone these days and maybe that’s a factor why she’s still hanging on and inadvertently making herself vulnerable.

Sunk cost fallacy is serving her shit dp very well indeed.

Absolutely she could have done some or all those things you have listed instead. But the fact she didn’t and chose not to buy a house or marry is not her DPs fault or responsibility.

OP is responsible for herself. DP is responsible for themselves and they are jointly responsibility for their child.

Yes she’s lost out if they never get married, of course I can see that, but OP can’t reasonably blame her DP for that. (And I don’t think she is btw - I think she was just asking if it’s realistic or reasonable to get married at this point in their relationship and most posters agree that no, he won’t get married)

The DP didn’t force OP to move into his house or have a baby. It doesn’t even sound like he promised marriage pre-pregnancy if I’ve read the OP post correctly.

Edited to add: There is nothing wrong with my cognitive thinking either if that is what you were implying.

Read the updates. It's says he proposed 6 years ago.

Wedding cancelled due to covid.

I think he's been extremely dishonest.

OP, marriage is nothing to do with romance. That is just a fairy tale spun to women to get them to do it. The big dress and all that.

If you disagree, consider this. You can be in love without being married. You can be married and not be in love. Therefore it is impossible that marriage and love/romance are tied to each other.

Marriage is a legal contract that involves the merging of assets, rights and responsibilities, and contains within it the terms of its own dissolution, ie it sets out not just how these things are merged, but is part of a legal structure that anticipates how they will be separated, should the marriage end.

There are very good reasons to want to be married ---- and they are all to do with the legal and asset/financial element. Your DP seems a bit horrible, but he is at least thinking in a clear-headed way about what marriage is, ie a legal and financial contract. I would engage with him on these terms. A relationship is a partnership or should be. It should benefit both parties equally (not necessarily in identical ways, but equally).

If you feel your relationship does not benefit you as much as it does your partner, and marriage would correct this, put that to him. If he doesn't care about that sense of equal benefit, then he doesn't care about being in a partnership. Which makes him no partner at all.

Going to him with an argument about romance is just talking at cross-purposes.

I think we’re talking at cross purposes tbh.

Possibly. I read your first message that I quoted as saying his house would be protected from her if they married. I don't think it would be, so from a financial standpoint I can see why he doesn't want to get married. Which sucks for the OP bit I would make the same choice. I don't think it makes him a total bastard.

I think people are allowed to change their mind about marriage. So many marriages end in divorce, maybe the silver lining of the cancellation giving this partner time to think is that he didn't enter into marriage (a legal contract, not a romantic gesture) when it's not truly what he wanted.

Thankyou.... THIS! This is the point I was getting at, worded so beautifully!! Yes I was naive, but I truly saw marriage for us! I've wanted to walk up the aisle with my lovely dad giving me away since I was a little girl. I just assumed after a proposal that would happen and we would live happily ever after. Stupid, maybe....
But you've got to have some dreams right?
I guess the whole point of this is modern society has changed.... Things get very skewed when you meet someone in your 30's when you each have different assets already accumulated.
The moral of this story is don't go into any relationship with your rose tinted specs on! Xxx

But you had agency in this situation. Your financial future and security was your responsibility, I don't think that's your partner's fault. If someone wanted to cohabit with me, share the bills and housework and shag me, I'd welcome it. I'd expect him to be looking after his own financial affairs separately. If he wanted to get married I'd probably say no if he didn't have similar assets, because I wouldn't want to be shafted if we split.

So are you still officially engaged then?

Well yes you could see it like that I agree. But the point is, I wouldnt place so much importance on it in this day and age.

You really should have put that in your first post, and the age of your children. (You gave the impression your eldest was much younger than he was).

I agree that some of the replies you’ve had are awful however I also feel it’s annoying to put time and effort into trying to help/advise someone then they come along with massive drip feeds! It’s all been a total waste of time.

Total and utter drip feed.

A 10 yr old child who isn't acknowledged as a new man's own is a massive difference to that half orphaned boy being a grown man who so say is the ''greatest cheerleader'' of the asset protector's'.

I can't see the point..OP should have left the partnership decades ago and bought her own property.

If this geezer really wanted marriage after Covid, {but not wanted a big party} he'd have suggested popping down the local registry office with a couple of witnesses.

Why would you want to marry a man that causes hurt to your older child anyway?

You are severely risking your relationship with your eldest if you stay.

Don't call women girls!! How stupid and patronising does it sound? That's how you speak to people I suppose, I can see why your partner doesn't want to get married.

Please read the current thread, Affair and Left Penniless.

Op wouldn't have been able to afford the other property she owns with him. She is also feathering her own nest.

Op IS on the housing ladder. Just not the one she lives in.

And weddings have been able to happen for ages. Covid being the reason doesn't make sense. Op has known for at least 3 years that the wedding wasn't getting re planned.

She still isn't a vulnerable or in as bad of a position as someone with 4 kids who hasnt worked for 20 years, who is having their ex threaten to stop paying bills. There's no comparison.

Weird that you describe having a child and having sex as something she does for him? If she didn't want the child she wouldn't have had one. Sex just for the man's benefit as an act of service is miserable