A Marriage Proposal

In My Humble Opinion
21

This.

And this.

Look, I have two kids. Two babydaddies. One I was married to and one I wasn’t. You want to know the difference in our splits? About $500 and an afternoon on the internet downloading other people’s divorce paperwork so I could plagiarize it for our own.

If you split someday, you’re going to have to negotiate the emotional landmines, the family reactions, the dividing up of property, the financial and logistical strains of coparenting…all of it. As you say, you’re already living as if you’re married, and bringing a kid into it seals the “can’t just walk away” nature of the relationship.

So…is he worth $500 and an afternoon of internet plagiarism? :smiley: Because while I agree that you shouldn’t marry if you don’t want to, I think maybe you’re already married and too stubborn to admit it.

22

He wants to get married, he expects that eventually you will be “Ready”. If you truly never want to get married you need to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to get married either, right now you have completely different life goals and while i am sure he loves you and will stick around in the hopes that you change your mind you are both going to have to face the fact that you are not willing to provide him with what he wants eventually. It is more than just about getting someone’s feelings hurt, this relationship is simply unsustainable in the long term.

23

Repeatedly expressed? Dithering? She said no when he proposed. He accepted that and they went on. I have no idea what’s in his head and neither do you. And marriage can be a “big, bad dragon”. I agree that if you are making babies you should think of one another as family but I don’t think getting a license from the state will make or break that. I lived with my husband for almost 30 years before we got married and as a matter of fact if I had it to do over I would not have gotten married. It was the only way to solve the insurance dilemma at the time but I don’t think it was the right choice. So, don’t think of marriage as simple or positive all the time. Think of it as inviting both the state and a bunch of people’s preconceptions (including your own, perhaps) into your life.

24

How have the discussions about the subject gone? Have you discussed and appreciated the reasons why he wants to be married vs. the reasons you do not?

There is the possibility that a year ago he proposed, you said no, and he let it go, but it seems that he really didn’t accept the idea of not being married, especially when children are involved.

With a baby, then a child, teenager, etc., there are going to many, many areas where your ideas are going to be different than his. Do you let the baby cry it out at night? When is bedtime? What foods to eat? Many issues, large and small for the next 20 years.

Couples/parents who are most successful find ways to understand each other other and come to an agreement on how to proceed. How to you handle other disagreements?

I’ve ambivalent to the question if parents should be married or not, but feel strongly that they need to be working together and have each other’s back. When you are both sleep deprived with a couple of kids (if you go on and have more) the more you are depending on each other for support and love to get through the rough spots. Having too many elephants in the room doesn’t help.

Have you discussed your feeling about marriage and that it was your previous divorce which has affected you? Have you changed enough that it wouldn’t be a repeat performance, and so you could go ahead? Or, dd the experience open your
eyes to a realization that this is something which you really don’t want to do, and never will, even with kids involved?

What does he find attractive about marriage? How does he feel about raising kids up living together vs. as married parents? What could you do to help him feet better about the later, if that is what you really want to do, or what would take for you to change if that is the best solution?

25

Does the OP think that not having a marriage certificate this time is going to make the break-up easier, than her first marriage? Time to grow up, and realize that the paper isn’t what made your divorce shitty. It was the guy you chose.

26

I agree with WhyNot and Manda Jo. You already ARE married. And all the CRAP about breaking up - now you have a kid on the way, there isn’t any way to avoid it. And if you do need to break up - with or without a marriage license - a kid is going to make it way worse.

But a legal marriage will give you a quick way to get legal status. And with a kid, that legal status might come in handy. Take advantage of it. (It could come in handy without the kid, but with a kid, you have to start thinking of the benefits to the kid.)

If you didn’t want to be shackled to this person for the rest of your life, having a child with him was a poor choice. Because now you are, like it or not. And it sounds like you don’t mind being shackled to him long term. Might as well get the benefits of it.

27

This

and now that there is a child involved…the separation of the marriage in a divorce is little shit, the kids are always where divorces get messy. My roomie is currently going back to court over custody and support issues for the third time in 5 years with her ex. Everything else was resolved in a few weeks when they split.

Every time there is an opportunity for review of support arrangements he files, drags her back in, has his lawyer draw up a 200 page pile of why she is a horrible mom, usually he walks out with $4K in legal bills and a bigger child support payment and even more pissed off and more determined to “fix it” next time.

