I have a dear friend who got married four years ago after two kids and being together 21 years.
They had a small registry ceremony in the UK followed by a large informal celebration abroad. This had a vows ceremony, speeches & a wedding breakfast. Their two daughters were bridesmaids.
The eldest (17) gave a speech saying she thought she was going to get married before her parents did. The bride gave a speech saying she’d waited 20 years for this day and thought it was never going to happen. The groom gave a speech saying he had thought about it for years but it had never seemed the right moment.
It was absolutely heartbreaking.
Here was a beautiful woman, both inside & out, who successfully ran her own business, raised two wonderful girls and yet had been kept dangling with the promise of a wedding that she really wanted but that she doubted very much would ever happen.
A year or so before the engagement she’d been thinking of leaving. Her partner’s business was facing difficulties, the liquidators were pursuing him for £manyK as they dissolved his company, he was talking about selling the house and moving to the countryside, even put it on the market for a while, because it was cheaper (she’s a committed city girl) and she felt unappreciated and unloved. She only held on because her youngest was 15 and she didn’t want to interrupt her schooling.
She told me she broke down, the last few years she’d started drinking too much and got a wake-up call looking at our photos of a girls weekend away. She hit the gym and started to make plans to leave. She felt better than ever and (her words) ‘knew she was worth more’. She worked her socks off building up her business in anticipation of going it alone, so successful she ended up taking on more staff. Then came the proposal.
We celebrated with her abroad. All singing, laughing, dancing, sightseeing and partying. Family & friends saying how lovely it is to see them finally married, never thought he would commit etc etc. Ha ha, how funny. Lovely joke.
But my heart breaks for her. She’s got the ring, the change of surname, the title of ‘wife’. Those speeches at the wedding did it for me. Her friends knew she wanted to marry, her daughters knew she wanted to marry, he knew she wanted to marry, his family knew she wanted to marry, but he kept her waiting 20 years.
He didn’t want to marry her until it looked like she was gaining self-confidence and getting ready to leave. She says it was because she was the problem - hitting the gym, taking up running & losing weight gave her confidence & she learnt to laugh again. But she was all those things for the first 15 years of their relationship & he still didn’t want to marry her.
Every year on her wedding anniversary she posts the same thing: a photo or video from the wedding and the caption ‘best day of my life’. Her social media profile is still of the two of them walking back down the aisle.
His isn’t.
Yes, there are women who don’t want to marry, some divorced, some happily unwed forever. This isn’t about them.
The OP specifically mentioned women who want to marry but whose partners don’t although they say they do. The women wait and wait but the wedding never happens.
My friend used to say ‘Oh, we don’t need to get married, it’s just a piece of paper’, but after a glass or two of wine she’d admit she did want to marry, very much, but it was her partner who was reluctant. Not now, not this week, not this month. But yes, sometime he would, but not now, the time wasn’t right. So she waited. Because at some point he’d realise he loved her enough to marry her, right?