I think now we are both being unreasonable

[Clovissa]

I really must apologise - this is at the very least the third, and perhaps the fourth, time I have posted wailing about DP not wanting to get married. I have been flamed from every angle and called a manipulative, immature and an emotional blackmailer. I don't think I am but I'm prepared to hear it (again). I could have slipped this post under Chat or Relationships, but I do feel now that AIBU has somehow become its spiritual home.

So, DS is now an utterly adorable 8 weeks and we both love him enough to weep. We are happy, I am fit and strong and recovered. It was my birthday recently and I had built up my hopes that a ring would be forthcoming, particularly when DP hinted there would be diamonds. I have my diamond, it comes on a chain and hangs around my neck. It's very pretty but it's not a ring.

Next summer we will be adopting (or taking on, whatever) DP's nephew who is an orphan and getting too much for granny. Much of the parenting will fall to me and it will mean our money and everything will completely merge. I feel this is a huge commitment on my part and thought it was a good time to open the old wound and give it a good scratch.

So this morning I said to him that before we get DN I would like us to be married.

To recap, in the first year of our relationship we discussed marriage freely as something that would happen. We have been together nearly three years. In the last six months, apparently, I now discover, DP has decided he doesn't believe in marriage and won't do it. He does not want to stand up and do a thing that he finds ridiculous because he has already made every commitment to me and our baby by forming a family and telling us he loves us and that we will be together forever.

None of my reasons for wanting marriage ring true for him (I want us all to have the same name as DS has his surname not mine, I want us to say vows, there are legal and financial differences - but he just says I want to please my parents, conform etc.).

He has said he has no objection to me changing my name to his. Pushed to compromise, he has said I can have a ring in a year and marriage in three if I still want it - I don't get this at all.

I can't break up our family over this but I feel incredibly sad because I want a marriage with him.

Actually, I suppose it's unfair to expect anything new to come of this post but it will give me something to read as I snivel in my well of self pity.

Um I have a few questions...

"In the first year of our relationship we discussed marriage freely as something that would happen" "When we met we discussed marriage fairly openly and he seemed to have not problem with it."

Who bought up the subject each time, you or him? And if you felt so strongly about marriage and spending your life with him, was there a reason you didn't ask him to marry you then?

"It's very pretty but it's not a ring." "he has said I can have a ring in a year" "I've practically thrown his gift of diamonds in his face."

Why is the ring quite so important to you? I thought it was just the wedding you were looking for.

"telling us he loves us and that we will be together forever." "We don't yet have wills or life insurance or anything like that. However, he has no objection to setting these things up"
"He has also suggested me changing my name to his"

Can he not change his name to yours, or double-barrelled? What erks you about the commitment that he's offering not being enough?

"None of my reasons for wanting marriage ring true for him .... he just says I want to please my parents, conform etc.)" "I feel as strongly about the contrived nature of that arrangement than he does about the heinous conventionality of taking me for a spin through the town hall"

Are you being honest with your true feelings on the subject? Would you really be happy with a simple town hall affair? I can't help but feel he's offering you the legality you're seeking, but you're looking for something more. If it's because underneath all of this arguement it's that you are feeling unsecure and really worried that he's not commiting enough to you, then a marriage will make absolutely no difference - your feelings will stay the same. Could you not ask him instead if he would be willing to make a grand gesture of commitment in his own way?

Thanks curious, he always calms down and we talk, as we have tonight. I'm pretty sure we will find our way. In any case the children will always come first.

Will update...

Poiparcel, he's not offering her the legality though, is he? Wills etc. are all very well but can quickly be changed without the beneficiaries being aware. Marriage is the only way to make a legal contract covering most areas of life between two people that can't be easily dissolved.

I could be wrong, but pre-nuptial agreement forms are becoming more common due to marriages breaking down and folks wishing to ensure that they have more security in their relationship incase of future difficulties.
That suggests to me that the pre-nuptial agreement defines that relationship legally as much, or more so, as the marriage itself.
To have a legally binding agreement between two people, marriage is not necessary.
I could be wrong, but I thought that this was something that he was offering.

Poiparcel, in answer to your questions - we both brought it up on occasion but not always directly, just in a way that comforted me that we were both on the same page: when I ask you father for your hand...when we're old and married... jokes like that. Do you know what I mean? I don't want to ask him to marry me, I want him to ask me.

The ring is important to me because I will wear it every day, and because I am a little vain and I want a nice ring.

The name thing: DS has his surname, so I'm sort of out of the club with my surname. I want us all to have the same surname, and we chose his. On the morning we went to register him we had a conversation when he promised to love and look after us always and I THOUGHT I made it clear that at some near point I wanted us all to have the same name. Apparently, I wasn't clear enough.

The thought of a big wedding horrifies me - as I said, I would download it off the internet if such a thing were possible. We're past that, and proposals, now. It's just about working things though as two adults planning on going from nought to three children in a year.

Thanks for your post, I've felt a lot better today reading all your input, but I'm going to bed happy that progress has been made.

Glad you're feeling better now, Clovissa. I very much understand where you're coming from, and I do think that posters who claim that having a child together is a greater commitment than marriage are being naive. The reason, it seems to me, that so many men are wiling to have kids with women but not marry them, is that they can, if it goes pear-shaped, claim that 'they just weren't that into her': after all, he didn't choose to have kids, did he? The dozy cow just forgot her birth control pills, didn't she, and then it was too late.

Bit more difficult for a man to claim a woman 'tricked' him into a wedding ceremony, though. Indeed, I've seen two men take just that cowardly approach to their exes and dc, after they split up following long-term relationships which, apparently, at the time didn't need 'a piece of paper' to prove their commitment.
Men are peculiar creatures, and they often hate to lose face.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into other people's relationships...