He’s not ready to sign on the dotted line when it comes to another marriage, and probably won’t be for awhile. Dood needs to heal.
He does like you a lot from what I’ve read, and you’re both discussing the future, more children, marriage etc… So you both have a lot in common, he just needs more time to process up to the speed your at. No one to blame for that, everyone gets their shit together at different speeds.
Don’t give him an ultimatum , but after a certain period of time based on your own criteria put him in the friend zone and move on with your life.
Who knows you may come back later in five years and you’re both single.
SweetiePotato, if he wanted to marry you, he would have done so by now. For whatever reason, he has everything the way he likes it with no financial or legal commitment on his part. You’re even willing to compromise further for even less by signing a pre-nup.
Leave quietly, and if he really doesn’t want to lose you, he will marry you. If he doesn’t, you will know that he never would have. You have wasted enough years on this man.
THIS. You are not good enough for him to marry, hon. Cow, milk.
And if you break up with him, you watch - he will find someone ELSE to marry. I have seen this happen. I don’t know why - the new live-in won’t put up with an openended relationship? He falls madly in love and can’t live without her? He gets a dire health diagnosis and wants to insure she’ll be around to nurse him through an illness?
Matching tattooes! What assholery! Fat lot of good that’ll be, and you’ll have to eventually have them removed or altered.
To her: The piece of paper is a sign of emotional commitment and devotion. She doesn’t want it for the legal benefits it will confer upon her, although they might be useful in the longer term (as others have said, death benefits, inheritance, etc.)
To him: The piece of paper doesn’t mean he is any more committed to her and the relationship. It doesn’t make the relationship one iota stronger or deeper. Just more complicated. In that regard, it is just a piece of paper. However, it DOES have ramifications that can be a major nuisance if the relationship goes south.
Thinking that getting married will somehow make the relationship better or more meaningful is a REALLY bad reason to get married. I personally don’t need a marriage certificate to know I’m committed to my wife and she to me.
Men get married thinking nothing will change. Women get married thinking they will. They are both disappointed.
I remember a guy friend telling me once that if you want to know what a man really means when he says something, listen to his actual words. At the time that just blew my mind but now it seems so obvious. There’s no subtext here, your boyfriend really does not want to get married. The only thing for it is to believe him when he says it.
If you decide to move out I think it’s important to make sure you’re not leaving with the expectation that missing you will make him change his mind. He probably will miss you, and his son certainly will, but he’s already made it clear that he doesn’t want to get married so whatever choice you make should be rooted firmly in that reality.
Lets say you leave him. How long is it going to take for you to find another guy you like, get to know him, and finally decide you want to marry him and have a kid with him and he will want to do that as well? I am guessing you would typically be looking at that taking yet another 2 to 3 years. Most people I know who finally got married and had kids took that longer or longer and thats often after years of playing the dating game till they found someone they wanted to stick around with for awhile and see what happened long term.
Now, back the guy you are currently living with. Do you think he ain’t gonna marry you no matter what or do you think the marriage and kid thing is fairly probable but its going to take a a bit more time? If its the former, then yeah you need to dump and run if the marriage and kid thing is a show stopper. If its much more likely to be the later then dumping and running will probably take you just as long or longer to get where you wanna eventually be and has a fair chance of being worse.
Of course only you can really answer those questions. Anybody here who says he definitely will or won’t based on the little bit of info you’ve given is just talking out of their posterior. We really don’t know the guy (or you for that matter). If we actually GOT to know him them maybe just maybe we could give you more than a random guess as to his actual inclination to marry or not.
I have to add that, in terms of financial security, he has put aside a fair amount for me in the event of our break-up so I will have something to fall back on. I’m also in his will.
Often, when he and I argue about something, I’ll see evidence of altered behavior a week or so later. I know he generally takes more time than I do to sort things out in his head.
And I do hope I have some sort of happy ending to share! Otherwise, my plan is to up and move to Pittsburgh
If a person has been burned in marriage, and is getting (more or less) all the companiable benefits of marriage I can see why he would not want to be married again anytime soon.
Getting divorced is often an enormous, expensive, traumatic, life shaking PITA. It makes you realize how absolutely weighty and serious marriage is. As others have pointed out you are two different places in your lives and he is not overly panicked (at this point) at the notion of living without you.
If he is really throwing up the tired “bullied into marriage” objection he sounds (to be frank) kind of childish and this should be a huge red flag for you that he rather enjoys the freedom of non-marriage.
You may eventually be able to force him into marriage but is that really what you want. A man should be all about wanting to marry you if he really into you and does not see his life without you. I do not think he is on that page.
