Speaking as someone who is currently in the dating game, albeit for older people …
A very large number of people use online dating apps. A very large fraction of them are very upfront in their profile about whether their end goal is marriage, long-term cohabit, serial exclusivity, or party hearty.
So long before the first date, you can filter results on that parameter. Why? Because its one of the most fundamental ones within the total relationship equation. Heck, it’s probably about property #2 right after “is your/my gender & sexual orientation compatible?”
My bottom line:
The idea of being upfront about relationship goals is a great one. Can it be done ham-handedly and sabotage what might have been a good relationship? Sure. Can it be a sign of a “my way or highway” mentality? Sure.
As said so often in this thread, the example Xits in the OP are far to little to decide what “really” went on in that couple.
I’ll echo the thought that we don’t know about the details, and the devil is in the details.
There are conceivable scenarios where this would be ok, and others where it would be absurd.
Back as a Mormon in my early 20s, there was tremendous pressure to marry early, and quickly. I knew a lot of people who got married within a few months of meeting each other. Couples would get engaged after a month of dating, sometimes even less than that. The expectation was that people were looking to get married in their early 20s, or even younger for women.
Men went on a mission at 19 and came back at 21. We were strongly conditioned to get married as soon possible right after we got back from our missions and young women were conditioned to look to get married to young men who had gone on missions.
Waiting two years would have been seriously wrong.
Previously, when Japan had more “arranged marriages” (more like match maker introductions) couple had a month to decide if they were going to continue the relationship, with the expectation of marriage, or break up.
For the situation in the OP, it would really depend on the circumstances of how they got there. When I was single, people often would get acquainted in bars or chance encounters, and not have a lot of in-depth conversations in the initial meeting. We would exchange numbers and sometimes set up a date.
Some people were looking for relationships, others for just a date. The normal progression was from “you’re cute with a haze of alcohol” to “thank god you seem sane and we can have a normal conversation even when sober” to dating for a while to see where it was heading.
The first date was really to see if there would be a second one.
When my wife and I had started to date, she was upfront that she wanted children and wanted to be married when she had kids.
She was in her 30s, so I thought it was perfectly reasonable. It was also really good to clarify that we were both on the same page.
I was also looking at finding a good long-term relationship and was open to having children. As I was in my 40s, having them sooner rather than later was better for me as well.
It’s good to be upfront about one’s goals, but the approach in the OP just seems off to me.
I’m not a big fan of ultimatums between partners except for very special circumstances. This ultimatum on the first date would give me the impression that this was someone who wasn’t interested in working with me towards a common goal.
And for younger people, “exploring who i am sexually” is often the goal. That’s not “party hearty”. It might be done in the form of serial exclusivity. Or it might be done as “party hearty”. Or a set of serious but non-exclusive relationships. But the goal is to learn who you are, what you like, and who you might be compatible with.
People who are still doing that are not ready for marriage, and would be turned off by someone who announced up front that they are looking to decide whether to marry you. And that’s okay. Just like it’s okay for two people looking for marriage to split early when they realize one wants lots of kids and the other wants no children.
Yeah that word has been used. Personally I didn’t read it as an ultimatum. That implies a threat in order to force an action else there be negative consequence. This is more a clear communication: “I am interested in finding a long term partner which to me means marriage; if we date and by two years we haven’t mutually concluded this is going there then that will be enough time in it for me. If you are not interested in that potential then let’s not waste each other’s time on even a second date. I’ll still take my ice cream though!”
I think we are all reading the story through different lenses. How she communicated “you have two years to propose” is really key. (And why does he have to propose? Isn’t this a decision they might talk through together? This is 2025.)
Making it clear that she’s looking for marriage, and will be moving on if they haven’t agreed to marry within 2 years is, imho, eminently reasonable. Taking her first bite of ice cream and then announcing, “by the way, if you don’t propose to me within two years, i will leave you” is wrong on all sorts of levels, starting with the implicit assumption that he won’t leave her first.
My now ex- second wife was single for decades before we got together. She had lots of experience dating as a post-children adult, not a young eager 20-something.