28

Just my <quite recent> experience:

My sweetie asked me to marry him a full 8 months before I said yes. It wasn’t unexpected; we’d already been living together for a couple of years, and things were going well. I just…couldn’t quite say yes. But it was definitely not a ‘no’. Smart guy that he is, he lied his ass off and said he’d be happy to continue as we are if that’s what I wanted, since it really was going well. (We have our ongoing issues, but we work them out, which to me is awesome.) He’d been married twice; I, at 44, hadn’t ever been married, had always shied away before things got down to the wedding planning stage.

That was last summer. By Christmas, I was already, internally, saying ‘yes’, and looking around for a ring so I could propose to HIM. I could not tell you what changed, except that sometimes I feel I’m like a very spooky horse who needs to be sidled up to very slowly or something. :stuck_out_tongue:

We planned a trip to Vegas to see a Rush concert, and I brought up the idea of just getting hitched while we were there; somehow eloping without all the huge wedding fuss made me a lot less nervous. Things moved up a bit when the boys <his from a previous marriage> wanted to be there, so…we did a very sweet, very small civil ceremony, and somehow I didn’t freak out or anything. :smiley:

Oh, and my folks had 4 kids before they finally officially tied the knot, though common law was much more, well, common then, and absolutely nobody knew they didn’t make it official until much, much later. So, tying the knot after waiting until it’s ‘right’, whatever that is for you two, can happen at any time.

I used to joke that we were getting married because ‘it will make him happy’, and I realized after about the dozenth time of saying that, that it was true…not in the scary, ‘oh my god I feel like I have to do this’ way, but in the way that let me know I was well and truly hooked: I want to make him happy. It just so happened that getting married made me happy, too.

Good luck, and don’t rush anything; even without a pregnancy, your feelings may change over time without you even realizing it.

29

OK, we have 27 posts so far and no one has brought it up so I will.

Is terminating the pregnancy a viable choice? As already mentioned, counseling for the both of you, and especially you, needs to be seriously considered. That counseling should also include discussions of whether to carry the pregnancy to term, or not.

30

As far as the pregnancy thing, I am presuming that a female who has no problem not being married in general has no problem being not married and with a child; that decision probably would have been made already, so there didn’t seem a point in bringing it up.

ETA: As there is no wedding decision right now, I don’t see why the decision to have or not to have would hang on whether there’s a marriage or not. There’s not a decision; there is a child. I can totally see the extra pressure bringing a little one into it might have on the decision, and I can totally see the backpedaling that might be induced by ‘omg I am so not gonna get married just cause I have to!’. But if the relationship is good, it should make it through. Counselling sounds good, just to sort out what is real fear and what might be ‘just’* fear that it’s for the wrong reasons.

*‘Just’ was enough to prevent me from ever tying the knot, so it’s not a small thing. :stuck_out_tongue:

31

It appears both of them want a child, so I don’t think abortion is an option here. As a fellow male, I can more closely relate to how the man in this equation feels, obviously. I’d be thinking, “I’m good enough to father your kid, but not to marry?” And also, Omar Little is exactly right. It wasn’t being married that made your first situation so bad. It was who you married. With a kid on the way, your lives will be very entangled and a breakup could be just as messy if you aren’t technically married.

32

As others pointed out - you’re already legally entangled, and have fewer rights than if you were married. It may just be “a piece of paper” in terms of expression of emotion and real commitment, but how you feel in your heart might mean jack in terms of medical power of attorney, getting you onto his health insurance (or vice versa), and so on.

I have a sister-in-law who was in a long-term relationship with a guy. One night, they rushed him to the ER when he started coughing up blood. His liver was failing. Those two weren’t married, and he was estranged from his parents. My SIL identified herself as his fiancee to staff at the hospital, and fortunately his parents didn’t challenge her on making his healthcare decisions.

I’m not saying, “might as well marry the guy” or anything like that. I’m just pointing out that there are a lot of automatic rights conveyed with marriage that you might not even realize, and be prepared to do a lot of legal paperwork to try to get some of those protections in place if you’d rather not marry him.

33

And that brings up something else: If you haven’t decided to marry before the child is born, you may need to do some paperwork regarding rights regarding the child. I’m not saying WANT to, but you might need to. I know, it’s a grumpy mess, but I don’t know how the law regards the father if not married. He may need to do some paperwork as an official guardian or something. I could be WAY wrong on this, but it’s something to think about, along the lines of what was posted above about medical rights, etc. Just covering bases: as I had to reassure my sweetie many times before, things like this are insurance so you DONT have to worry, not a cause for concern in themselves.

