To say no

[Icwftw4]

Bit of a back story here so bear with me.

In a relationship for around 8 years. Both were previously married years ago to other people.

I have been divorced for a long time. He was still married until very recently. A few years ago I made it a deal breaker. He always said he would do it but then just didn’t and I didnt want to be with someone married to someone else no matter if it was all over and old news.

essentiallly now divorce has happened and I have said no to marriage. It’s something I would have considered in the first few years, wasn’t really sure I wanted to do this again anyway. But the fact it’s taken such a lengthy time to sort the divorce has put me off all together. it basically said to me, I’m not bothered about committing to you long term a long time ago.

I am happy with things as they are. Getting married at this point achieves nothing anyway. And I no longer want to. I have voiced this and DP is making out I’m very unreasonable to do so now he’s divorced. I don’t think I am, he says I spoke about marriage a lot - I didn’t, I spoke about him being divorced (or not) a lot. Because you can’t be with someone long term if they are married to someone else!

im pretty sure IANBU especially based on the responses to the OP post about her son, which is a similar kind of situation, except she is younger and more free to go off and pursue something else with no ties so slightly different. But I just want to sense check.

pretty much sums up my feelings on it now.

Thing is generally I do. But when it comes to nitty gritty stuff like this if I sit back and think too much, it does bring up some questions.

i am very independent and want to stay that way now. I have everything sorted and settled and i am not going to give that up for someone who dragged thier heels. I am happy to carry on as is. But I have been clear it’s up to him if that’s a deal breaker for him. But I won’t change my mind based on his views of it. If that means he walks, he walks.

I would have considered it at the beginning and we defintly had conversations about it then. Which were nearly always ended with we can’t even discuss this as you are still married.

he then never made any moves to change it. Until I said I was done due to him still remaining married and that I wasn’t prepared to be with someone who was in that situations indefinitely. I was happy to walk away at that point given that was the case.

I made it clear I wanted to be with someone divorced due to the legalities that marriage has in terms of a partnership, rights etc. but that I wasn’t sure or bothered about getting married again.

he could have stayed not getting divorced. He chose to get divorced because I was calling quits on the relationship otherwise, not because I said we’d get married. And I’ve said plenty of times since, that I don’t want to and that he shouldn’t get divorced because he thinks that’s what I’m after because I’m not. I’ve spelt it out very obviously now as divorce has come through and I don’t want him to propose to have me say no!

I think you're entirely reasonable to make a distinction between him being married to someone else, rather than both of you being married to no one (including one another), because of the very practical reasons you outlined re: his ex wife being legal next of kin etc.

I love my DH (second marriage) to death but I would never marry again. We had our reasons given a very specific set of circumstances, but I never felt the need to be legally contracted to him for our relationship to be meaningful.

The only thing I'd say is that it's reasonable for you to refuse marriage, and also reasonable for him to want to be married. So what remains is for each of you to work out whether it's workable as it is, or if one of you is going to have to decide wihich is most important to you.

Flip the genders on this, and everyone would be saying the guy led you on that you would get married after divorce, and if he really loved you he would be happy to share financial assets and that you should "protect yourself" by getting married.

I have been with my partner for four years, both have kids from earlier relationships. Don't have the baggage that you do on the marriage question, but I just couldn't see any good reason to get married. I have my space, financial independence, autonomy, and I'm not even sure I want to move in together, let alone get married. And, we actually have a strong relationship. Spend quality time together (every weekend), go on holidays, are friendly with each others friends, get along with each others kids - but no living together or marriage. Works beautifully. All the good bits without the friction of enforced proximity, compromises, lack of space etc. Seems to me your issues with your DP go beyond marriage/not marriage though - hope you can find a happy equilibrium.

" he is saying he always wanted to marry, but in my opinion remaining married to someone else, says otherwise in your actions."

Bang on, OP.

Given that you both have children from previous relationships I think you are better off not marrying!

You are probably right, but I definitely never said I wanted to. Always been very open I wasn’t convinced on marrying again.

I'm not sure this works for any gender at the stage in life the OP (and I) are in - pooling financial resources together when you are starting a family and are making choices to financially disadvantage yourself to advantage the family/enable the other person to excel in their career makes perfect sense. It is one unit. But, if you have your own careers, financial independence and children, sharing financial assets is just going to end up disadvantaging their respective children. This isn't about really loving the other person (or not) but about providing for your children, and making sure you are not reliant on anyone else.

