How do you forgive your boyfriend for not proposing?

[Lostromantic]

Hi all, I need help and I'm not sure what to do. And this story will likely go back to why buy the cow when the milk is free I know it. - so I've been with my boyfriend for five years and no ring. (Sigh) I made it very clear this was something I wanted from day one. I took the route of not nagging him but I would bring it up once a year or so. We moved in together after a year, bought a house, and have a ten month old baby. All along the way I've still made him aware it was something I wanted. For fucks sake I even bought the wedding bands a few years back. He all the time has stated he wanted it too. But after bringing it up I let it go because I still wanted to be surprised and have all the thrills and scary stuff that comes with an engagement. Btw I'm 35 and he will be 37 this year. We are not babies. So on Monday I finally lost it, I told him after five years if he wanted to marry me he would've by now and he hasn't and that breaks my heart. I wish it were different but it's time we separate. Of course he says he is sorry and wish he could change it, BUT is it too late to have that special feeling? Am I dumb if I believe him? How do you forget and forgive him for not making you a priority in his life. Why couldn't he just ask on his own? Are men really that lazy with marriage proposal when they truly love someone? Is this forcing him to marry me? Ugh should I just stick to my guns and leave? We do love each other.

Surely you can make legal stipulations for your house if you were to marry? I'm divorcing a man I actually bought a house with and he isn't getting half so that's rubbish anyway. As OP already owned her house she would have a good case on divorce. Plus you can remortgage and become tenants in common, setting out a % each, rather than joint tenants.

Try to forget about romantic proposals. They may be lively but the person who makes flashy gestures isn't always the person yoh can rely on long term. Now, what you need to do is decide whether you are prepared to split up over this. Then, you ask him to marry you. And if he says no, you start the process of leaving.
I've been there myself (minus the child). We split up. Six months later he was on my doorstep saying he'd made a mistake, and we've now been married 19 years. I'm not saying it's a plan that will work for anybody - it wasn't a plan at all. What I'm saying is sometimes it's a negotiation, and not very romantic, but that doesn't mean the marriage won't work. Negotiation is a key marriage skill after all!

I just worry that i would regret not having that special moment

I don’t think marriage is for you. You are placing too much emphasis on special moments etc. If you truly wanted to be married, the proposal and wedding wouldn’t matter.

I hope my children are more realistic about marriage. I want them to realise what it actually means and not want the superficial stuff just for Facebook etc.

So the baby and the house were okay to me because we were moving in that path. But time kept passing and nothing.

For you, no. Nothing.

He's got you. You've provided a house for him to live in. You've had his baby. You've basically handed him everything for free. He doesn't need to propose or marry you. You've demonstrated that you didn't really want or need it for him to have all he's got with you/from you.

Wow. It sounds harsh but whilst you say you're adults etc it sounds like you are living in cuckoo land full of teenage dreams

Marriage isn't everything. It's 2019. I'm married, but the engagement wasn't all thrills and scary stuff - it's just an engagement. Our wedding was an amazing day but honestly being marriage hasn't changed our relationship a single bit. We were both financially independent before - are you?

Seriously, you've got a house and a child. That's so much more than being married.

I love my husband but we'd both say that really being married to us just means we had a nice wedding day. Otherwise no difference. So I think you're being childish to throw away a relationship with the father of your child over this if this is the only reason. It's also a bit selfish. Be grateful for what you have now.

I imagine your partner just doesn't see the point in getting married when you're so clearly committed to each other in other important ways.

There was a thread a while ago about reasons to get married. You should try to find it. Whether you believe in marriage or not he is leaving you and baby in a very precarious position if he doesn't marry you. You don't need a big wedding but you do need that legal piece of paper.

As the OP owns the house and is financially secure, she is not in a precarious position. Marriage, if it ends in divorce, could well see her losing out financially.

Marriage provides protection and security for those who are financially dependent on their other half. That’s usually, but not always the woman.

Like a pp, I’ve also been married and divorced twice. Both times I was the higher earner with more savings. Both divorces cost me a lot of money, and like her, I would never marry again. It would not be in my best interests.

