House... Baby.. No ring.

[littlerabbitface]

Have nc'd for this.

I suppose this is like a WWYD.

Basically me and oh live together, own the house together, have a baby, own a car jointly, finances are pooled. You get the idea. We act like a married couple.

However we are not a married couple.

Not even engaged.

At first it never bothered me really, but now we have a baby and him and oh have the same surname and I have a different one, I'll admit it does really get to me that we aren't married. I feel like a bit of an idiot.

Before anyone says well why did you buy a house and have a baby with him, well because I thought we would get married and I wasn't bothered if that came before or after a baby!

Now I'm starting to doubt it'll happen. We've been together four years. Neither of us have been married before. He's in his early thirties, I'm in mid twenties.

I know there is no real rush, and realistically we couldn't afford a wedding for maybe a year or two. (Though I'd be happy with a registry office and a nice meal! He wouldn't!)

When I've spoken to him about it he mainly just says we will do it in time, we will get there eventually, not yet, or in a few years, or what's the rush it won't change anything (technically it won't I suppose, obviously legally but in terms of our relationship nothing would change as we're pretty much living as a married couple)

He thinks I want to rush into it and doesn't see why I'm so bothered about doing it because it won't change anything. I say that if it won't change anything then why not just do it instead of putting it off for years.

I guess I'm just a bit fed up and this is just a bit of a whinge. I don't want to leave over this obviously as we have a good relationship, but I want to be married to him and I don't want to have to nag about it.

WWYD in this situation. Can you change the mindset of someone who is not very bothered? He is quite laid back anyway so it comes as no surprise that he is in no rush to do this.

Should I bring it up? Should I forget about it? Should I resign myself to the fact it may never happen?

I am hoping he is secretly thinking about it but I doubt that very much.

I need advice!

You cannot force him to marry you.

If my wife, before I proposed to her had ever tried to guilt trip me into it I'd have dug my heels in. Fortunately she's not like that, she let me propose in my own time.

Onion - are you a man or a woman ? How many kids did you have befroe " your own time " came along? How much time did you take off work to care for these kids ?

I think leaving proposing to men gives some of them an inflated sense of power. If you want to get married, ask. If he doesn't want to he'll say no and you can move on. No point sitting around hoping you're on the same page and wasting years waiting for him to do it in his own time.

I've just asked him why he doesn't want to do it, he just says he just doesn't there is no reason.

Ouch, I think that's why I can't bring myself to actually ask why he hasn't proposed yet!

But from what you've said, he has now changed his tune, and that would really piss me off,
He can't be so flippant with your feelings.

I have always felt that he has done things to benefit him or us, and never just me.

Must soooo true, it's always "her" that has to be the reason

Kr1stina I'm not bigoted at all, I have been to many weddings where the bride is older, and they have looked fabulous, I just don't want to be an older bride, we all have our own wishes and desires.

Does it matter if I'm a man or a woman? We don't have kids, I'm just saying that if my wife attempted to guilt trip me to propose it would have gone badly. We got married six years after getting together, not that it's any of your business.

I think there's a difference between being an older bride - nothing wrong at all with that - and being an older bride when you've waited decades for the father of your children to agree. Especially if you've been to your children's weddings before your own It could happen!

I think leaving proposing to men gives some of them an inflated sense of power

I agree.

When I was young, stupid, had low self-esteem, I was badgered constantly by a boyfriend who wanted me to move in with him. Against my better judgement, I did.

He had no job and no assets whatsoever.

I worked and paid for lots of stuff.

After I moved in, presumably when he thought he "had me", any opportunity he got he'd make smart comments about marriage being a mug's game, how he'd never ask me, etc. This happened whenever it came up on TV or we saw a wedding procession.

No idea where it came from as I'd never brought it up. In fact, I was having serious doubts about why I'd moved in with him in the first place.

For my birthday, he bought me a ring and it fitted my ring finger(!) I immediately put it on my RIGHT hand. He looked a bit crestfallen and asked why it wasn't on my left hand. I told him why would I do that, as I didn't want people thinking I was engaged if I wasn't?!

He said no more, but the stupid marriage remarks continued.

In short, he was a Grade A arsehole. Very insecure. Used to spy on me and interrogate me. Told me I was getting fat (I was over 5ft 10" and weighed 9st 12lbs at the time).

