Boyfriend felt pressured by ring shopping discussion

[Autumntimes]

Both in our early to mid 30s so I thought a year and a half is plenty of time to be engaged for our age. We are also living together now. We have discussed marriage and kids and I mentioned that I would not like to be together for more than 2 years and still don’t have a solution plan if we would get married. He seemed to be ok with the timeline but he never actively brought up the timeline convo again. I recently started to look at rings and I never try one on before. My friend who just got married recently has been encouraging me to at least start looking and it would take time to find something I like anyways so I should start looking for fun. I expressed to my bf that we should maybe go ring shopping together. He seemed ok to it at first. Today he finally mentioned that I am pressuring him and that I had been talking about it too much. Maybe I had been but I was just excited for the future and the fact that a few of my friends just got married recently made me feel the highs of being engaged. I freaked out and asked what he meant and he said he didn’t mean it in a negative way.
Now my head is all over the place. We had been talking about marriage for a while and he even wrote down the different shapes and cuts of rings that I came across on the Internet. I thought we were on the right direction. I had told him that I just wanted to do ring shopping for fun and did not expect this reaction.
Now I don’t want to even think about marrying him anymore. The relationship has been very good otherwise and he has genuinely been a good partner to me and his family is amazing to me.
Am I being dramatic? I feel dramatic because as the words came out of his mouth, my tears just wouldn’t stop dropping I had to take a cold shower to calm myself down. I can’t quite fantom whether it was the shame of me even asking to go for ring shopping or the fact that someone who I thought loved me would even feel pressured by ring shopping talk.

the shame of me even asking to go for ring shopping

You've only been together a year and a half-sounds like he doesn't want to get engaged yet.

It's irrelevant if you think 2 years is the right time, or your friends things it's time you did it. You need both people in a couple to feel the same way and he doesn't. You either leave the relationship or wait until he's ready.

But he hasn't agreed to get married, has he?

The OP wants to go ring shopping in advance of a possible engagement.

We don't know if this man wants to get married at all, to anyone.

Are they living together in their mid 30's?

Would you really feel it was any of your business?

I certainly cannot imagine being involved in my sons relationships with a partner that they live with and they are mid 30's.

I would think that very strange unless specifically asked for advice by them.

By your mid 30's you know if something is real or just a holding space until the real thing comes along.

OP deserves better than to be strung along.

I think OP is getting a very unfair battering here.

Too many men string women along for years with vague promises of marriage despite having no intention of going through with it. If the woman dares to even hint at making plans or setting a timescale, she is being completely unreasonable and “pressuring” him.

Eventually she has either wasted her fertile years waiting on a false promise, or she ends up having children with him but not getting married, and then when it all goes tits up she’s financially screwed and gets massive criticism on here from people saying she should have protected herself.

OP, perhaps asking him to go ring shopping was a bit much but if he’s not mature enough have a sensible conversation with you about future plans after 18 months together then I’d be very wary about wasting any more time on him.

Ha ha 🤣

I've never heard of anyone ring shopping who isn't engaged.

I think you've just pushed it a bit too hard. I don't personally know of any men who do any sort of shopping just for fun, so I don't think going and looking at engagement rings when he's not ready to propose would be his idea of fun. It needs to be a mutual choice and it doesn't sound like he's there yet, I can see why that would be hurtful.

@Autumntimes Don't pressure a man into marrying you.
If you need to pressurise hint, and pester he's liable to give in just to shut you up and a future divorce will be very likely.

Never heard of ring shopping before, we chose the ring after we got engaged, together only 6 months but had been close friends for 2 years before.

It’s always best if men think something is their idea though it quite clearly isn’t. It’s stood me well anyway.

1.5 years is rushing things
months of ring shopping before an engagement is weird
dont you want to be surprised?
I had no idea it was coming ( 5 years) and they picked the ring

In the kindest way he’s right - you are pressuring him! You also sound really spoilt and dramatic. You’re living together - give the guy a break and lay off!

It seems to be all about the ring????????

the op wrote: "We are also living together now. We have discussed marriage and kids and I mentioned that I would not like to be together for more than 2 years and still don’t have a solution plan if we would get married. He seemed to be ok with the timeline but he never actively brought up the timeline convo again"

Seems like the OP wants to be married but he's very unsure hence the reason I suggested walking out after 2 years if there's no wedding date.

I'm never heard of proper ring browsing before getting engaged!! I get you might pass a jewellers and look in the window and do a bit of a jokey hint. Must be a new thing.

I think you were excited and this has understandably thrown you and you don't know where you stand and are embarrassed. Have a chat again tomorrow. He's allowed to find it all bit overwhelming. It's a huge deal. My now dh would happily have not got married, but it was a deal breaker for me. We did nearly split up over it. Married for 10 years with 2 wonderful kids now.

This would freak me out if I were him. Massive amount of pressure and all seems very materialistic.

