How long do I wait for DP to propose?

[HoldingBreathandCountingtoTen]

Been with DP over 2 years, known each other for 5 years as friends. Lived together over a year and a half now. We are both early 30s. We are very happy.

I want to get married. To DP. I am just SO ready. I have told DP I want to marry him, said DP let's get married. He said he wants to get married to me but will propose "as and when he is good and ready". So he is not ready yet.

I don't want to twist his arm into anything, any proposal needs to be his own free choice. But how long should I wait? I don't want to waste my 30s child bearing years with a man who is never going to marry me. At what point would you draw that conclusion and walk away?

Everyone else says he's Taking the piss

But that's not (or certainly not entirely) because he's taking his time over a decision. It's because the OP effectively proposed to him and he didn't say "Yes", didn't say "I need more time to be sure", didn't even say "I'd like to do it the traditional way and propose to you". He said "I'll propose to you when I'm good and ready." That's just rude and a crap way to respond to a proposal.

I think you should talk again. You should say that you don't want him to propose to you because you know your own mind and you know what you want and you'd rather just discuss it with him rather than hang around waiting.

If he is not ready to get married, fine, but you need to know that now. However, I am surprised that you would walk away from this relationship instead of thinking of other ways to protect your children financially, other than marriage.

You love him enough to want to marry him, but you would leave him if he doesn't? That doesn't sound like love to me. Nor does it sound like you respect his right to choose not to be married.

If this is typical of how you communicate, though, are you sure this relationship is going to last?

That ("respect his right to choose not to be married") would be fair enough, Fairenuff, except that the OP is pretty definite that he does want to be married, and does want to be married before having children. He just doesn't apparently want to marry the OP now, or even to commit to a timescale for marrying her, and hence he doesn't want to have children now, or even to commit to a timescale for having them (unless "when I'm good and ready" counts as a timescale).

He can still have children whenever he decides that he's "good and ready". The OP may not be able to. And she doesn't even have any indication of when that's going to be.

If this were an "I want to get married before having DCs but my DP doesn't believe in marriage" thread then the OP would be getting very different or at least far more wide-ranging advice, a lot of which would be focusing on his right to choose not to be married.

Yes, I agree that's what it sounds like on the face of it. However, I think he is stalling because he doesn't actually want to get married but didn't have the guts to say it outright.

If not, and this is just a control issue like others have said, then she shouldn't marry him anyway because he would be a sexist arse.

Either way, it doesn't look good. Imagine the marriage - the bins are overflowing dear, are you going to put them out? Yes dear. When I'm good and ready...

^^ Well, quite.

Or even "The bins are overflowing, so I'll just put them out, OK?" / "No. I'm going to put the bins out, because it is Men's Work. But I'm only going to do it when I'm good and ready."

My view is that after 2 years (arguably 5 years) he should definitely know by now. He has knocked you back, and as it currently stands he has got the upper hand/control in this relationship regarding your future together. I would not let him keep you dangling - you should be in charge of your own destiny and not feel guilty or pushy about it.

Good luck.
Ps: Do not underestimate the 'good guys' they are very capable of wasting years & years of someone's life if that person suits their needs.

Exactly, Cool. The two guys I know who did this to their ex-partners (who then both had left it too late to be able to have kids) are nice guys. They went on to marry & have kids with really nice women. They just didn't consider the fertility of their exes. It was all about them agonising over the 'right' decision.

The OP is her early 30s, so she hasn't seen the pattern of this happening in other relationships yet. When her partner says he needs time to be 'good & ready' she doesn't see it for the common stalling tactic it may well be.

Two years together, five years as friends, if he doesn't know now, he never will & it's not right. She can give him another 6 months if she wants to, but it could just be a waste of time.

Personally I would lay out women's fertility stats (it's astonishing how many clever, well-educated men are totally clueless about basic female biology) and say he's got 6 months to decide. Thereafter she will need to move on to protect her ability to have children. And she needs to stick to it.

It seems like the OP has left the thread, though.

Why does it have to be when he is good and ready. This is why I think proposing is bollocks Marriage is a joint decision a written legal contract about sharing responsibilities and assets. One person should never have that power. I think if you have suggested it he should have said yes or no

Well, she posted late Friday night. It seems a bit harsh to decide that she's "left the thread" because she's not come back on by Saturday lunchtime.

What KeepCool And Twinklestein said above says it all really. I'd not give it 6 months though. New year, new life.

Hopefully the OP is absent because she's having a serious chat with her DP.

But I hate to say it OP but I don't think this is going to end the way you want.

It is extremely common for couples who met in their mid/late 20s to drift on in this way before fizzling out and one or both going on to marry v. quickly. Look around you friendship group honestly and ask yourself if you don't recognise this. As you know he believes in marriage, but don't kid yourself that this means he believes in marriage with you.

You've been very upfront with him and there are two scenarios going on. Either he does want to marry you but is waiting for you to fuck up, or he doesn't actually want to marry you and is wondering if he's going to change his mind. Neither of those are very nice are they!?

It's been long enough for you both to know. Someone recently said to me that if you want to get married, and there's been no proposal after a year of living together and no sign of it happening then force the issue or move on. At first I thought it was ridiculous but now I'm a convert. You're not playing at adulthood anymore, what's holding you back?