@whyohwhyisitalwayswet couldn't agree more. When you're older you have to be a bit more hard headed about practicalities rather than being starry eyed about someone

You're not being unreasonable.
It sounds a little bit like now that he is 100% out of his previous marriage, he's looking to latch on to you, who's the higher wage earner, has a house etc. Because to be legally married, then divorced, in this case he would Make out better financially than you would. So it makes sense for him to be married.

I can understand how you've gone cold to the idea. First of all you never said let's get married let's get married let's get married. You said I am not going to be in a relationship with someone who is currently married. It took him 8 years to finalize the divorce? Eight years? I can see 8 months, I can see 18 months, 8 years seems a bit excessive. I can see why and all that time you've gotten cold. If you're constantly promised something, "I'm going to do it I'm going to do it, yeah I didn't forget, I'm going to do it I'm going to do it, stop bugging me, I'm going to do it," then when they finally do it, it's been so long you don't care anymore. And they think, look at me look at me, I finally did it. And I'm like yeah, two little too late.

I am absolutely not up on any type of legalities, but is there some sort of law that says that if you're residing together with another adult for a certain amount of years in the same home, if you're not legally married, but you live together under the same roof does that not constitute some sort of common law marriage? In so much that let's just say you guys live together not married for 3 years and then you decide to part ways but he can prove that he was at that residence for 3 years with you so he should be entitled to half of your whatever? Is that a thing? I've heard of that before but I've also not heard of anyone taking a common law marriage to court.

If after all this time, you still like the guy, but not enough to marry, you're a little bit suspicious that he might just be trying to get his hands in your wallet, and you feel that he's proven you're not a priority by taking nearly a decade to finalize his divorce so that he could start a new relationship with you, well, that's all pretty sensible.

OP, he dragged his feet for 8 years.
It was perfectly reasonable to not want to be with someone who was only seperated.
Perfectly reasonable.
Being with someone who is divorced is very different to the ear IMO.

You would be out of your mind after all this time to jeopardise your finances and your childrens inheritance marrying him, after all this time.

Please don't do it and cause your children upset, because it will.

It's too late now. I am 60 and have several friends in your situation.
Having seen a few messes in the past, they are keeping finances strictly separate with wills crystal clear to everyone.

When you don't share children and are older, if it isn't financially beneficial, do not do it.
Certainly not for someone like him.

Keep a cold sharp head on you!

Completely agree with you OP! You can’t have a committed relationship when one party is legally married to someone else. They’d inherit and be part of any major decision if the worst happened.
If your partner has only just worked this out then that’s very short sighted.
I would never get married again or live with someone already married to another person. So he’s technically single and thinks you should jump to his tune and marry now when he’s taken so long to address the issue? That’s not reasonable.

sounds like you’re doing this out of spite and cutting off your nose to spite your face. It may have taken him a while (who knows why) but he’s done what you asked. If you didn’t want to be with someone married maybe you should have ended the relationship completely as you clearly can’t communicate with each other

A friend is in the position of her partner still being married to someone else. The two of them have ten year old twins! He says he doesn't know where his wife is to divorce her, but these days that is just a pile of horse manure.

To me this all seems to be down to some poor communication. You didn't want to be with him if he was married, probably he took that as meaning you wanted to marry him. But those are not the same things - and you didn't mean you wanted to marry him. So there are misunderstandings both sides. Either that or he realises you have some assets (money, pension etc) and is chasing you for that and expecting you to share it. Neither the mis-communications nor the fact that he probably needs/expects to share assets is a good basis to marry.

But what to do now is probably the question. As you've got the most assets and you don't want to marry him it would be really crazy to proceed with the relationship. So if you don't want to marry him or be with him as a partner then of course you should break it off. The only thing I would say is don't keep him hanging around and do it quickly - because from his point of view he's done exactly what you asked, but now you're not marrying him (which is what he expected) so that is obviously not going to go well and it won't be be an easy nor a pleasant message for him in this phase of your life. Best cut the ties and moves on quickly to do your own thing.

I don't think either of you are being unreasonable. The situation with his ex-wife is irrelevant tbh. You both know what you want and what would be a dealbreaker for you. For him, he wants to get married and is entitled to say that if you don't want to, its a dealbreaker for him. You want different things, one of you will have to compromise or end the relationship.

I'm not sure about this. She didn't ask him to get divorced so they could get married. She just didn't want to be in a relationship with someone who was not actively making an effort to sever legal ties with an ex (entirely justifiable). It is perfectly possible in middle age to have relationships with people and not be married. If the relationship is otherwise solid, marriage/no marriage shouldn't be a deal breaker.

But yes, if he wants to get married and you don't, that is a deal breaker. If my partner insisted on getting married it would be a deal breaker for me.