[Joe Pesci] “You were serious about that?!”
Presented verbatim directly on a first date it is very off-putting. “YOU have 2 years to propose!” YOU are one clock starting NOW!
If it was presented on a first date as more of her standards/values/expectations “If I have been dating someone for two years and they haven’t proposed I would definitely break up with them.” It let’s the guy know her principles up front which is fair and doesn’t immediately rope him into it.
My partner and I have been together for 41 years this past month, without benefit of clergy, as they say, so I’m mystified by the whole marriage thing as a goal. It also strikes me as weird to say, “I’m going to give this relationship 2 years and then make a decision.” Are matters of the heart so easily settled with a flowchart and deadline? I guess, for some. It seems a carry-over from neo-liberalism and marginal utility theory.
IMO for people in their 20s and 30s, it’s about the fact that biology poses a hard deadline on women’s child-making. The exact end date for any individual is vague, but the fact it’s coming closer at a rate of one day per day isn’t. Which is super important to some people.
It’s also generally thought that one’s attractiveness as a potential mate is a steadily decreasing function. IMO as a now-older person that’s a rather naïve POV by the young folks. But it does drive behavior even if it’s wrong.
At the later end of the age spectrum, marriage in the USA has a lot to do with the differing lifetime earning power of men & women. And the relative ease of men just leaving whenever the deal du jour looks to be souring.
I met my wife in early December of 1979 when I was 19 and she was 20.
I proposed on New Years Eve and we married in late January of 1980.
And no, she was not pregnant. We just knew we were right for each other.
On the other hand my brother was with a woman for 10 years before they married.
Different strokes for different folks.
Sure, it reasonable to have a deadline. It’s your life and time. Stating it on the first date feels a little forward, like “This isn’t about having fun; it’s about a goal. Go go go”. That might put me off but I suppose it’s good to be honest about it. If my goal was ALSO to be married ASAP then I suppose it would be a good thing?
I dated several people for 2+ years where marrying them would have been disastrous based on events that came later. I was pretty sure I wanted to be married to my wife within a short time of “getting serious”. But that was also based on the wisdom learned from the previous relationships and working out what I was looking for. If she and I had met in college and tried to speedrun getting married, it might have ended much differently. But then I know couples who literally married out of high school and are still happily married today so it’s certainly possible. I don’t know if she’s going about it in the best way but, hey, not my life.
I think any relationship built on ultimatums is not a healthy one.
Well. Within reason, I suppose. “Stop seeing your side piece and agree to both individual and couples counseling or I go live with my sister and start divorce proceedings” would be a fair ultimatum. However, “you have up to but not exceeding 730 days to decide if you want to marry me, make that proposal, and begin preparations for such or, on day 731 I’ll be leaving forever” seems not only unfair but very unhealthy.
Like Spice_Weasel noted, sometimes it takes time to know if the person you’re dating is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Especially, it would seem to me anyway, if you’re young and marriage is something that will be a 50+ year commitment that includes kids and a mortgage and all the other trappings and responsibilities of life.
Having said that, I also agree with LSLGuy – as I so often do – that timelines and goals in general are not bad things. Knowing you want to settle down and have kids and not wait decades to do so and then communicating those desires to a potential partner early in the game is a good thing. Having an understanding of shared goals and possible differences before you seriously commit to a relationship is vital for the long-term health of that relationship.
My wife and I met when I was 19 and she was 21. I had never been in any relationship with anyone – never even kissed a girl. She had had a boyfriend in high school. That was it. We started dating in September and by January had decided we wanted to get married. There was no romantic getting-down- on-one-knee nonsense, we just sort of talked about it and decided that’s what we wanted. However, before getting married we found a flat together and waited almost 3 years before actually tying the knot. We wanted to make sure we really were compatible.
We’re celebrating our 22nd anniversary in a couple of weeks. We have two kids, both adults now. We have a mortgage and a car payment and retirement accounts and volunteering commitments and all the similar trappings of boring middle-class lives. It hasn’t been easy, not by a long shot. I moved away for 19 months to finish college and then came back and worked while she finished her degree – and this was after we had had kids. We have fought about stuff small and large and have gone to bed livid with each other and once openly talked about divorce. But. But we made a comment back in 2003 to make this relationship work and to do everything we could to get through tough times and that’s what we have done. We have similar interests and life goals and energy levels, all of which help immensely in making the relationship work.
I’ve known at least two couples that met through shared interests, started dating seemingly days after meeting, got engaged a scant few weeks after that, and were married soon after that. One couple is about as mismatched as you can imagine: he was barely out of high school and had never been in a relationship before while she was a divorcée 10 years his senior. For the other couple, both were in their 30’s, both divorced, and both were single parents of children from their earlier relationships. Today, both couples are deeply unhappy, or at least the men are, but both have kids together and are not willing to throw in the towel. I posit that had both couples taken the dating thing slow, had given themselves time to get a read on the other person and decide of they really were The One, then maybe all this unpleasantness could have been avoided. Whether or not two years would have been enough time I don’t know.
I know two people who were married. One wanted kids, and the other did not. So, after a while… they got divorced. It happens.
I’m in agreement with you. Two years is a reasonable amount of time to decide whether the person you’re in a relationship is the one you want to marry. When I was still dating, I would have appreciated knowing what was expected of me before the relationship got into full swing. If I was the type to run for the hills at such a declaration then I’m obviously not the right type for her.