I eventually got rid. I now believe he was trying to exert some sort of power over me, assuming I'd want marriage and dangling it in front of me and withholding it and telling me he wouldn't marry me. So stupid. He didn't even have to have a live-in girlfriend if he hadn't pushed for it. Maybe he was trying to make himself seem more of a catch?!

He misjudged me entirely, of course, because I dumped him (not for the marriage thing, but for being an arsehole in general) and never looked back.

Onion, when you post on a thread like like this you are inviting questions, so it is a bit off to tell posters that it's none of their business.

There is a massive difference between being completely upfront from the get go about not wanting to be married and this scenario of effectively trapping a woman by implying you want marriage too but then ducking it once she has had a baby/tied her finances to yours. The OP might well have made very different life choices had he been honest and said that marriage was never going to be for him. He has basically defrauded her!

Does it matter if I'm a man or a woman? We don't have kids, I'm just saying that if my wife attempted to guilt trip me to propose it would have gone badly. We got married six years after getting together, not that it's any of your business

Yes your sex does matter. Because womens careers and earning capacity are adversely affected by parenthood and men's are not.

And yes it matters that you didn't have children because that what the OP is talking about - " im good enough to have kids with but not marry " .

And it's relevant because having children with someone is arguably a bigger commitment than marriage.

And if you don't want anyone to ask you about " you business " , don't post details about it on MN .

I conclude that you are a man .

It's just all kind of wrong that women need marriage to protect themselves should the man leave but men don't need it at all.

Conclude whatever you want, doesn't make you right

"It's just all kind of wrong that women need marriage to protect themselves should the man leave but men don't need it at all."

They don't.

This is a long thread already, but I wanted to make a small point...

OP, if you finally manage to get him to say yes to the marriage, WITHOUT having sorted out the reasons why he's currently saying no, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be a 'long engagement' (i.e. neverending). He'll probably say yes just to shut you up and you will never actually get married. he's just found a new ruse to shut you up.

The whys of his mindset are the key to unravelling it.

BR - so why all the you should be married before kids and you should be on the house deeds then?

Because people don't realise that you can secure your position legally without marriage. And, incidentally, a man who was not on the deeds of the house and so on would be equally vulnerable, but that doesn't usually happen because it's women who have babies.

You can reproduce the rights of a married person pretty closely but you can't reproduce them exactly.

Wills can be rewritten without the other's knowledge, for example.

And married couples are exempt from IHT (if inheriting from each other) whereas unmarried couples aren't.

Bertrand I respect the fact that you are not married and don't want to be, but i don't think you are offering particularly sensitive advice to the OP. You don't seem to understand or give a shit about how she feels about the situation. You also don't seem to be acknowledging the fact that while her partner has every right not to want to get married, he also owes it to her to explain his reasons.

"You don't seem to understand or give a shit about how she feels about the situation"

What I am saying that is that she needs to be making sure that her interests and those of her child are secure- and she needs to do that now. Her partner's unwillingness to do this is a warning sign- she needs to do it. She wants to get married- I understand that. But she can't force him, and while the legal position remains as it is, she is incredibly vulnerable. And she doesn't seem to understand this

It's embarrassing! Of course it's embarrassing! Being someone's girlfriend for the rest of my life is embarrassing.I'm good enough to live with but not good enough to be a wife.

I understand how you feel and I can sense the hurt within you as you say this.

I had a colleague/friend in the position of your DP. He lived with his GF (no kids) and he just wasn't keen on marriage. He never said why, apart from knowing people who were together for years, but who split up soon after marriage.

He said he loved his GF and was happy as they were and saw it as a forever relationship. That was until he noticed she got 'sick' every time there was a wedding and couldn't make it.

After missing a few weddings in a row, he brought it up and she broke down saying she found weddings too painful, as it's what she wanted and having people saying 'we're waiting for you guys now' or calling all the single ladies for the bouquet throwing was just too much for her.

It was so bad that she'd had anxiety and panic attacks over it, resulting in sick leave from work and only told him at this point.

She didn't want her sadness to show or people to think she was jealous, but it was hard to deal with, so she decided to stay away altogether.

After hearing this (after 9 years together) he proposed. He said he hated the fact that he had caused this much sadness to a girl he truly loved and he'd rather marry her than be without her.

