Weddingbee boards

@FutureMrsCassar:Wow, how harsh and judgemental. I think that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything.

@Scottish_lassie:I'll be honest with you, I'm not the most gracious about it. I take it one day at a time, and sometimes it's a good day, sometimes it's a bad one. I don't even find that keeping myself busy helps, because sometimes I'll be so tired and worn out at the end of a busy day that I'll be more inclined to snap about it.

I can tell you right now that there is not a single day where I don't think about it.

I was an antsy waiter too so I get the frustration, but I agree with the other girls here, the more you focus on 'the next step' the more you miss out on the wonderful opportunities to spend time with the ones you love that happen every day!  Becoming engaged doesn't magically make your relationship totally fulfilling, it doesn't bridge al the gaps and all of a sudden you understand your partner on every deep level possible, no!  That stuff should come before the ring, and you shouldn't rush it.  Some girls are in love with the idea of being engaged and all the excitement and attention that comes with it, I'm not saying this isn the case with you, but definitely relax about it.

It'll come when it does, and the best way to not ruin it is don't make it seem like thats all you care about and that if he doesn't put a ring on it then you aren't interested.  If its been 5 years of cohabiting then you should start worrying (and I was in that position with an ex, so believe me, I know waiting lol)  Chill out and focus on the reason for the ring and then it won't matter so much when you get it, the true prize is the man :3

@GoldfishPie:  co-sign. this is what worries me about lassies post, 2 years to a wedding is understandable as it takes awhile to save for one. but 2 years for an engagement? seems more like hes stalling. i can see if it was a young relationship and youre still getting to know your SO, but the OP is older and has been with her SO for years now. it doesnt seem like she agreed with the timeline but agreed to it since it was what HE wanted.

i thin it would be harder to enjoy the relationship when youre given those circumstances.he seems to be calling the shots here and youre along for the ride.

i really hope your guy gets it together OP, i agree with armychica about avoiding the bee for awhile, it definitely doesnt help the waiting period. breaks are needed every now and then.

@Scottish_lassie:  Awww... 2 freaking years!  That would kill me.  But I just found out I WILL NOT get a proposal this year.  Probably early to mid 2013.  I am almost 33 and I have never been married.  My biological clock is ready to explode, so I get your frustration.  I want to wring my SO's neck and say "if I'm the one, why not just seal the deal?"  lol

However, I adore my SO with all my heart.  He's battling cancer and we are handling it together.  He's worth waiting for, and I already told him if he waits too long to propose, we may have to adopt children.  I laid it down for him, and now HE has to propose when HE's ready.  I am willing to wait because I love him that much.

Focus on building the relationship, and trust that he will put the ring on your finger on his own time.  I know that waiting for a man sucks, especially when your future is directly tied to this.  Believe me.  I don't like waiting either.  But if he's truly the one, you can do this.  If you have doubts that he is the one, it makes sense to find someone else.  But that new person may take 2 years to put a ring on it too.  Get what I mean?  You will be waiting 2 years regardless of what you do.  That's how I see it.

To make the waiting better, I think back 2 years, so that would be February 2010.  I think of how fast that went by, and realize that 2 years will pass quickly if you see it that way.  Good luck!  I know it sucks!!!

@txbella:  That's the thing with waiting though: whoever is ready first DOESN'T get to call the shots.  You can't force somebody to be ready for an engagement and marriage so, as hard as it is, you have to wait for them to reach it on their own otherwise there are going to be a lot more problems in the future.

The are a million reasons why a person may want to wait to get engaged for financial reasons: building up a savings account for emergencies, saving for a ring, paying off debt so it won't become your future spouse's, saving money for the wedding if they don't want a long engagement, buying things that should take priority over a ring first (ex. a vehicle if they don't have one), and so on.  Plus, 

@Scottish_lassie:  I don't want to be harsh, but you cannot keep getting angry at your SO and making comments like that if you don't want him to start permanently feeling angry at you.  It is a two way street: you resent making him wait, but if you keep pushing for it and making him feel like what you have isn't good enough he could very easily start resenting you and, if it gets too extreme, may not want to propose after two years.

The advice for helping your relationship is the same advice that people in LDRs get: find things you can do to distract you from what you wish was happening (being with your SO or, in this case, getting engaged).  Moping instead of living your life and enjoying what you have doesn't help anybody and can actually be counter-productive to getting what you want.  In your case, if it's upsetting you so much that you have to wait two years take some time away from wedding websites, stop counting how many days are potentially left, and do something that makes you happy.  Do NOT try to plan your wedding before you're engaged, that won't help you at all.  (Also, what if he has an opinion about something you love/hate?  What if your parents or his parents chip in (which gives them a say) and you have to throw out part of your plans)?  Daydreaming is fine to a point, but when you are so upset and focused on the engagement and the wedding rather than working on what you have right now, I think it is time to take a step back.