Having said all this I understand to a degree where he is coming from. I was a divorced dad with kids from a bruising divorce, and there is no way on God’s green earth I would have been getting remarried again after only a year or two. His head is just not in that game. I think you need to find another guy.
I have to admit his offered excuses for not getting married and suggested alternatives were childish tropes. They were virtually cartoonish. I was thinking he must be amazing in the sack or smuggling a python to be able to get away with saying stupid, uncreative shit like that.
I think you’re on the right path, and that you’ll be just fine.
Men are often traumatized by bad marriages. But moving on is a choice, allowing his ex’s flaws to shape your relationship is ridiculous. He must know this. Good on you for having the ovaries to challenge his thinking, because that’s exactly what’s going to get him to where he needs to be, I’d wager.
And I’d be willing to bet the new business is part of reason he’s not ready yet. When it’s a success/stable, things may well shift. It wouldn’t surprise me.
When I was younger, I thought open-ended shacking up was great. However, becomign an old’er’ foggey I have come around to your point of view. I don’t think shacking up is usually a good idea.
Possible negative aspects of shacking up:
You get into a routine ‘marriage-like’ without the actual rights/protections of marriage as Cat has said
It is much harder to extricate yourself from a bf/gf relationship. You can’t just ‘break up’ without moving residences or kicking someone out.
Breaking up could carry some finances-splitting problems. breaking up is bad enough without throwing money into the mix.
Kids of the other parent get much more bonded to you. It isn’t ‘she is real nice, I like to see her’ anymore - it is like a surrogate mommy.
If you do have doubts about the relationship and want to ‘dabble’ in the dating scene it is much harder to do it when you live with your bf/gf.
Since you are around, your S.O. feels no hurry to ‘seal the deal’. I WANT to come home to her damnit - or I WANT her around more’ so I better propose.
On the other hand, you may be more likely to get married via inertia when you should be breaking up instead.
I think the answer you’re looking for isn’t on this board, it’s in a crystal ball.
If you knew for sure he will marry you in the next few years you would be willing to wait. You don’t want to be in this same place 10 years from now.
Nobody can answer that question, not even him at this point.
I think your upcoming birthday is making you anxious about the future. I would wait until your birthday has passed before making any decisions. Also, give him time to get his business up and running. A lot of men, even now, feel like they have to be the primary breadwinner and they won’t feel comfortable getting married until they feel financially stable.
Often when we want something from a partner we have been thinking about it for some time. We’ve figured out what we want, how we are going to say it, the reasons for and against. We’ve worked it all out in our minds. Then we say something to our partner and want a definite answer right now. You’ve said what you want, drop it for now and give him time to think about it.
Don’t get into a mindset of “if my partner loves me he will do xyz for me”. Not wanting to marry you right now doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you, it means he doesn’t want to get married right now,
Pack it up, move, and take some time off of the/any relationship(s), and get counseling to improve upon yourself and your boundaries. You have met virtually every need this guy has, and he hasn’t returned it in kind. That will take any person from loving and caring to angry in resentful in a few years, and it sounds like you’re half way there. Please move out for your own sake, and chalk that up as a mistake. Do not move and/or have kids with anyone until your criteria have been met…you do deserve it, and don’t compromise on it like you did in this relationship. It’s a deal-breaker.
In due time, he may change on his own terms and be the guy you always wanted him to be, but you may find somebody else who is already with that mindset…and right now, you are totally unavailable to that guy. You deserve* that* guy…you do not deserve the guy who happens to be your live-in boyfriend.
I do feel sorry for the kid though, but that is definitely not your fault, and please do not feel guilty about leaving.
SweetiePotato, I really think you have a very good, commitment-worthy relationship here. And I’m going to suggest a couple of things I hope you really think about.
-Don’t just set yourself a timeline. You need to tell HIM what’s going on in your head. Otherwise you’re just killing time and you might as well leave now, as you’re not giving him the chance to be part of the dynamic.
-It’s NOT coercion to need something and ask for it. And it’s NOT stubborness to not want what the other person does.
But…you both need to set a time-frame wherein you both SERIOUSLY imagine life as the OTHER person wants it. Seriously. You both need to get used to the idea of being married/not married. What would REALLY change, in either case?
If after a decent length of time of both of you TRULY considering the other point of view, you honestly come to the conclusion that neither of you is going to change, then at least you can end things on honest terms, knowing you both really did try.
If you don’t do this, you are complicit in the failure, by just…letting it go without even giving it an honest chance.
-My 2c, which might be worth only a peso in this economy.