34

I’m pretty sure that in most states, that if the father is listed as the “father” on the birth certificate, he has all the parental rights that any parent gets. Now if they break-up, they will have to negotiate custody agreement, but the dad’s parental rights cannot be taken away.

35

I feel a lot of empathy for the OP, having been in a similar situation… twice.

After my first marriage, I was entirely, completely, totally gunshy. There were lots of issues during the marriage, and afterwards, he took our children out of state, without my permission. Because of my emotional and financial position at the time, there was damn-all I could realistically do about it: Even if I could have forced him to bring them back, or gained sole custody of them (we had previously agreed to joint custody,) I couldn’t have taken care of them at the time. I was a mess, and not making enough money to pay my bills, much less pay to feed/clothe/house/take care of two children…

Fast-forwarding a bit, I began dating someone (far too soon after the previous mess, honestly, but that’s beside the point,) we moved in together, etc. He asked me more than once to marry him, both before and after we found out we were expecting. I repeatedly said no, for a couple of reasons. First off, I was the classic “once bitten, twice shy,” and secondly, I knew that, in the unlikely event that there were ever a custody battle over our children, he would have to do a lot more work to gain standing in the courts. Frankly, I didn’t trust him as much as I should have trusted someone with whom I shared a home and family. (I even waited to move in with him until after the state’s common law marriage law was repealed.) We lived together as man and wife for seven years, I helped raise his older kids, we shared finances and a business, etc., but I never wanted to marry him. I don’t regret that time, but I also don’t regret my decision.

Second “not-husband” and I split up in 2004 - he left me for the woman he’d been dating, because she was pregnant! At that time, I swore off anything even beginning to resemble marriage. Huh-uh, not me, never, ever again! Sure, I dated a bit, but nothing was ever allowed to be serious, more “we’re friends who have dinner or see movies or sleep together” than boyfriends. They didn’t meet my kids, we didn’t spend Thanksgivings or Christmases together, etc.

In 2009, I ran into a high school friend. He was having a rough time, financially and emotionally… Recently divorced, had to declare bankruptcy due to his ex-wife’s gambling habit, dated one person right after his divorce who apparently treated him like crap and then dumped him for another guy. With the intention of just offering him emotional support, I began inviting him to casual hang-outs with my group of friends, or “hey, meet me at ??? after work and I’ll buy you a drink.” That sort of thing. Within a couple of weeks, we were dating, and I was deeply, truly in love. He met my family, including my kids (and that’s a big, huge deal to me,) I met his family, and we discussed marriage as an “It’s gonna happen one day” thing - just understood, no doubt about it, just no wedding date set.

When I learned that I was pregnant (holy crap Batman! I wasn’t supposed to be able to have more, and he was never supposed to be able to father a child!), we mutually decided that we would go ahead and tie the knot - not because of any stigma about an out-of-wedlock child, but because that made the most sense emotionally, financially, and legally. There has never been one doubt in my mind that I did the right thing in this situation.

Take-away advice? Get some counseling for your trust issues, don’t get married just because there’s a baby on the way, but don’t avoid marrying because you haven’t learned to trust again. If you don’t trust HIM, though, don’t marry him, regardless of your co-parenting situation…

36

Ever hear of birth control? :rolleyes:

37

Yes.

Ever hear of unwarranted assumptions?

38

In our state (Illinois), the father may choose to sign an Affidavit of Paternity, but he doesn’t have to. He has essentially no say in whether or not his name is put on the birth certificate. The Affidavit of Paternity is available at the hospital, along with the birth cert. application.

I have a copy of the one signed re: my son, but I’ve never found a need for it. I suppose if there was a court battle, I could use it to prove that my ex knew of his existence and accepted his paternal rights and responsibilities at the time of birth, though. Since it’s the mother that fills out the birth certificate application, having a name on there isn’t really proof that the father knew and accepted paternity, although in many (most? all?) states it is considered proof of paternity unless the listed individual contests paternity within a specified time frame.

39

Exactly what point where you trying to make with this comment? First, it has nothing to do with the point of this thread. Second, at no point did she express unhappiness about being pregnant.

So what are you getting at with your rolley eyes?

40

I (dad) filled out the birth certificate application for all three of my kids. In two of those births, the mother did not even sign it.