Good luck.

@AnastasiaM:  neither party should be calling the shots in a relationship, there should be compromise, and if youve read the OPs post history you would see that her FI has no valid reason for waiting to get engaged. i agree you cant force someone to be ready but that doesnt mean a compromise cant be reached on the timeline, 2 year wait on a ring is ridiculous.

just because HE said 2 years doesnt mean she has to go along with that timeline if it isnt reasonable to her. the OP seems to be making all the sacrifices in this relationship while he makes very little in return. i can see this going terribly wrong as it seems the resentment has already kicked in from looking at her original post. so i stand by what i said.

if she thinks 2 years is crap let it be known to him and reach a happy medium, theres no valid reason for him waiting this long. which is why i reached the conclusion he IS stalling.

I'm in a similar boat with a 2-year timeline. What I do that seems to really help is on the days where I'm feeling really antsy about it I tell myself that if I still feel that way in 2 days then I can go ahead and talk to the SO about it. Most of the time I'm just having an off day and looking for reassurance, which I end up getting in other ways because he's awesome. Usually by the next morning I'm totally fine, but the few times I have gotten to the talking about it phase I'm much more calm and capable of having a constructive conversation.

@txbella:  Compromise would work if he was saying something like "I don't want to be married until I'm 40" or something like that.  However, if somebody is truly not ready to be engaged or married of course they get to call the shots on if it happens or not.  You can't get married if one party is being coerced into it, that is grounds for an annulment.  You can't make somebody be ready and if you push it too much, things don't work out well.  (I've seen the results of this first hand with my parents.)  There is no compromise when one person is ready to get married and the other isn't, becuase you either get married or you don't.

@Scottish_lassie:  If you aren't happy where you are, I think that is the issue you have to deal with before marriage.  I know being far apart and not having the same schedules is difficult.  SO & I have been together almost 4 years and spent nearly 2 years in a LDR... six months of which we could not communicate AT ALL (no texting, emails, or phones where he was) 5 days a week. Three months he was doing his paramedic placement on shift work where we were working opposite schedules, and that's what the next year and a half are going to be like when he is several hours away.  It sucks, you don't have to tell me, but if it relieves stress it is actually good.  In fact, I think every couple should do long distance for 6 months before they get married, because it really shows you what your relationship is made out of.

I can sympathize with a lot of things you've said... my parents have spent the last 3+ years divorcing after an awful marriage, I've had the panic attacks since primary school, and that there is no proposal coming this year (I probably have 1.5+ years of waiting left).

My biggest recommendations are probably the ones I said above: try to enjoy just being with your SO and think of how lucky you are to have a guy you love when you're feeling down.  Find a time-consuming hobby that you feel is productive and makes you feel good (I scrapbook and write novels, both of which take up plenty of time and are good distractions).  Try to give your guy space and let him process the marriage/engagement thing on his own, but if you've been feeling consistently upset about something in particular (not just waiting in general, because that's kind of hard to fix without somebody giving in, but if you feel like you're sacrifising more than him for example) have a heart-to-heart.

Sorry if you thought we were being harsh earlier, I can't speak for the others but I know I didn't mean to be.  I just wanted to make sure that you realized that moping or resenting that your SO isn't ready when you are is not the best way to start a marriage.  As long as you don't hold anything against your SO and don't criticize him for not feeling ready/try to avoid low blows, you're following most of the advice you got from people.

@AnastasiaM:  i dont think i suggested anything of the sort to 'coerce' or push someone to be ready for marriage, agreeing on a timeline they are both comfortable with is not pushing or forcing so i dont see the correlation in your stance here, so we will have to agree to disagree.

the OPs SO is a grown man with free will, he seems to be calling the shots so far, when it should be a mutual decision on a timeline, i dont see why finding a happy medium they can both agree on is coercing.

ive been in a 4 yr relationship with a man now who once told me he wanted to wait until he was 35. should i have told him 'sure honey ill wait?' hell no, i let him know that was out of the question, and i would walk in x amout of time. he can either come along for the ride or walk. that is where free will comes in. i didnt put him in shackles and tell him to marry me or else.. he's still here (his choice) and we have a date. not all couples who settle their timelines end up like your parents.

you dont have to settle for what a man thinks should be the time frame if you're not happy with it. plenty of couples who deal with mismatched timelines, some are able to meet somewhere in the middle and agree on a plan. 

@txbella:  There is a big difference between waiting 10 years and waiting a maximum of a little under 2.  I am also under the impression that the OP and her SO have agreed that he has two years to propose to her.  She can discuss it with him, but has to be open to the possibility that he might say, "Honey, I'm sorry.  I don't think I will be ready to get engaged until 2013."  Also he has told her that he will propose in the next two years... that doesn't mean he's going to propose on the last possible day, but people are jumping to worst-case-scenario here.