Her comment was: "The first meeting is one hour one time to answer one question. Namely, ‘Can I/we stand to spend a whole evening together?’ "
It seemed to me to be a very sensible and effective filter. I can’t say I’ve adopted her rubric wholesale, but I see its merits.
FWIW, my wife is a therapist with many young adult clients. She bites her tongue but this return to the expectation of a proposal, and even, bleh, asking the parents, is really the trend among women she sees. It drives her nuts as her generation was in such push back against those things.
Point is the woman of the OP is not unusual for younger women today in wanting that.
The communication as presented in the OP is all sorts of broken (and I’ll take it at face value, even though social media engagement farming).
“You have 2 years to propose.”
Ok… so what if he proposed then. On the first date? Is that what she’s looking for? I’m curious about what point she decided she was ready to marry him.
The story as-is implies that she was ready on day one, and it was his job to get there. That’s just not how most people build relationships. As she crafts her two-sentence story, it sounds like she didn’t really care about anything other than being married to an arbitrary person. Which is of course valid, but not a model most of us would hold up as admirable or healthy.
Any relationship can end at any point. It’s reasonable to decide for any reason that the relationship isn’t the right one and end it. If she is mostly interested in men who want a woman to marry right away, then of course she should pursue those men and reject those who want something different.
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That doesn’t surprise me, and is part and parcel with the disturbing zeitgeist shifts towards more “traditional” relationship and gender dynamics (trad wife, etc).
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But why not start off with that conversation, and not an ultimatum? Especially if the people are older.
Here’s a perhaps similar conversation. Delicate questions about attitudes about sex might be useful. I wouldn’t want to waste time on someone who took a chastity pledge and stands by it, and she might not want to waste time on someone who expects sex sometime before a deeper commitment. But a guy who said “if we don’t sleep together by the third date, I’m dumping you” right off might of might not be a jerk (I vote jerk) but I’m certainly not going to think less of a woman who dumps him right away. And you can switch genders and it still works.
That’s a great question. If this becomes common, maybe guys should go to dates with a questionnaire she should fill out to see if it makes sense to propose right then and there.
Didn’t see this but it makes a lot of sense. I assume that you need to check that the answers were accurate, and that someone didn’t say they were willing to get married just to increase their pool. (I don’t know - I got married at the end of the punched card era.) And it seems like a good thing to go over early in a relationship that seems it is going somewhere.
But that’s not a “I’ll have the fish, and we need to get married within two years” kind of situation.
While, again, I don’t read it as an “ultimatum”, simply because saying it as she says she said it is more fun than saying
I am interested in finding a long term partner which to me means marriage; if we date and by two years we haven’t mutually concluded this is going there then that will be enough time in it for me. If you are not interested in that potential then let’s not waste each other’s time on even a second date
Seriously. Imagining myself “out there” (a stretch to be sure), the “you got two years before I walk buddy!” would make me laugh, and then have the real conversation. Same message but one is something I’d find appealing and other would be too serious for me? Obviously YMMV!
Again, it kinda depends on how it’s worded. “If you don’t sleep with me by the third date, I’m dumping you” has a pretty similar meaning to “I’m mostly dating because I’m looking for someone to have fun in bed with. Someone i enjoy spending time with, of course, but my main goal is good sex. If that’s not what you’re looking for, we are probably not a good fit, and should look elsewhere”.
I’m not going to think less of a person who dumps the second one, but i don’t think that second person did anything wrong.
Did your wife keep her name? I married in 1982 and there was never any question over whether I would retain my surname. In the circles I traveled in, few women took their husband’s name, and that looked to be the wave of the future. I was delighted that as a society we were shedding a tradition rooted in the concept of women as men’s property.
Of course, my delight proved premature.
(And for anyone who wants to yell at me for being judgmental toward women who change their name on marriage, know that I have learned to keep my mouth shut as a general matter, this post being a rare exception. People can do what they want and it’s none of my business. I don’t understand it, though.)