Many years ago, I was talking to my sister about her relationship with her boyfriend. They had been together for a little over 5 years and for whatever reason he simply wasn’t ready to get married. I told her at this point he probably wasn’t going to ask her to marry, so she either had to accept that he wasn’t going to ask or cut bait and move on. I imagine this young woman didn’t want to be in a similar situation.
Rereading the OP, I think part of the dissonance comes from the “On our two year anniversary, I broke up with him” with her cruising on a boat and satisfyingly looking off into the distance.
I would think that either (a) you were in love and ending it would be hard and take some substantial healing time and, heck, maybe you would have been better off giving it more time if things looked hopeful than starting over or (b) you just shrugged it off as “He didn’t hit my mark” and are ready to jump back in, in which case I guess it’s good for both of you that you broke up because that feels a little emotionless and sociopathic? I get more B vibes from it (especially seeing as how she posted it for the world to see). If you just wave off two years of relationship because of an arbitrary deadline that wasn’t met then it doesn’t seem like it was a great relationship to begin with so why did you want him to propose anyway?
However, this is all based off two photos on social media and I don’t know these people or their actual relationship so whatever. Kind of goes back to the “Designed to farm engagement through debate” thing.
My friend from grade school found her mate early. She got pregnant at 13, never graduated high school. They got married had a few more kids. Now shes 67 and they are still married. YMMV.
ISTM the nature of adult life is that things change slowly and there is rarely a definitive cut point. You slowly become more or less satisfied with your job, your home, your relationship and its formal status, etc. But the pull of not upsetting the apple cart and instead simply shuffling forward one more day is very strong.
Whereas life as a kid is driven by the steady progression of school years, graduations, birthdays, etc. Each of which will happen on a date certain whether you like it or not.
So it’s hardly surprising a young adult might wish for the decisiveness of “On [whatever] date certain I will have a proposal or I’ll be gone.” And they might sincerely mean that as part of imposing some discipline on the inherently squishy business of life and emotions for two people. The gotcha of course is making sure your explanation of this idea is both understood and seen as credible by your counterparty. Which probably means it needs to be reinforced at least a couple of times (
) after the first date.
I actually did not expect to be dating anyone until grad school at the earliest. I was an ambitious person who wanted to focus on my studies. I saw marriage and children as pretty far-off. I also had a lot of issues to work through and just wasn’t sure I was relationship material at that point. I had a very brief relationship with a man who had severe psychiatric issues, and he said, “we’re both too messed up for this to work,” and I thought, you know, he’s got a point. At age 19, I was neither looking for nor expecting romance. It was a big mental adjustment when I realized where things were going. I initially pushed him away, and he wooed me with a nine page handwritten letter. Then the next day he went to Spain for the summer. It was a long summer!
What clarified things for me was knowing that if we stayed close friends, eventually he would find a partner and that person would be the most important person in his life and we’d drift. And I could not tolerate losing him.
But during that Summer while we sent hundreds of emails (they’re all in a binder somewhere, he gave it to me when he proposed) there was still that question of, “Does this work once he comes back and we’re in person again?”
And thankfully, yes it did. It worked better than I could have ever imagined. Second best decision I ever made (first is having a kid with him - I know that’s totally out of chronology but whatever.)
I suppose so. I have little patience with artificial deadlines, and this person probably would have imposed a different loony deadline that I’d ignore before long. So getting that out of the way quickly would free us up to go our separate ways. Heck, it’d be better if she mentioned it before we even went out.
I did know girls who had these kinds of timelines mapped out in their heads when I was young. Some even seemed to like me for whatever unknown reason. I avoided becoming involved with them even when they came onto me, because it really seemed I’d just upset them in the end. I suppose I was more rude than the person in the story, because I didn’t tell these girls that was why I was avoiding becoming involved with them. Heck, one is still my friend and I’ve never told her why she stayed in the “friend zone” despite making her interest very clear. Fortunately, she’s married to someone that actually does meet her expectations.
The first time I’d been in a relationship for two years I’d been married for a little over a year. If we had been younger (I was 31 and she was 29) I’m sure we would have waited a good bit longer.
I just read reviews if a couple of books on how younger people are not having as much sex these days. If this is standard first date discussions, no wonder.
Getting a general idea of the other person’s feelings about marriage seems reasonable, perhaps on a second date. The first date would seem more like a test of compatibility. And where were they two years later? Were they just still dating? Were they living together? I also wonder if she had brought it up. At the time of the first date, did she really know she’d want to marry him after two years.
I wonder how she would have reacted if he gave her a compatibility quiz right there. Not that I think this ever happened.
She didn’t give him a ‘compatibility quiz’, she merely told the guy that marriage was her goal out of a romantic relationship and she had a two year deadline. And if you think men don’t do the same on a first date, whoo-boy!
As for the course of their relationship, it’s all just theorizing. There’s no information on which to base an opinion, other than they were together for two years.
Nah, I love being an adult, have always loved it, and would never, ever go back to childhood (unless I went back in time with all my current memories, then I would be as rich as Creosus).
When it happens, it’s fantastic.
I agree, shouldn’t she be heartbroken?
And who is supposed to be taking her photos? A couple’s first date pic I could maybe see, especially if it was really going well and a server offered or a photobooth situtation or something. The boat pic is, like you said, not matching with the story.