People have suggested that maybe he's secretly planning his perfect proposal. That could be true, but ask yourself if you've honestly seen signs of that happening? Has this been discussed at all since the "when I'm good and ready" conversation? My guess is he actually thinks the matter is closed for as long as he can continue to put you off and isn't spending sly afternoons ring shopping.

DH and I went out for a year and then I moved into his house and rented mine out. I was very clear in my own mind that I would not sell my house unless or until DH and I were married. He talked about marriage very early on and I moved in on the basis that once I had done so, we would get married. Then it all went quiet.

I gave it six months and then had a conversation with him, asking why it had gone quiet and telling him that the plans we had (which required the equity from my house) were not going to happen. I didn't get emotional and when I'd said my bit, I moved on to talk about something else.

I was prepared to bale out of the best relationship I'd ever had, if I wasn't important enough to him to be his wife. It was as simple as that. I had previously been in a ten year relationship where I had expected marriage to follow and it didn't and I wasn't going to be in that situation again.

Three days later I thought I had my answer. He was behaving very strangely, very edgy, and I thought he was going to dump me. Instead, he proposed and we married six months later. Married 10 years now, but I would have left him if he hadn't been prepared to go that far.

If your DP's timetable doesn't fit with yours OP, you may have to be decisive.

I'm in a similar position - together for over 4 years and living together for nearly 2. The difference for me is I already have children from a previous marriage and don't want to have any more, DP says he doesn't want kids of his own. My DP knows I want to get married - he knew this before he moved in with us and there have been several conversations about how he 'probably will want to one day' and 'isn't quite ready yet'. This is interspersed with comments like ''we can't afford it / I can't afford a ring' and 'let's wait til things are better between us' (no major issues, just usual couple stuff, what relationship is perfect?).

I can't imagine my life without him but similarly I want to get married, be part of a equal married partnership and provide a stable parentage for my children (their Dad hardly sees them and is useless). If he doesn't want the same then he isn't the man for me... But how long do I wait for him to be ready for this? I'm also early 30s.

OP I'd say that 2 years is still 'early' days, but you've been living together for nearly all that time so it has been serious for a long time. I'm in no position to advise but I feel inclined to agree with posters who say he sounds reluctant and not as keen as you to make the commitment of marriage.

Good post RockinD

Why wait? I will never understand why some women are so content to accept a passive role in their own lives. Surely in an equal partnership the decision to get married should be arrived at by both parties. Why should one person wait around on tenterhooks for the other to make the choice "as and when he is good and ready"? You both want to get married, right? So what are you waiting for?

I've been married for more than a decade and we lived together for several years before that. We got married when we decided the time was right (and for various prosaic reasons that had nothing to do with our commitment to each other, which was already as strong as it could be). There was no proposal, no engagement ring, no asking for permission from my father (I can only imagine my father's bemusement had my DH taken it into his head to do such an odd thing). We didn't have a wedding either, just a legal ceremony. Personally, I wanted nothing to do with those trappings of a bygone age, which are at root reminders of the days when women were essentially chattel. There's nothing romantic at all about them to me. Obviously, other people feel differently. I just don't get it.

This sounds to me like an 'inertia relationship.' The OP says that they were friends before they became a couple; quite possibly they were the last two single people in their friendship group - or the last two who weren't repulsive or mad. Quite often people in their 20s and even early 30s start to date one another because they each find the other reasonably attractive and the other is available, and there's never anything negative enough going on to justify splitting up, so the relationship just bumbles along. However, one or even both partners is aware on some level that the other person is nice enough but not someone s//he really wants to spend the rest of his/her life with, and sometimes that means that, even though all their other friends are marrying and even starting families, there is at least one person in the couple thinking, but I don't want that, at least not with him/her. But splitting up would be an awful upheaval, unsettle the friendship group, lead to time spent being single (and if you are a fairly conventional sort of adult, the idea of being single is scary and upsetting and unthinkable). So people stall, and fob their partners off, and sooner or later one of them either gets some kind of excellent career opportunity miles away and can use that as an excuse to end the relationship, or one of them has an affair and that becomes the exit strategy.

Needadvice: Well in your case there isn't the same concern about declining fertility - you have DC and don't want any more. However, I think your partner is also one of those who is still expecting that at some point he will get a better offer. After four years, he's not going to marry you unless you force the issue, and I'm afraid that isn't a good idea either - a man who 'gives in' and marries a partner who wants to marry him will spend the rest of the marriage greeting any complaint or disagreement from his wife with 'Well, you were the one who wanted to get married.'

Just because the woman is ready and the man wants to wait until he is ready does not make the man controlling or sexist! Just not READY, which, after two years and the OP sounds like she wants babies as soon as they're married, is completely fair enough.

Just talk to him. Tell him you want to have children with him and would like to be married first. Tell him the timescale that you have in mind and ask him if that fits in with his plans.

No big paws what makes it sexist is saying he is ready but he wants to propose when he is "good and ready"...

He didnt say "I'm not ready for that".

You asked him. You said, DP I want to get married, let's get married.

He said, no.

So there's your answer. He turned you down.

SGB I fear you're right. And I don't want to force it for the very reasons you describe. A talk is needed in the near future....

Topic - you are right, he turned her down.
Need - good luck, I hope it all works out for you.