Home › Forums › Dating and Sex Advice › Timeline for marriage conflict
- This topic has 4 replies and was last updated 2 years, 2 months ago by
Rubi.
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Ashley
Hello,
I need some advice. Me and my boyfriend are 30 years old and have been dating for a little while and he’s recently brought up wanting to get married and I want to marry him too. He told me a couple of weeks ago that he wanted to get married by the end of the year. He hasn’t proposed yet but we’ve been talking about our timeline. Then, we had a conversation yesterday that he wants to get married “someday” and he doesn’t want to feel pressure from family or friends to get married in a year. It just made me feel sad because I was getting excited and then all the sudden he’s concerned about what family, friends, might think instead of what we want which was initially in a year. Now it sounds like it won’t happen in a year.
I want to get married and it didn’t feel good to hear “just trust me, I will marry you someday”. That’s so ambiguous and then it could happen in 5-10 years or something and I would like to have kids and don’t want to wait that long to marry someone.
How do I approach this and what do I say? We are in a long distance relationship and I don’t want to keep flying back and forth if we are going to date for a long time. I know he’s the one for me and I want to get married. Do I just give him space or what do I do?
Liz Lemon
Can you give a little more info?
1. How long have you been dating?
2. How long have you been long distance? Have you been long distance the entire relationship?Sam
I might be totally off but is it possible he said that to you because he wants to surprise you? Timelines aren’t exactly romantic ;)
Maddie
Need more context from the answers to Liz’s questions, but you’re right to see this as a potential red flag. He shouldn’t be worried about pressure from other people — there’s only two of you in this relationship. If you two are on the same timeline, that’s all that matters, and it’s a yellow flag if he’s not adult and mature enough to make his own decisions without letting people who shouldn’t be involved “pressure” him.
You will need to continue honestly communicating about this. Ask him what happened to make him change his opinion on timing. And tell him what your timing is (maybe you’re most excited about a year, but if it’s not two years then it’s not what you’re looking for?). Then give him some space to process and see if he steps up around whatever you discussed. If he’s playing games or he’s all talk and no action (you can say “let’s get married!” but then not doing anything to follow up, like come up with a plan to end long distance ane move in together, look for a ring if you want a ring, steps you take before even planning the wedding), then you may need to reconsider if he’s really “the one for you.” Because someone who can’t actually commit to what you want isn’t the one for you, and sometimes long distance can make it difficult to gauge if someone actually has commitment problems.
Good luck, hopefully he comes around quickly… and if not, hopefully he flames out quickly and shows you his true colors so you don’t waste your time.
Rubi
Hey Ashley, this pressure of wanting this marriage to happen when he hasn’t even proposed yet is going to ruin your experience. Pushing for it and making it the only thing you talk about wouldn’t feel right when he finally marries you but rather forced.
While I agree that “someday” sounds like it’s never going to happen, I also feel like you can’t put a date on when you’ll actually get married when you’re not engaged or living close to each other.
Dating a little while doesn’t sound like years to me. Have you two even cohabit for a while and see how you get along? Once you get married is he moving to you or you to him? I hope all these details have been talked about too before we anticipate for the big day to happen no? Maybe these are the reasons he is realizing that the timeline you talked about might not be that easy to make happen?
Anyway maybe you’ve had it all figured out, but I would worry about getting engage first, living together and have an established life together before I worry about the wedding date. But I guess you can look out if he’s taking steps towards these important milestones then you will have an idea how promising he is and how close the union will be.
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