Interested to hear your opinions on this...

[hothead323]

My boyfriend and I were having a conversation about a couple who are mutual friends of ours after he went out with the male partner of the couple. When he came back, he said that the gf was pressuring him to get married.

The couple have been together for 17 months and moved in together after 4 weeks due to lockdown last year. She is 34 and he is 31.

My bf says he feels sorry for his friend because he feels under pressure to propose when he's 'not ready' and apparently the more the girlfriend talks about it, the more it puts him off the idea. Other than that, the bf said that everything is good in their relationship and they regularly talk about buying a bigger house, having a future together etc

I was sticking up for the girlfriend and saying at 34, when she wants marriage and children, she hasn't got time to waste and after 17 months this guy should know whether or not he wants to marry her. My boyfriend says that that's not fair and that he does want to marry her one day, just not yet. I said it would be fair of the gf to tell the bf to shit or get off the pot and my bf said if she did that it would indicate she's not the right girl for him as she's not considering his feelings about the situation. He also suggested that she should propose to him rather than the other way around (not really sure how this makes a difference!)

Anyway, I'm interested to hear your opinions. My bf told me v early on that he wants to get married etc and we are only 7 months in and not living together yet so we are nowhere near that stage at the moment, but I do wonder if his response to our friends' predicament could be reflective of his own feelings about marriage and commitment. He does have friends who are married though and speaks highly of their relationships.

Thoughts?

I agree that 17 months of living together is long enough to know if you want to marry or not (presuming you do want a marriage relationship). And there is nothing wrong with the GF wanting that commitment at this stage, especially considering their ages being mid 30s. They’re not infatuated teenagers.

I also agree that the GF should just propose and get an answer. The whole “when will you ask me to marry you” knots women tie themselves thinking the man has to propose is patriarchal in my opinion. She is the one who is sure she wants to marry him, so she should ask him imho.

I think that the time couples take to get from dating to marriage has gotten far longer than it was in the past, so much so that I do not think it is a good thing at all. This post Y2K trend of waiting 8-10yrs plus having a house and children before marrying is alien to me.

I met my husband in August. Moved in with him January and married in April. Done and dusted in 8 months. Yes that was unusually fast even for the times, so I’m not saying I’m some example to follow or anything. We were lucky we knew quite quickly. That was 28yrs ago and still happily married to the same husband.

I would have thought that in your 30's you would know what you want and whether your partner was right for you within a year of you are seeing each other daily. I was 32 when I met my husband and I knew quite quickly what I wanted. If he had not proposed within 12 months I would have given an ultimatum and moved on. Fortunately he did. We however did not live or sleep together until married so had a good incentive to tie the knot. You could argue that if a couple are already having sex and sleeping together, a man might not see there is much more to be gained by actually getting married.
I know the Christian view of no sex until married is laughed at but it definitely focusses a man's mind on whether he wants to commit!!

I think it's a mistake to rush into marriage. It's also a mistake to have a child with someone who is not 100% committed to you and that child. Far better to use a good sperm donor.
So many couples split up, is it really worth all the angst and pain?
Life is not a Disney movie. The majority of humans are not monogomous.
Having said that she needs to decide where her boundaries lie and make it crystal clear.
It she wants a child then she hasn't got that long.
If she wants marriage then she might be better splitting up with her current boyfriend.
It's tricky. No right of wrong answer but in the not so distant past, most 30 something's would know what they want from life and not have this vague wishy washy attitude.

I've never been close to marriage in any of my 3 long term relationships. Longest 9 years. To be honest we just are not those sorts of people and its not that important to me. I'm quite shy and the idea of the attention on me is not great.

People feel so many things with this stuff. Money issues. Taking their time. Family issues. Work issues. Confidence issues. Stress stuff etc. Ultimately its a piece of paper and what really matters Is the relationship.unless they are waiting to be married to have sex then they are already doing everything that they'd do in a marriage. So why rush?

Why are some posters intent on invalidating other women's lived experience?

I and several other posters have said that 17 months was too short a time for us to commit to our partners for life. That doesn't mean we didn't get there in the end.

But cue floods of posters saying that 17 months is definitively ample amount of time to know for certain you want to jump into marriage, and that this applies across the board!

I think this is one of the occasions that an age-gap, even a small one, does matter.

He is 31. She is 34. It would be better if it were the other way round. There are lots of men who see settling down with wife and children as the end of being young. And lockdown has cost him 2 years of his youth. But, as pps have emphasised, it's different for her. Her options are closing down and she doesn't hanker after the lifestyle she had in her 20s.

Things are different now- fingers crossed, but it's not surprising that he'll be wanting the youthful experiences that he feels cheated of, less likely to want to move on to the next stage of his life. I think he'd have to be really besotted with her to agree. And if she makes it clear that a baby is more important to her than he is, he's less likely to think she's 'the one'.

@gannett
Why are some posters intent on invalidating other women's lived experience?

No one is invalidating by sharing their different lived experience? I married 3 months after moving in...8 months from first meeting. Still happily married 28 yrs later. The fact that several of us have had this lived experience just happens to conflict with you opinion that “most people” won’t know after 17 months living together, perhaps it is actually opposite and “most people” do know? Let’s have a poll.

You said:
17 months is way too soon to make this sort of commitment, I don't even think they should be buying a house together yet. I appreciate some couple will have "known" earlier and made a success of it but I don't think it's reasonable to expect most people to know at 17 months. And honestly it doesn't matter how much you want a baby or how much your biological clock is ticking - you can't speed up the process of really getting to know someone enough to properly commit to them for life.

I mean, that a pretty sweeping generalisation isn’t it? And no actual lived experience that you’ve shared here. Just your opinion that 17 months is way too short and that it’s impossible to go any faster because you can’t speed up the process....etc etc.

There is no set “process” that requires more than 17 months of living together before you can possibly know if you want to marry.

I agree , I only knew dh 6 months and we got married and had our ds. Relationships move at different paces and we 100% knew we were right for each other by 6 months. I was a total commitment phobe too!
I haven’t seen a different side to him or me to him from those early days. In fact, we’ve had lots of challenges which have made us even closer.
There no timescales of too early from my perspective. For your bfs friend’s partner her timescale is that she wants to settle down soon and 17 months is long enough for her to judge that. If that’s not his timescale and he can’t see it in the near future- she’s better moving on.

The gf sounds as needy as fuck.