I think if marriage isn't important to you, you won't understand how upsetting it can be in the OP and many other women's position.

Some of you are quite bigoted against what you call " older brides "

It's a matter of opinion and because you disagree it's not being bigoted.

I would not have wanted to walk down the aisle if I was an older bride, although I think it depends on how you look for your age.

I'd have found it embarrassing, If it was my second (or third) wedding I may not mind so much. A quiet registry wedding will do if my DP has been dragging his feet for years on end. I wouldn't want an audience for my wedding after decades together.

This is my personal view for myself and is not a judgement of all older brides.

I wonder if people on here talking about 'older brides' really mean 'when I look 10/15/20 years older than when we got together'. So less of a judgement on age and more of a judgement on 'remaining unmarried'. Maybe.

We can't and shouldn't force someone to marry us but suggesting that we should waste our time waiting on a question that might not come is a bit of an ego stroke. She's waited 4 years and still no sign of a wedding.
I'm 5 years into a relationship and we've had some really shit times and some great times but if he thought that I'd wait another 5 years to say I do he's with the wrong woman.
I think it's normal to not really know if marriage is on the cards in the first 1-2 years, but 3 years or more you'd know if you wanted to walk down the aisle or not, and if it's no then why string her along with the whole big wedding thing?

Why should the person who doesn't want to get married trump the other then?!

Because unmarried is the default state for all of us. Forcing/armtwisting someone to change his legal status just to satisfy your emotional needs is absurd. He is not asking YOU to make any changes to the status quo, YOU are asking him to take a serious legal step. That is the difference.

That said, I feel strongly that people should be married if they produce offspring together, for the good of the kids and society. The time to sort out whether or not he was marriage material was before the house and the kids. If marriage is an emotional dealbreaker for you, best to find someone who wants to get married and make a legal commitment to you. Not settle for a man is ready and willing to have a succession of out-of-wedlock baby mamas, which he apparently is.

Now, you don't really have much leverage. My hairdresser was in your boat and she harangued and nagged and begged and pleaded for years - her guy clearly used marriage as a carrot in their dysfunctional power play. She too gave her daughter his last name and bitterly regretted it. Finally, with the kid 9 years old, because he was out of work and living off her, he agreed to marry - no frills, no family there, both of them in jeans, she went right back to work afterward, no honeymoon. All she has gotten out of it is his bills and tax problems, frankly. Hasn't upped the romance of their relationship one bit and now he uses it as a trump card "well, I caved and married you..." whenever they argue.

Good luck.

"That said, I feel strongly that people should be married if they produce offspring together, for the good of the kids and society."

Why?

Old nursery rhyme below about a soldier that leads a girl on with all sorts of excuses to get a whole new outfit of clothes from her. Then, when he's run out of excuses, she finds out the real reason.

No reason for posting this, just thought it was interesting. I remember this song from when I was a kid.

O soldier, soldier, won't you marry me
With your musket fife and drum?
O no sweet maid I cannot marry you
For I have no coat to put on.
So up she went to her grandfather's chest
And she got him a coat of the very, very best
And the soldier put it on.

1. O soldier, soldier, won't you marry me

With your musket fife and drum? O no sweet maid I cannot marry you For I have no hat to put on. So up she went to her grandfather's chest And she got him a hat of the very, very best And the soldier put it on.

1. O soldier, soldier, won't you marry me

With your musket fife and drum? O no sweet maid I cannot marry you For I have no gloves to put on. So up she went to her grandfather's chest And she got him a pair of the very, very best And the soldier put them on.

1. O soldier, soldier, won't you marry me

With your musket fife and drum? O no sweet maid I cannot marry you For I have no boots to put on. So up she went to her grandfather's chest And she got him a pair of the very, very best And the soldier put them on.

O soldier, soldier, won't you marry me
With your musket fife and drum?
O no sweet maid I cannot marry you
For I have for I have a wife of my own.

I feel like I've woken up inside an Austen novel. All this social stigma of the unmarried, waiting for a proposal, feeling embarrassed at weddings about not being married, angst walking down the aisle wearing wrinkles, oh the shame! All we need now is Mrs Bennett and her lace hanky.

This is 2016 people.

p.s. My dad got married at 80 - to an older woman. I was mortified at the ostentatious amount of age on show!

p.p.s. NeedaBiscuit give your 2nd dc your surname. That will even things out.