My ex didn’t like marriage. “Who needs a piece of paper to say I love you.”
We split up.
He met another women. Within a year of meeting her they were engaged. Within a year and half they were married.
It’s not always like that. But it often is.
Daylight savings time struck me harder this year than usual.
I’ll read through everything and post later. I have some work to do 
Thanks for all the responses. I have a bunch of reading to do.
Sometimes it’s that the other party is still kind of fishing around and not ready to commit because there might still be, I dunno, some underwear supermodel looking for a partner. 
A while back this situation played out among some people I know and it was explained like this: “I mean, I love her and we’re going to be together for always because she’s my soul mate but … I’m not ready to face the fact that this is it and she is THE ONE.”
She wasn’t The One. And he married someone else.
Now maybe he really wasn’t ready to be a married guy and then after a little while he was. Sometimes (for whatever reason) prospective marrieds are just not in the same place and available and agreeable to make these choices and the potential opportunity goes by, because usually if it gets to that place it’s fish or cut bait.
In the case cited above, in some sense this guy felt like he was “settling” with Bachelorette No. 1 and he wanted something more. When he found that something more, he got married.
This might or might not be happening with you. But you also need to question your own motivations in this as well. Why do you need to be married now? What does that mean to you, really? And why is it also just as important to be “Bridezilla?” Which also seems to be of equal importance here and is as much of a red flag as his unwillingness to make a formal commitment.
Also, can’t stress this enough: As everyone has said here, get your financial house in order all the way around – including spelling out legally what is His and Yours and Ours and etc. See qualified experts about this for best coverage of situations and protection going forward. Don’t be sloppy about this. You’be been living together for years, it’s past due for you to take care of this properly.
Finally, hope this works out as appropriate for both of you. Good luck and all best.
If she has debt, then the security clearance excuse has some merit - assuming he’s even in position to apply for a Federal job.
However, it sounds like he used it as a reason not to go to therapy.
A background check will look for any “blackmail” offenses - cheating, debt, etc…
If I loved you I would make sure you were happy in the relationship. At the end of the day that’s what it is all about…
Yea, and going to premarital, or couples counseling is not the same as psychiatric treatment…they are referring to something like psychiatric treatment or hospitalizations for a major mental illness such as.bipolar, not talking to a counselir. It said in the link thats not what it refers to. Nevertheless, since he makes up excuses about everything else, I would take it as another excuse
I am a man, but that doesn’t mean I can tell you why “Men” feel a certain way–because different men feel differently about this topic (all topics). I don’t know the financial specifics, but it could be that he fears losing a lot in a potential eventual divorce. I wish I had that fear, because alimony is costing me a ton. The tricky thing is that a “relationship” shouldn’t be about being the more shrewd business person, or should it? I believed it shouldn’t, and I paid for that belief.
Well, if it’s any consolation, I was with my GF for a longer period of time and we eventually did get married.
What’s strange is that I seem to frequently run across other people who have also been with their SO for years and years with no interest in marriage. It might be an NYC thing. Like they associate marriage with the eventually next steps of moving to Morristown, NJ, taking the commuter rail to work every day, kids, and eventually dying of bordom.
While it worked out for us, I don’t recommend it. If you are older than 25 and a relationship goes more than 6-18 months without serious consideration of what the next steps are, he probably has some unresolved issues. It may not even be about you. But whatever they are, it’s preventing him from either taking the relationship forward or letting you go to find something you both really want.
I don’t see the OP’s boyfriend as evil incarnate at all. We don’t know nearly enough to assume that he structured the relationship so he had all the power. It sounds much more likely that he was the one with stable employment and money coming in. It would make sense for him to be on the mortgage. And honestly, not being on the mortgage isn’t such a bad thing. The house could have very well lost a ton of value. Not being legally tied to it could be a huge blessing.
I disagree. Maybe that was true when you were 25, but I don’t think that’s the climate of today. I don’t know how serious you think the issues are, so I don’t know how strongly I disagree with you, but if you think anyone over 25 in a 1.5 year relationship who doesn’t want to talk marriage is a “manchild”, for example, I’d be disagreeing very strongly indeed.
I agree too. I don’t know any 25 year olds who are even remotely mature enough for marriage. Most couldn’t even handle a long-term relationship yet alone marriage.
Then IMHO you shouldn’t waste a year and a half of your life with that person.
Which is my point. If you are not sure or not ready for marriage I think it’s a mistake to date the same person year after year. Especially if you are in your teens or 20s. Like it never made sense to me those guys who dated their girlfriend all through high school/college only to break up when they graduated.
I think you generally know pretty quick if you want to marry someone. The rest of the time is just due dilligence to make sure they have no hidden weirdo habits.
Or, you know, you just think marriage is a dated institution and you just don’t want to get married. Or you have a really lovely girlfriend but she has one insane issue: she wants a massive wedding that will cost you more money than you have and you don’t see the point in it. Or you think what you have is fantastic and you don’t need validation from an imaginary friend or a piece of paper. Or you think weddings are annoying and have too much glitter. Or you don’t want to go into the whole “in church or not in church”-thing. Or marriage terrifies you because your parents were married and look at how that worked out for them. Or you think the whole thing is superficial and shallow and could never be an expression of the way you feel for the other. Or a million other good, valid, mature, loving, intelligent and personal reasons not to get married.