OP - why are you waiting for this man to do something he doesn't want to do? You've been together for 5 years, live together, and have a child together. What is it that he needs to ponder about before deciding whether to marry you?

He's just buying more time. Don't let somebody else dictate your life. It doesn't matter why he doesn't want to marry you, or why you want to marry him. The point is that you want different things. You're never going to get what you want now with him. There'll be no fairytale, just potentially a wedding where you always wonder if you browbeat him into it.

Why would you want that to be your life?

Personally if I were you I would not get married. You are financially independent and everything in your name is yours. and you have the upper hand. Once married he has a say on your property and how you bring zip your child. you hold the cards I wouldn't give that up.

Can I advise you don't marry him? You're in a very strong position financially, marrying him weakens that.

And it really doesn't seem like it's going to work long term.

People can live happily together without being married. I was with dh for ten years before getting married, and that was mostly to tidy things up after dc - and because we were clearly staying the course in terms of our relationship. Issues can be financial insecurity but sometimes that can work the other way around. My reluctance to marry was nothing to do with the man I was with and everything to do with how I felt about marriage.
I enjoy being married now, but wouldn't if I'd been pushed into it I think.

If you've had this talk and it hasn't resulted in making moves towards a wedding date being set (with or without the grand proposal you've been holding out for) it's not going to happen.

A man doesn't need to do a big faff-filled proposal to be head over heels in love. DH and I didn't have a proposal, or really count ourselves as "engaged" - we agreed we should probably set a date for a wedding and within a week we had a date set for a couple of months down the line at the registry office that worked for our families work schedules. Who honestly has the energy for the faff when you've already got a well established life together.

Yes but would the OP be happy if the talk ended with "ok then let's set a date for it" - that wouldn't be a romantic proposal would it?
I loved a thread on here recently where an OP admitted to "embellishing" her own proposal story to make it sound more romantic - I bet a lot of people do that. And I suspect no correlation between romantic proposal and being loving years down the line.

I agree with others - in your position I wouldn't marry, as it would weaken your financial position. I'm really not convinced he wants to marry you. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has at least one friend who hung on and hung on for years waiting for marriage, only to see their partner go on to marry someone else quite quickly after they split.

You say you have been clear from the start that marriage is what you want (although to me it reads more like it is a proposal that you want), but you actually weren't that clear - your words and your actions didn't match.

When I moved in with my ex-husband, I said to him, 'if we aren't married in 2 years I will leave.' Never mentioned it again.

Got married a year later within a month of him proposing.

I would have left at the end of the 3 years. Biological clock and so on. And I wasn't going to have a baby out of wedlock - we earned similarly, but having a baby would severely hamper my earnings, not his.

Something to think about for next time - or even for now if you want to try with this one. But the thing with ultimatums is that you have to mean it.

I actually believe if the OP’s boyfriend said to her ‘I love you and I want to marry you, shall we set a date?’ she’d be head over heels and in full ceremony planning mode. I think often people who want to get married with reluctant partners seem like they’re fixating on the ring and proposal when really it’s about them wanting some kind of sign that their partner does want to marry them. I’d have been as delighted with my OH saying ‘so, shall we set a wedding date?’ as I was with the big flash proposal (though that was amazing and will forever be one of my most loved days as it was so thoughtfully done and he went to so much effort re the things that matter to us, i still can’t believe he did that).

When you’re not married and with a partner who won’t marry you the actual idea of marrying must feel so far out of reach. So people focus on the next step. Which is a proposal. Him asking her to marry him.

Yes but would the OP be happy if the talk ended with "ok then let's set a date for it" - that wouldn't be a romantic proposal would it?

So yes, I believe she would. But it’s immaterial really as he doesn’t want to marry her so she’s not going to achieve that. She might ultimately manage to cajole him into reluctantly marrying her.

I would have left at the end of the 3 years. Biological clock and so on. And I wasn't going to have a baby out of wedlock - we earned similarly, but having a baby would severely hamper my earnings, not his.

