Argh. The situation: Met each other on the Internet in September '95. Met for the first time IRL December '95. Had on-again/off-again long distance relationship for three years. Became seriously “on again” in September 98. Moved in with each other June 99. Have been living together ever since.
Things are great between us. I mean, really great. We get along well, laugh at the same jokes, read books to each other, etc. etc. etc. It is everything I could want in a relationship and more. Except…he doesn’t want to get married. He says “it just doesn’t feel right” and is basically unable to tell me why it doesn’t feel right.
This really upsets me from time to time, although for long periods of time I will be okay with it. It’s just every so often (like now) I get that urge to be married and have a definite future and not just be “the girlfriend.”
I’m probably being dumb about this. I should be grateful (and I am, really I am) that I’m in such a good relationship with this guy. He treats me like a princess, no kidding. But yet, why no marriage?
You’re not lame because you want to get married. It’s perfectly natural to want to deepen the relationship after it’s been going for a while. Most people just get to that point at different times. Just my $.02
I guess it depends on what you really want. You want to marry a man who is not red hot to marry you. This doesn’t mean you are lame. He has issues he can’t verbalize to you. I hurt really badly when my SO and I can’t verbalize, when we’re not on the same page, and it’s important.
But ask yourself what it is you really want…is it okay for you to be merely the girlfriend for a couple of years? My friend Carla said if I wanted a husband who would bring me flowers and take me dancing, then I should marry a man who does those things now. This is hard when the man you love does so many other things, when you feel you should be grateful for what he DOES do…but what do want? What do you need? Would he do those other wonderful things he does if he didn’t like it,too? What does he do just for you, just because YOU want it and he doesn’t, but does it anyway?
I dunno, doors, I liked being married and would love to be in such a loving caring relationship again where I could give myself to someone and make that commitment.
Since I was like six years old I’ve wanted what you want, MsWhatsit (from what I know of what you want): a wife and kids. Not complicated. Scares people, though . . .
I’m a woman and I don’t want to be married. I don’t know why, the idea just doesn’t appeal to me. I backed out of one engagement after an eight year relationship, and I am now in another long-term relationship. I am happy, he’s been divorced once and is happy too. No kids, just pets. After my engagement broke up and I gave the ring back it was a mess…we had bought a house and boat together, plus a lot of furniture and everything had to be split up. I got the short end of the stick and now I prefer to be an “independant”.
I was married and I liked it so much, I stayed with my husband for twelve years. I was good at it, too. I want to be married again, and I will make an excellent wife to a man who wants that. It’s not lame to not want to be alone, to have someone watch your back and to be able to care for someone in a very public commitment.
I am not the model for any kind of relationship but marriage is but a legal thing these days. A day to dress up pretty and share your marriage with people you know.
Other than that, if you are happily in a committed relationship, why must you push it? You are still together, living as a couple and you apparently have made an unwritten resolution to be together for a long time if not forever.
Honestly, I think many people who are not legally committed together can have a healthier relationship. You don’t have the “divorce” thing looming among other things.
If you love one another that should be enough to pull you through the thick and the thin without some ceremony.
In short I do think that the word “marriage” is for those who need to commit to God (in whatever religious capacity) that you vow your lives together. Not some legal document that says you take his last name…
Keep in mind I am 32, never been married and honestly I prefer not to. I also think the act of marriage is a silly reason these days to have a ceremony and a party, oh and a way to satisfy the IRS for some benefits not deserving…but again, that’s just me.
Men often look at these situations differently than women do. For a typical man to make the decision to get married there generally has to be some overriding reason to make the leap and most of the time these decisons are directly related to pure self interest. “It just doesn’t feel right” is typically code for “I’m not going to marry you now or ever”.
Depending on the person the marriage leap is typically based on some degree of love/affection +
1: Competitive- Wow! You are such a wonderful woman and if I don’t snap you up someone else will and that would pain me endlessly.
2: Threat of loss- Wow! You are such a wonderful woman that if I don’t commit to you you will possibly terminate our relationship and that would pain me endlessly.
3: Moral Posture- Living together is juvenile and/or immoral. I respect you too much and I love you enough to commit to you.
4: Pure intertia and/or compelling circumstance- God we’ve been together for a while now and you’re pregnant! Might as well make it legal for the kid’s sake.
If a man has a satisfying physical and emotional, fairly low maintenance relationship and the situation does not fit any of the above categories what is the compelling reason for him to encumber himself? ie He gets the milk. The cow is free, and it’s not about to walk out on him or date other bulls. Life is good.
This is obviously not the most romantic way to look at the situation and we could spend endless hours discussing his fear of committment, issues etc etc etc. The cruelest part of this little dance that men and women do is when a couple breaks up after years of a realtionship where the man wouldn’t commit to marriage because “it just doesn’t feel right” and a few months later she hears that he is getting married to a women he has known for only a few months.
