Dear Roe,
I’m a 35-year-old woman. I have been with my boyfriend for seven years and we’ve lived together for three years. I knew early on that he was the one for me. Because we met in our 20s, I wasn’t in a rush to consider marriage, but since my early 30s it has become more important to me. I’ve brought it up a couple of times over the past few years and my boyfriend has said that of course we’ll get married “some day”, but that he wants to “get his life in order” first and wants to “do it in his own time”. He says that because we know we want to be together forever, it’s not really a rush. But the past two years I’ve been getting more and more depressed about it.
I’m scared that there’s a reason he’s not proposing and have heard horror stories of men stringing women along for years, only to break up, get with a new woman and become engaged within a year. I’m terrified of that happening to me and having to go back dating after spending all this time with someone. But I also don’t want to become this nagging woman putting pressure on her boyfriend to propose. I don’t know whether to push it, trust him, give an ultimatum, or leave. Help!
I hate the term “nagging”. It’s disproportionately used against women, blames women for repeating a request or a need that is going unfulfilled, while also casting the need or request as unimportant and bothersome. It’s a way of trivialising women’s needs and distracting from the fact that their requests are going unanswered.
Your desire for marriage and your need for clarity, communication and safety about your relationship and your future is not trivial. Asking your partner of seven years about the topic of marriage “a few times” without ever getting a clear answer is not unreasonable.
I’m very curious about the dynamic in your relationship where you believe that asking about something that is hugely important to you is you doing oppressive to something to him like “nagging” or “putting pressure on”.
I also want to note that ultimatums can sometimes be used to control or manipulate people, but sometimes they are simply a necessary statement of a boundary, as you tell someone, “I need this in a relationship to feel safe, loved and happy, and if I can’t get that with you, I need to leave.”
I’d urge you to examine the ways you’ve internalised the idea that expressing your needs is an inherently unreasonable act, and encourage you to find a therapist to help you explore this.
If you’ve been in this relationship for seven years, I’m sure there are lots of things you love and appreciate about your partner and this relationship, and he has said he wants to be with you forever. But he’s giving you words instead of actions. Actions are a language and his actions right now are not communicating that he wants to change anything about your current dynamic.
While this dynamic did work for you for the first few years of your relationship, it’s no longer working for you. It’s making you feel depressed, insecure, fearful, and it’s teaching you that your needs and desires are simultaneously too much and unimportant. Your needs have very naturally changed over time and he is no longer meeting those needs. That is not unimportant. That is everything, and you need to take it seriously – which means you need to start taking your own needs seriously, and acting accordingly.
I’m guessing you haven’t done that before and are frankly terrified of doing so, which is why you’re stuck analysing the possibility of him changing and becoming ready within your current dynamic. I’m absolutely not going to say this isn’t possible – of course many people stay together for years and then get engaged and married and it all works out wonderfully.
However, you’re in your 30s and have been together for seven years, which means you should have a pretty good sense both of yourselves and each other as individuals, and I’m guessing you’ve been through a lot of things together so I understand your concern that your partner has all the information he needs.
I think it’s important to think about the dynamic you’re both perpetuating here. He feels very comfortable and safe within your relationship as it is, and despite telling him that marriage is important to you, he hasn’t taken any steps either to make that a real possibility or even to initiate communication with you on the topic, such as telling you about his vision of your future together or explaining what he wants to achieve or experience before getting married and telling you his ideal timeline. He’s simply dodging the topic – but so far, there haven’t been any real consequences for him.
[ How do I find love while still living at home in rural Ireland?Opens in new window ]
You’re expecting him to break a pattern while you’re maintaining it. You staying in this relationship, not seriously expressing your needs and keeping him comfortable, isn’t a rejection of the pattern – it’s an approval of it and participation in it.
I don’t believe it’s hopeless or impossible for you to have the relationship you want. But I wonder what he’s learning from what you’re communicating through your actions – and my instinct is, not a lot.
It’s an unfortunate cliche, but as you note, many times people stay in long relationships hoping for something to change – for their partner to become more romantic, to commit, to want children – only to break up and for their ex to quickly do all those things with their new partner.
Sometimes of course this is because there were issues or incompatibilities in their original relationship, but sometimes it’s because losing the first relationship was a necessary reality check to break the hesitant partner out of their stagnation and complacency. It’s not that they have suddenly changed, and it’s not that the new partner is somehow more worthy or deserving – it’s that a pattern has been disrupted. There has been a consequence to their inaction, they’ve lost something, and know they have to act differently to avoid that consequence again.
I know you love this person, and of course the hope is that you can disrupt this pattern without losing the relationship. To do that, you need to act differently and consider options that you haven’t considered – while remembering that you can’t do all the work. He has to want to move forward, too.
You need to express your needs and feelings clearly, without apology, emphasising how important this is to you and how the lack of communication and action around the topic is affecting you. Couples counselling feels like a necessary step, so you can have support and guidance as you navigate what has become a make-or-break issue. Down the line, you could also eventually consider taking some conscious time apart (with a clear intention of thinking about your future together and clear date to reunite).
I also wonder what you can start doing just for yourself right now. In long-term relationships it can be easy to begin to stagnate, and I suspect you’re someone who often thinks of their partner and relationship before thinking of yourself. It may sound counterintuitive to focus on you when it feels like your relationship is hanging in the balance, but breaking your own patterns and reconnecting with yourself may give you the energy and perspective to view your relationship clearly, and the ways this current dynamic is holding you back.
I really hope it works out, but I want to warn you against undermining your needs or falling prey to a sunk cost fallacy. What you want is important, and just because you’ve spent seven years with someone does not mean you can’t start over if you need to. Right now, you’re scared of expressing your needs in case you lose your relationship – but you don’t have the relationship you want right now anyway. Something has to change, and you being a bit braver might need to be the first step. Good luck.