To have a niggling feeling that my bf won't propose to me?

[Cheesygirl]

I have a niggling feeling that my bf won't propose to me. We have a very good relationship where he is thoughtful takes care of me, gifts etc.
I fell pregnant very early in the relationship and now we have a six month old daughter. He is a good father(he now does 50% that I have gone back to work). We are saving to buy a house, he has a life insurance set up for me and my daughter and he shows he is committed all the way.
However I have the niggling feeling he won't propose to me for engagement or marriage. He says he wants to marry me and our daughter to be a bridesmaid in our wedding when she is about 3-4 and he has told other people as well.
He hasn't However spoken about any engagement interim or any other form of formal commitment. I asked him to sign a cohabitation agreement with me but didn't want to saying real love doesn't need contracts and he finds it insulting.
I do believe that he loves me a lot he is saying that daily and doing things to prove it so there's no doubt about that. Yesterday we were on a date day at the Natural History Museum and we were at the gemstone section. I told him that I like the aquamarine stone and I would like some day a ring with this on it. He was joking about Haribo rings and he had some banter throughout. When we went to the pub, I was looking at rings (not Engagement just jewellery) with aquamarine. We looked at a few and said that he wouldn't buy me a cheap ring. Then I said what about engagement rings? As the description of a few rings was mentioning engagement. He replied, "Where did that come from " . I said it is on the description. "This isn't what it is about " he said then.
Then he continued the joke about Haribo rings and that I shouldn't wear it on my left finger in case of confusion. I said so what you wouldn't want people to think we are engaged or married? He replied definitely not with a Haribo ring lol. I said to him is that how much you value me? He said obviously he was joking about that and that love is not counted in material value. I said to him that's a part of it as well. But something about his whole reaction to the engagement ring mentions threw me off so I wasn't as warm the rest of the evening. He picked up on that and started asking what is going on and if I love him. He then said I'm his everything to him.
The thing here is that he is showing that to me daily. However I just have this feeling inside me. I dont know if I'm right or wrong here. I don't believe he is lying when he says he loves me etc.

@Cheesygirl how about a Civil Partnership instead?

You’ve got a child together, that’s about as big a commitment as it gets

You'd be surprised at how uncommitted people can be and still manage to make a child 🤷🏼‍♀️

Well if I wanted to string someone along without actually doing anything “ serious” I’d buy them a sparkly engagement ring in the knowledge that it was nothing more than that . If serious is what you want, you’d be better to push the cohabitation agreement.

But a 'formal acknowledgement' means absolutely squat in the real world.

He could buy you the aquamarine ring and you'd be in exactly the same place in 3, 5, 10 years.

If you don't care about marriage then stop focusing on an engagement. Engagement without plans to get married means nothing.

It doesn’t sound like he is going to marry you. He has everything he wants right now - and the ability to walk away at any time.

Are your finances joint ?

in the sense if he has in mind marriage in 4 years constant pressure from her to be formally engaged could lead to problems within the relationship. They have already had that conversation you refer to and he has said that he anticipates them being married in 3 to 4 years time and at no point of this thread has the OP said she feels this to be unacceptable to her. She just wants the formality of an engagement and a ring now. And he seems not to. The more she pressurises him for this the more likely he is to back off or not want to discuss it at all. HTH

In fairness he might not be stalling as much as making sure he feels their relationship has a future. They have not been together long. Being sure about the workability of things is not stalling, it’s sensible. Sounds to me like he thinks about three years is thd time he needs. That’s not a ludicrous window.

If he's committed to marriage and she wants a ring, what's the problem?
HTH, @Spirallingdownwards

This is.why you get the ring on your finger before you have the baby.

It sounds like you’ve not actually been together that long.
Make sure you ensure financial stability for yourself and protect yourself and your child whilst you’re not married, but it does sound as though it’s still a bit early to be putting the pressure on about a proposal. That said, you can discuss it with him like adults - that marriage is something that is very important to you and what timeline you’d expect, and if you’re not on the same page you assess the situation.