That’s exactly the issue. Not to mention that, within reason, neither partner in a relationship should need “permission” from the other for a night out with friends or a weekend visit with a friend, unless of course there are practical obstacles (e.g,- one partner or the other has an important engagement and someone needs to be home to look after the kids). So on top of the rarity of my best friend’s visits, he then is forced to spend an hour every night on the phone yakking about absolutely nothing. And lest I be accused of using the word “forced”, trust me, I’ve known this guy my whole adult life, and he is absolutely not an emotional or needy sort. And I know his wife pretty well, too. The phone calls are mandatory, period.
The reason all this originally came to mind in the context of this thread is that the woman described in the OP strikes me – rightly or wrongly, and I’ll probably get flak for this – but she strikes me as fitting the same controlling profile. To be very clear, it’s perfectly fine on a first date to discuss one’s long-term plans and aspirations, like wanting to have kids someday. It’s the laying down of a timetable that I would find disturbing and possibly suggestive of a controlling personality.
To also be very clear, I certainly don’t want to be the domineering partner, either, nor could I – it’s just not in my nature. I just believe that the two partners in a relationship should, overall, be equal partners. In a good healthy relationship each naturally makes concessions to the other, in more or less equal measure, as circumstances require. It’s when it becomes permanently unbalanced that it’s bad news. Issuing an ultimatum on a first date is not only a bad start, it’s rather arrogantly presumptuous about how the relationship will progress. But maybe she phrased it in a way that was more generous and open-ended than I imagine, but I would be spooked by this kind of attitude.
Eh, my mother urged me to take my husband’s last name, so we would both have the same name as our children. And it’s proved convenient. He took my last name as a middle name. If it’s had an interesting maiden name, i might have felt differently. But i have an interesting first name, which is how people recognize me, and i felt i was exchanging one common boring last name for another common boring last name.
vaguely related rant
(And i can’t tell you how annoyed i am by sites that want me to review their stuff and instead that i do so with my first name. No way. If real names are required, and everyone else is going by a recognizable name, maybe. But to have a bunch of essentially anonymous Carol’s and Robert’s, and then the extremely identifiable Puzzlegal… Yeah, i like posting reviews, but no way.)
And disliked the hyphenated name bit, so put her family of origin name (I dislike “maiden name”) as her middle name (never had one) and always uses the whole three of them in circumstances that last name is included.
I kept mine, and our daughter has both. I didn’t even consider changing it, but most women I know who are my age did change theirs. I can only think of two who didn’t: one friend who went double-barrelled and the kids the same, and another who kept her name because it’s an unusual one and she’s an only child. Most couples also did traditional proposals (obvs we didn’t), but I didn’t hear of any asking parents/fathers for permission. Can’t believe that’s coming back into fashion for Gen Z!
That’s a nicer way to put it. I’ll have to remember that phrasing.
Ah yes, I am familiar with that mode of play. We like to joke that our son has a promising career in middle-management.
Only instead of playing pretend he wants you to draw as many nines as possible (he’s working on this giant paper that has 0.9999999… so for every 9 added it gets closer to 1, which he finds just delightful. I had to quit after 187 nines the other day.) Before this, it was building cubes successively bigger. There’s a kind of elegance in it, and I wouldn’t mind so much if it weren’t for the fact that it’s rarely done to his specifications, so the process can be unhappy.
See what dating gets you?? More nines than you ever knew what to do with!
My concern is not about families wanting to have the same last name; it’s the assumption that in all cases the woman’s surname goes, and the husband’s name is for everyone. (It’s nice that your husband took your name as a middle name.)
There are alternatives: both could take the woman’s name, or both could change their names to something new. For example, when one of my grad school roommates got engaged, he and his fiancé decided to combine their names - something along the lines of Leonard + Schofield became “Lenfield.” Very sweet, and it gave them a unique surname, too.
I can sort of understand concern that there will be confusion if family members have different last names, but in fact, there really is not, and I speak from personal experience. Our son got MY last name, with his father’s name as a middle name. So he and I share a surname but his dad’s name is different.
Our son attended schools, went to doctor’s appointments, registered for sports teams, spent time at summer camp, etc. etc. in three different countries while growing up. Do you know how many times the fact that his father’s surname was different from his was a problem? Zero. Blended families are so common these days that no one ever blinked an eye. I’m sure some people assumed he was my son from a first marriage and my husband was his stepdad, but … so what?