The coercion thing was in reference to if you keep pushing, people sometimes agree to things they aren't ready to out of fear of their SO leaving them.  Having a rational conversation is one thing, but if you keep bringing it up after your SO has told you the earliest they would be comfortable getting engaged and try to make them propose to you sooner, you are pressuring them to give in to your desires.

An analogy would be if, after you're married your husband tells you he wants to have kids asap.  You don't feel comfortable in your ability to parent, feel that you aren't financially stable enough, and/or want to get things done before you become a parent and tell him that you would be more comfortable starting TTC in two or three years.  The answer to the problem is not for your husband to keep nagging you or to pressure his wife into trying to have a baby in a year, the answer is waiting until they are both ready.  You can compromise if a person realizes maybe they don't need to do everything they originally thought they had to do before taking a big life step, but if they aren't ready and you love them, you have to let it be and let them come around on their own time.

@AnastasiaM:  i believe i mentioned here in previous posts she agreed to what her SO wanted for a timeline, it wasnt necessarily what she wanted, but she accepted. and again this is based off her post history. i believe she has also mentioned in previous posts that he changed timelines plenty before. even making up a cultural excuse as to why hes waiting. this all ties into why i believe he is stalling. the latest timeline he came to was 2years, she mentioned she wouldve preferred a year but agreed to his 2 yr timeline anyway.

but anyway, im done with the back n forth. good luck OP.

@txbella:  I didn't realize that he had changed when he was going to propose so many times.  In this case, I agree that it seems like he's stalling for some reason.

OP, I'm sorry he's made waiting so difficult for you.  Have you talked to him about your concerns that he doesn't realize how much you've given up for him?

Honestly I didn't have a hard time waiting till we started living together. Now that I feel like his wife without the actual title, it's really hard some days. But I'm now trying to focus on our relationship more and improve it to help me not think about it too much.

@Scottish_lassie:  

we were watching tv and he said (innocently and jokingly) 'If I wasn't with you, I'd go out with her' (about a girl on a UK dating show).

Whoa. I don't care whether he was joking or not. That is just a super, super insensitive and thoughtless comment for a man to make to a woman who he is sleeping with, in a committed relationship with, and worse -- to a woman who he knows is going crazy because she is waiting for him to propose.

If my DH had made a comment like that when we were dating, I would have walked out the door. SHEESH. I'm not saying I would have broken up with him. But he would have been in major hot water and I probably would have been in tears to the point that he would have had a lot of explaining and backpeddling to do.

I would have used that "joke" as an opportunity to put him on the spot and ask him what his intentions were. And if he responded that he didn't see marrying me in the foreseeable future (sorry, but I think him asking you to wait two years for a proposal is total B.S. and not foreseeable), I would have nicely responded by thanking him for his honesty. And then I would have explained that dating for more than two years without a wedding on the horizon was not something I'd be comfortable with. And then I really would walk.

I don't think jokes like that are really jokes, if you know what I mean. I think when a man makes a comment like that, he is establishing the pecking order in the relationship and letting you know, not so subtly, where you really stand with him.

I know I'm the lone dissenter here, but I disagree with all of this "get a hobby and let him take his sweet time because it will happen eventually" advice. Baloney. Get the hobby, yeah, but walk out the door and use your hobby to meet a guy who won't string you along like this.

If your b/f really loves you enough, he won't let you get away.

And if he does let you walk out of his life without giving you the engagement and marriage commitment that you need, then you'll know he never loved you enough in the first place.

Wouldn't you rather find out now instead of when you're 30?

@txbella:  

ive been in a 4 yr relationship with a man now who once told me he wanted to wait until he was 35. should i have told him 'sure honey ill wait?' hell no, i let him know that was out of the question, and i would walk in x amout of time. he can either come along for the ride or walk. that is where free will comes in. i didnt put him in shackles and tell him to marry me or else.. he's still here (his choice) and we have a date.

Seriously! This is a little bit like what happened with me. DH and I were having a great time dating, but after 14 months or so he had only dropped a couple of subtle hints about us getting married eventually. So after about 14 months of dating, I asked him what his plans were for us. He said he wanted us to be together for many years to come. I asked him if he had something more specific in mind because I wasn't comfortable dating someone long-term without knowing where it was going. He said that we should get married eventually. From there, we agreed to plan on moving in together, and he suggested we get married about six months after moving in. I replied again that I didn't want to live together without a marriage commitment.

And now here we are less than a year later. This past Christmas, we got married on our two year anniversary of meeting each other, and we moved in together as husband and wife.

If I hadn't let him know how I felt about the issue, we might still be just dating!

Letting a guy know that you're not willing to be his girlfriend forever and ever until lightning strikes and he feels like proposing is not equivalent to pressuring him or forcing him to marry you. It's called standing up for yourself, respecting yourself and not letting someone string you along. Big difference.