So OP needs to know that. If he isn't committed he needs to be honest with her so she can decide what to do. Kicking the can down the road with a vague promise of 3-4 years is not cutting it.

If he had the honesty to say 'I love you and our child, I see us as an equal partnership, I'm here for the long haul but I don't want to get married,', that's OK - it may not be what the OP wants to hear, but he's been honest, and this allows OP the space to decide what she wants. Vaguely pointing to a wedding at some misty point in the future helps no-one.

It's not the 50s a pregnancy doesn't force a marrige.
Considering people have sex on the first date a baby can easily appear long before a marrige is ready.

I wouldn't want to risk all my financial security on someone I don't know.
He may not be ready to gamble everything. That's OK.

A woman is the one with control over when a baby appears so clearly OP was fine with a baby and no ring before. She doesn't get to change the posts now.

Just propose to him. Sorted.

I see it like this.

If you want the traditional man-goes down-on-one-knee surprise proposal, then you need to STOP hinting and let him do it according to his own time line, which he has already shared with you. Obviously that comes with the risk that she is stringing you along - only you can be the judge of this, but nothing you've said makes him sound that this is inevitable. Perhaps he really does love the idea of your DD being old enough to be part of the ceremony.

If what you want is the legal status of marriage, and a clear agreement about when that is going to happen, then you need to put romance to one side and have an adult, two-way conversation about it.

You can't have it both ways.

Serious intentions are the two of you sitting down together to plan the future, that can be done without a ring. Just have a conversation about when would be a good time (for both of you) to get married, what kind of wedding you would both like etc.. Once you know that both of you are on the same page then you will relax. Honestly drop the idea of proposals and rings, to me none of that counts for much anyway.

I'll never cease to be amazed how many surprise babies there are on Mumsnet when contraception is free in the UK and almost 100% effective.

A baby and living together isn’t a formal acknowledgment of the relationship?

In your position, the way you describe it, no wonder you feel the way you do. I've read the same situation many times on MN and it's generally accepted that he is future faking because there's no real incentive for him to marry, especially once you have his DC.
I didn't need a Disney proposal and wedding, but did want the protection of marriage. If DH hadn't offered that, I'd have walked away.

Probably because you put him on the spot in a public place.

Choose a better time and place to have the discussion. State your position clearly, say you want a visible commitment and a timeline, tell him he doesn’t realise how important this is to you, and him joking and being dismissive about it really hurts you.

You also need to think about, and decide what your reaction will be, if he says that actually, an engagement and marriage are off the agenda.

'It's not the 50s a pregnancy doesn't force a marrige'

Of course it doesn't but marriage is a legal contract which protects the parties involved to a certain degree (and usually more so the woman) and not just financially.

If the DP dies suddenly there could be all kinds of terrible implications for OP and her child. There are other legal ways of making sure a partner is provided for, watertight wills and pension eligibility etc., but getting married is a more sure fire way of ensuring protection.

Well I’m not going to make assumptions about how surprisingly it happened but in fairness to the DP, it was early in the relationship and he might still feel he needs time to explore the relationship better.

I do not think you are being uneeasonable but forget about the ring for a minute. Tune into your gut here, is he everything you'd want a husband to be? does he feel fortunate that he met you? Does he value you? Would he be careful not to do something that meant he'd lose you?

I'm guessing the answers are no, no and no. And your focus on the ring is to distract you from the pain of those truths.

YOu have wisely kept your own job. I'd say to him that you have CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT MARRYING HIM. You want somebody who values you, feels overjoyed to have met you, and who wouldn't drag his feet realising that (marriage/contracts/legalities aside). I'm not talking about being love bombed, but if somebody does feel so lucky to have met YOU, then they won't risk losing you.

Maybe he has in mind saving up for a nice one and making a special occasion of a proposal rather than doing it in a cafe because the OP is hinting. HTH 🤣🤣