Typically the (real) reason for this is that he is now truly in love and never was before and/or the woman has taken a stand (ie marriage or bye bye). To a large extent women dictate acceptable male behavior toward themselves by the limits of what they are willing to tolerate or otherwise accept. If your behavior and attitude in the realtionship is as you have described (accepting and grateful for such a swell guy) there is no reason at all for him to change his mind about the fact that “it just doesn’t feel right.”
I certainly don’t think there’s anything lame about wanting to be married in your situation. In fact, among the lamest reasons to marry is “… because I always wanted the big traditional wedding before I turn 30” - or other such inane thinking.
Seems to me, you need to decide what’s important to you and discuss it with your SO - the two of you together need to come up with your own right answer based upon what you want from each other and from life. Personally, I’d not trade my married life for any other kind, and we’re looking forward to growing old together. Knowing that we each have another committed to being there through everything - well, what more could one ask??
My current spouse and I lived together for a year before getting engaged. There was a earlier point at which I knew she wanted to get married (well, engaged) but I wasn’t ready yet to say “This is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with”. We had a surprisingly reasonable conversation, in which I told her that if and when I was ready to ask her I wanted to be sure that I was doing it because I wanted to, and not just because she expected me to or because it was the next logical step in the relationship. Sometimes these things are hard to figure out. And because I took that time to make sure, I’ve never had any doubts that it was the right thing to do (and we’re coming up on 11 years of happy marriage).
Maybe your guy is confused about his feelings towards making a permanent commitment (and if he is, don’t take it personally – guys take longer to resolve these things internally than women seem to). Or maybe he’s genuinely commitment shy and is using his inability to articulate how he feels to hide the fact that he currently feels that he really doesn’t want to get married. I have no idea.
In the meantime, in reference to your OP: I’m with FairyChatMom. Make sure you know why you want to get married before trying to figure out why he might not.
Another q - has he been married or engaged before? If he has, maybe he’s afraid there - he was torn up after the divorce, or “Everything was fine, until we got engaged, then…”
The commitment part? Maybe he feels right now he's with you because you both want him to be, not because he has legal/moral obligations. He wants the door open in case he chooses to run. Now, it's open,. but he stays in anyway.
As Mrs. F. and I approach anniversary #10, I have nothing but good things to say about marriage.
Still, I have to echo techie and ChiefScott: it’s important for you to be able to distill, for yourself, the reasons you want to marry.
Marriage, even after we toss all the legal and religious stuff out of the picture, is about a commitment to one another that goes beyond the horizon of what you two can see ahead and plan around. There are a whole lot of good reasons, IMO, for wanting to enter into such a commitment. The freedom in marriage to have a bad day, or even a bad year, and know that your SO isn’t packing his/her bags on account of it, is a tremendous thing to work within. But again, this isn’t about my reasons for having chosen marriage; you have to sort out yours for wanting to be married.
One question I have is, what sort of talking have the two of you already done about your future together, and what level of commitment is already implicit in your relationship (or is that part of the confusion)? There really are some forks in the road with this sort of thing. If one of you really wants children and the other doesn’t (or really doesn’t want to talk about it much), it’s probably a deal-breaker. Or if you want to start planning a more long-term vision of a future together, and he’s more into taking it day-by-day, that’s gonna put some stresses on things. If you tell us a bit more about what’s going on here, we may be able to get a better feeling for what the real questions are here.
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Is your username from A Wrinkle in Time?
(Just wondering.)
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So, bottom line, Ms----you are not lame. You can want what you want. Even if it’s not what your SO wants. You can’t change his heart or make him choose what you would have him do, but his choices don’t make you less valuable. There are lots of people who want marriage for themselves. When you find out why you want it, you’ll seek it where you have a good chance of finding it. And you’ll find yourself sharing your life with someone who wants what you do.
But, that whole “doesn’t feel right” thing would really bother me. Why doesn’t it feel right? Does it not feel right for now or does it not feel right ever? I don’t think that you should attempt to push a man to marry you. Who wants to be married to someone who didn’t want to get married? However, if you really want to be married and he never wants to marry you the situation may need to be reevaluated.
I think that you need to explain to him that you need to know why it “doesn’t feel right”. That is just a excuse to avoid telling you the real reason.
While I admit marriage is not for everyone, and agree that it’s not necessary for a healthy relationship, I take umbrage at the idea that it’s an excuse for a party or just a legal-IRS thing. No, it isn’t. It just isn’t.