I can pin point you to a million MN threads of angry women who are have been stringed along for years while having the marriage carrot being dangled and now they're too invested emotionally to leave. it's not materialistic, the Biological clock is a thing, you don't wan to waist those precious fertile years on a wishy washy guy who won't compromise.

How can you go ring shopping together before engagement? If you’ve both decided you need an engagement ring and you are going to get married, then you’ve decided that you are engaged, so you already are engaged. you just haven’t some kind of romantic, staged getting engaged performance. It makes no sense!! Or do you choose the ring, somehow forget about it and he surprises you with it later?

You don't go ring shopping when there is no reason for a ring. He has not proposed despite the conversations. Sorry to be harsh but if he wanted to marry you 18 months in, he would have asked.

You are either quite young and have got carried away, or you are a bit emotionally immature.

You need to work on communicating, listening and observing your partner's feelings/responses.

I chose my own ring, but only after DH said that he was ready to propose and would love me to give him some ideas.

“Bunny boiler” ??? Ugh. Just, don’t. I despise terms like this, applied to keep women from raising their heads above the parapet and daring to state what they want and expect.

He doesn't sound particularly ready, OP. I think you need to have a very calm, adult practical chat about both of your expectations for the future.

Noone goes ring shopping before a proposal. How would that work? The proposal might never come. I'm surprised your boyfriend hasn't run for the hills!
Have you already changed your surname to his as well?

First of all, probably forget what is 'normal.' If you've made it to your 30s, I'd hope you weren't so obsessed with what other people are doing and comparing it to what you need to do with regard to how your relationship progresses. I'm sorry but your obsession about a ring sounds incredibly immature.

Big surprise proposals where there's a ring already picked out and whatever you're seeing on social media etc, that's not normal and I feel really badly for the few men who have been pressured into a whole performance they weren't comfortable with.

Far more common (since you've used the word 'normal') is a discussion about marriage and what you both want out of life re: kids, your families, religion if it's a factor, finances etc. More often than not, it's more of a "we should get married" "yes, we should!" type exchange, and once you've realised that's the engagement happening, you start talking about dates and rings.

I will go against some of the grain here though and say 18 months is entirely sufficient for many people; DH and I married after knowing each other 10 months, though we had the added pressure of being different nationalities and needing paperwork to stay together. We've been married 20 years now. Sometimes you just know.

You aren't unreasonable to have a timeline, but he is also not unreasonable for not being ready for your timeline and ring demands. If you're still interested in him, I think you need to have a frank conversation. Less ring focused, more actual marriage focused.

Honestly, if this was me - if I was your partner which not having a penis I'm guessing I wouldn't be -I'd be a bit freaked out too, especially giving you crying and having to have a shower to calm your emotions down over ring shopping. You seem to have a whole big plan in your head of what comes next and while you've spoken about marriage, you're running a few miles ahead of him and pushing him for something he's not quite ready for yet. When did you last talk about what you wanted in terms of marriage and children? Is it ongoing? Do you talk about weddings a lot when you've been to a wedding? Do you feel that maybe you're talking and he's just nodding because he's not ready or maybe - and this is not necessarily the case at all - will never be ready.

You've asked someone do people do the ring shopping after they're engaged because you thought it was before as though there is some sort of book of rules out there which if you follow you too will end up walking down the aisle and having your big happy day in a pretty gown and your happily ever after with the right amount of children. Life works differently for everyone. I might want to look for rings before, during, after, never. I might not care about marriage, I might want to wear a huge meringue or a trouser suit or a pair of jeans or ... I might do things in any order that feels right for me and my partner or happily do none of them. Just because your friends are getting engaged and married doesn't mean you're missing out or you have to do it immediately or it will never happen.

In short you need to sit down and have a serious chat with yourself and then with your partner. And, if you seriously don't want to get married to him over this, then did you ever really want to? This isn't some awful thing he's done to you he's just told you that he's feeling pressured. There's a conversation to be had and you need to have it.

Every relationship is different and I don’t think 18 months in your 30s is necessarily too long to know what you want, but your entire post is just… incredibly intense.

I know people who’ve got together quickly and it’s worked magically, but the majority of people I know getting married have been together longer.

I do get the feeling of insecurity in your relationship (I was 7 years before being engaged and for that last year it was akin to torture). But at that point we’d been through hell and back and he was just fucking around. I found it hard because I was sick of auditioning for a commitment I’d made emotionally a long time ago, and it felt painful to be messed around. A key factor is my DH’s personality is very strongly procrastinatory and he is like this with EVERYTHING so to a point I had to not take it personally, even though it’s deeply personal of course. And I love him and want to be with him despite this tendency. Anyway you’re nowhere near that, so try to enjoy yourself more, continue getting to know him, don’t stop communicating, have a timeline in your head but don’t get too stuck on it. I wanted kids in my late 20s, I’ll be 32 at the earliest now but… it’s gonna be fine.

This is just so gross.

I had hoped by now that we women would have evolved beyond "proposals" and "ring shopping."