Smart head on your shoulders :) and ultimately this is what marrying is really about. Ensuring the financial security and protection of both partners and kids in the family unit. I can’t wait to marry my OH in two months’ time (we’ll have been engaged ten weeks: you can marry with 28 days notice for £90 in England) because I love him and he’s amazing and I’m so excited to be his wife. But a huge reason for us both is that even though we earn similarly now, once this baby arrives we have no choice but for my income to take a huge drop to work part time, we earn the same but I’m at the top of my field and he’s near the bottom of his and he’ll be earning double what he’s on now within a few years, so his pension will be nicely grown while mine will not, we’d have extremely unequal savings (personally I don’t believe in sharing all money equally before marriage), and I’d be left in a worse position than him if we were ever to split up.

It just makes practical sense, it protects me, and our child, and if we weren’t marrying before the baby arrives (we decided to TTC and then marry this year whether pregnant or not but didn’t want to delay TTC due to my health) I would have insisted I continue to work full time and it just wouldn’t have been what’s best for our future child.

No we are not engaged still lots more to figure out, but at least we are starting down that path.

What is there to 'figure out'?

And treating a proposal as some kind of ultimate test of male commitment after you've spent five years living with someone and had their child is completely mad.

though we earn similarly now, once this baby arrives we have no choice but for my income to take a huge drop to work part time

Of course you have a choice. Use childcare, both continue to work FT.

Or he goes PT, or takes a few years out to be a SAHP.

Sorry Abhann, you’re right, I phrased it wrong. We do have the choice to both continue working full time and use full time childcare. But I don’t want to put my baby in 40 hours per week childcare from just turning one, it feels way too much to me even though I know others do it and don’t believe there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it.

If we weren’t married by the time the baby is here then yes, that’d be what I did, as I’m not compromising my career at the expense of someone else’s without the protection of marriage.

What JemimaPuddlePeacock said - marriage is ultimately about financial protection and for that reason alone is very significant.

I'm friends with a seemingly lovely couple who are in your situation OP. He is a relatively high earner in the music industry and she runs her own business. She is the main carer as he has more earning potential, so she's had to scale her business back to part time now.

She complains that he treats their incomes as separate and it's like living with a flatmate who you happen to share responsibility with for a young child. I do get the impression unfortunately that he's just biding his time until he can check out.

Abhann we’d both love for him to to PT but it’s not possible at this stage of his career, he’s a doctor. Or he could do it but then specialist training will take 6 years instead of 4 and we both reckon it’s better to get it done in the shorter timeframe as when he’s qualified he’ll have a lot more freedom and capacity to choose his hours and we’d like to get there ASAP!

Ironically he’d love to be a SAHP and i’d love to continue working full time, but we knew when we started trying this would be a tricky time in his career to have a new baby and decided it was worth it. The plan atm is first baby he works full time and I work part time, and if we have a second we switch as by then he should be able to.

Thankfully he’s managed to get a six month gap when baby is 2-6 months between placements! So he can locum a couple days per week but primarily be at home with us.

There are unfortunately some professions that are so non-family friendly and you just have to make the best decisions you can once you’ve decided to make that sacrifice and go for it.

We’re getting married very soon anyway so I’m not concerned about going PT (and my career is flexible enough I can pick back up to FT whenever I wish), but my comments were more how I’d handle things if we weren’t going to be married.

I really believe that if a man hasn't proposed after five years and a baby he doesn't want to get married. Either propose to him or accept the status quo, or leave. You need to make your own decisions and stop waiting around for him to call the shots.

JemimaPuddlePeacock your reasons why your dh can't go PT are fascinating. So, so many women have faced the same thing but gone PT, and yet because it's a man's career it seems less doable.

If OP stays at home for childcare reasons or more mat leave or goes PT she will lose out on her pension. If her or the child need emergency medical care he will not be her next of Kin and will have no say in her treatment. There are many legal and financial implications of marriage. In these instances often the woman puts her foot down about marriage. The man leaves, meets someone new and gets married almost immediately proving that he just wasn't sure about tying himself to her. If he wanted you for the rest of his life he'd want to make it official.

I do think however there are other reasons why maybe you shouldn't get married.