One of the things marriage represents, to me, is that we have made a very public and legal and (sorta) religious statement than says we both believe enough in “us” that even if things go sour, we will attempt to work through it. When past relationships have fallen apart, I questioned whether we both ever really wanted it. It’s easy to rewrite history, or to simply not be able to remember when or whether we both were really into it and looking towards the future. It made it a lot easier, I think, to just let the thing slide. If that started happening to me today, I’ve got the benchmark. I know that there was a time when we both unequivocally were aiming for “forever,” and I’ve got substantial legal and societal hurdles against forgetting that. Even if my heart is not in it at the time, I’ve got additional incentive to fixing what’s broke. And I ought to! We did decide, with a lot of soul searching, that what we had was worth committing to.
Admittedly, that’s a somewhat pessimistic view of marriage, isn’t it (“it’s good because it’s hard to break up”)? It’s just one facet of it, of course, for me. Here is another small but non inconsequential benefit to marriage: societal supports for our relationship. People respect and validate your relationship when you’ve committed like that. It’s subtle, but I think it helps.
Okay, back to the OP. No, you’re not lame. It’s troubling that he’s not on the same page. I can’t speak for him, but I know that some guys see marriage as a freight train. Once you get on, there is no getting off and no slowing down. The train is speeding on towards increasing responsibility and obligations. Suddenly, a married man is “a provider.” In addition to the expectation that he will have a serious, steady job, around the bend are things like home ownership. Kids. Minivan ownership. Life insurance. College savings. All piled on, a huge mantle of adulthood and maturity and responsibility. Goodbye Freedom! Goodbye spontaneity! A single guy who is free and spontaenous is successful, interesting, the object of envy, and in the prime of his life. A married man who is free and spontaneous is seen as an asshole, immature, selfish, and doing wrong by his family. The single man can have a girlfriend and still have those things be true. The married man, with wife, is expected to behave differently.
I think that these issues really bother some men. Not all, I said SOME. And they can make marriage seem like something that’s better off pursued after you’ve lived more.
Wow, you guys are great. I go to bed and come back in the morning and there’s a pageful of insightful commentary waiting for me. To address some questions:
Because we have now been together two years, and share our life together in almost every way, and I am ready to deepen that commitment and make it official. It makes me feel slightly insecure about the relationship that he does not want marriage. It makes me wonder why exactly it is that he doesn’t want marriage. Is it, as some have postulated, that he just wants that back door open so that he can run if necessary? I don’t know, and he isn’t willing/able to say.
Actually, the answer to this is a definite “yes”. I don’t want the white dress and the ring and the piece of paper so much as I want the commitment. We talked about this the other day. He and I have often talked about buying a house; I asked him why he feels okay buying a house with me but not getting married. He said that while buying a house with me is also scary and intimidating, it’s also something that he really really wants for himself and for us. OK, that’s not entirely fair to me (“I’m willing to overcome my fear of commitment but only for something I really want”) but I’m willing to deal with it. I told him that honestly, buying a house might be enough symbol of commitment for me. He then said (how can you not love this guy?) “What about a tattoo?” I was like, “What ABOUT a tattoo?” He said, “Well, what if I got a tattoo of your name? Would that be enough commitment?” I thought about it for a few minutes and said, “Sure!” So now he’s thinking about getting a tattoo of my name. Anyway, the short answer to the question above is, yes, it would be OK not to be married if he could show a sign of permanent commitment in some other way.
Nope. He was in one long-term relationship before, but it ended quite badly. No previous engagements or marriages.
Well, as I said, we’ve discussed buying a house together. We often talk about what we would hypothetically do if we had kids, although he says he’s not sure he will want kids. He often says things like, “We’re a team!” and “We’re good partners” and “I will always be here for you”, etc. I would say that there is a good level of commitment in the relationship. Just not rock-solid commitment, in my opinion. (Or in my mind, at least.)
Well, that’s the kicker. You’d expect this waffling around to come from someone in his 20s, but my boyfriend is 36 years old. Yes, 36. I’m 24. I’ve asked him if the age difference is part of what’s bothering him, and he swears that 1) it isn’t, and that 2) he rarely thinks about my age except to feel proud of having such a “young, hot girlfriend”. (“Oh, so you’re just using me for sex, eh?” “No! That’s not what I meant!” “Uh-huh.”)
I’m feeling a bit better about this than I was yesterday. My feeling is that I would rather be with him and not married, than not with him. Yes, marriage is important to me, but so is Keith! (MrWhatsit) At this point I really don’t know if he will ever want to be married. I think I can accept that, because as I’ve said, our relationship is great otherwise. I wouldn’t want to throw away a good thing just because one party involved is gun-shy about commitment.
Eh, I don’t know. Life is hard, dammit! Nobody told me there were going to be all these, you know, decisions!