I did know pretty quickly that I wanted to BE with my partner. I also knew I didn’t want marriage. That’s what it’s about: wether you want a future together. The piece of paper is irrelevant.
I agree with what msmith537. And this isn’t about marriage and certainly not about lavish weddings. It’s about long term commitment and building a life and family together.
There are fundamental differences between a relationship that is more or less headed towards a long term commitment, and one that is not. And it is perfectly fine for a relationship not to be heading towards that commitment Plenty of people live perfectly happy and meaningful lives side by side, rather than merged together, with their partners.
Anyway, these differences are subtle if you’ve never been in a relationship like that before, but striking when you do find that kind of partnership. I think this is what a lot of people mean when they say “I knew he/she was the one.” It’s not just that the other person is special, it’s that the relationship is that kind of relationship. It really is something of a totally different quality.
If that is the kind of relationship you want, it’s not very smart to invest a lot of time and energy into the other kind of relationship. If you want to get married, focus on people who also want to get married and if it’s a good match you’ll find common ground fairly quickly. If you want to stay fairly independent, go ahead and date and have fun. But it’s a waste of everyone’s time to spend years and years into a relationship that at least one partner deep downs, knows is going to dissolve. Life is too short to spend years playing house to no ends, especially if you are somehow hoping things will change. We all know at least one person who has wasted their best years with an on-again off-again partner, and it adds up to nothing. It’s not fun to waste time like that.
As for the OP, it’s hard to tell. You guys started young, which has it’s own complications.A lot of people have a hard time committing to something when it’s the only thing they’ve really known. Anyway, it could just be that he really does feel too young and will have a change of heart when he starts wanting kids or retirement plans or whatever. It could be that he’s afraid of what he’s missing out on, and that could go any number of directions. It could be that he’s immature and may or may not ever grow up. It could be he just genuinely dislikes marriage.
Eventually relationships hit a point where either they evolve or they don’t, and it sounds like the OP is getting there. This is probably she should have worked out years and years ago, before investing eight years in something essentially unknown. But she is there, and it is what it is. All you can really do is communicate what you want, figure out what you find acceptable, and hope there is some intersection between them.
Well…it is and it isn’t. It’s irrelevant to whether or not you want a life together; that piece of paper in our file-box has fuck-all to do with whether my husband or I want to be with each other, or anything else to do with our hopes and plans and day to day life. But it’s highly relevant to a lot of pragmatic legal matters; that paper has everything to do with whether we can file our taxes together, or be on each other’s health insurance, or make medical decisions or funeral arrangements for each other, or automatically inherit each other’s stuff. I mean, yeah, we could have set up most of that without getting married, but it would have taken a lot more time and money than a $27 license and a 15-minute ceremony. And that extra time and money is absolutely a valid consideration when weighing how much that piece of paper truly means to you.
As a general thing, both people should have done this sort of weighing up and be on the same page about where the scales balance BEFORE moving in together. Because open-ended long-term shacking up is fucking torture to someone for whom the scales balance squarely in the “married or GTFO” side of things. Go back and read the part of the OP where she’s talking about wanting him to marry her because he wants to, not because she’s pressuring him. The pain in there is palpable and heartbreaking.
When someone asks for advice from a bunch of strangers on a free Internet site what they think, they get what they pay for. And that includes (a) comments from misanthropes, (b) rose-colored glasses from hopeless romantics, (c) sage advice from disinterested parties, and (d) mealy-mouthed hemming and hawing that aren’t worth the electrons.
I think having started an eight year relationship at age 18 and getting crappy answers that sound like they’re from a teenaged boy about the future of their lives together is a strong, but not totally conclusive, indication that things have run their course. Could I be wrong? Sure. I wouldn’t put odds on it, though. And it’s up to the OP to run her life, not take a poll of people here and thereby make rash decisions.
One piece of thought for beyondimagination07: what’s the current situation with children? Do you have any now? Do you want them? Soon or much later? Have you talked to the boyfriend about kids? Is he on the same page, or giving you the run-around?
All in all I think this is probably the most accurate synopsis. He may wake up and agree to get married if he thinks he is going to lose her, but based on the OP I don’t think she’s going anywhere nor is she prepared to stand on an ultimatum that costs her the relationship.
I don’t think the OP’s boyfriend is the only one who needs counselling; it sounds like couples counselling would be a good idea, because this is almost the definition of a dealbreaker - a problem this knotty needs a lot more help than advice from a bunch of yahoos on the internet.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see the OP’s boyfriend as evil incarnate, either - he’s not ready to get married, she is - it happens. Untangling all the issues here is more work than we can do.
So the OP’s boyfriend funded her business. Does he have any legal control over that business? If it takes off and she becomes a multi-millionaire, does he have any claim to a percentage?
If not, it could very well be that she is taking financial advantage of him.
(I don’t really think she is. But there’s as much evidence for that in the OP as there is for the more extreme posts in this thread accusing the boyfriend of being a Machiavellian villain.)
It seems he would “like to” do alot of things, but they seem to be followed by a ‘but’ and an excuse.
‘but’ + excuse= b.s.
( aka someone seeking to meet his needs without the responsibility)
best answer = “run”
more time will not solve the problem, because he is not honest to begin with