Topic : Ready for Marriage?

Hi Bridget,

I'm a fairly young mom of an 18 year old son. I'm sorry your not getting the respect it sounds like you deserve from your fiancee's parents. The only thing I can think of is if my son announced he was getting married to anyone at this point in time I would have a difficult time accepting it. I wouldn't be disrespectful of the person he felt he loved enough to marry, but I would be concerned. The two of you are so very young and there are so many experiences you have yet to experience before marriage. Yes experience them together, explore things together, just not married, yet. I don't want to sound like someone who doesn't understand where you're at, I just remember very vividly how very much I thought I "knew exactly what I wanted" when I was your age and come to find out, I didn't really have a clue. Wow, life changes so dramatically, in a blink of an eye. Is there any way the two of you could wait a year or two? If you're going to be together forever anyway, why not have "dating" time first? I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

My boyfriend and I have been together now for 1.5 years in April. We have been living together since May of 2006. That's almost a year. Oh, living together in his parent's house I might add.

He is 24 and I am 19; I will be 20 in July.

My whole life, I have always been mature for my age as I had to be the only adult for myself. He on the other hand lived with both of his parent's his whole life and doesn't know really much of the "real world."

I have taken this into consideration the fact that he may have some fears but if this is the case, why has he been willing to date" and live together for this long so far?

I have been pressuring him a bit lately about becoming engaged. I tell him that I want to, I am ready because I know what I don't want to happen and I know I can make an engagement and even a marriage work. I would even settle for being engaged for years... It's just the fact that I want that next step.

Our relationship has endured many hardships and I'm sure will have many more. I have changed and grown a lot since the first 6 or so months of our relationship and am still willing to change. He however says he would like to as well to improve what we do have now but is a lot of talk and no action if you know what I mean.

Also, I don't know if he's ever going to leave home.

Like I said, I am ready. Should I move on and find someone else who shares my feelings? Should I stick around and "wait" for him or should I do something else?

Any advice is great advice as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you muchly!

 

My fiance and I have been going out for about 4 years now, we got engaged last year and are currently planning for our wedding in June. I love him more than anything in the world, he's the man of my dreams, and I'm looking forward to marrying him and being with him.

 

But recently, I've been thinking about my ex boyfriend alot, wondering what could have been if we had'nt broken up. I see him every once in a while which makes me think about him even more, sometimes I even dream about him, and us being together again. I feel that I want to talk to him about my feelings, but I'm worried that it may ruin everything I have with my fiance, and even the thought of loosing or jepordizing my relationship with my fiance brings me to tears.

 

I dont know what I'm doing, i feel confused, not sure why I'm thinking about my ex, rather than focusing on my future with my fiance.

 

Any advice?

It is possible that you are focusing on the past because you are fearful or uncertain of your future. You are looking to the past because you are wondering if “the grass is greener.” Most people will tell you this- the grass is NOT greener with your ex! There are reasons why you broke up, and throughout these four years that you’ve been apart, it is likely that he has developed into a different person. I’m sure that you’ve developed into a different person, too. You can’t help but to mature and evolve. You are looking into the past for a reason to not move forward, almost as though you are trying to be self destructive; don’t do this to yourself! You deserve to have true happiness with the (one man) that you love.
 

Thank you for the reply... the part about being self destructive is so true, hearing it from someone else made me believe it even more, anything I do to persue these feelings would be self destructive! And I do love my fiance so much! Thank you

 I met my husband on line back in May.  I lived in New York, he in Los Angeles.  I am 40 and never been married, he is 45 and was previously married and has a 19 yr. old who lives with the mother.  From the very beginning he was so attentive and loving.  Our conversations were warm and amazing.  He was and is everything I ever imagined.  I fell for him hard and am still extremely in love with him.  We fell in love the day we met.  He pdroposed 2  months later and we got engaged.  I left my job, my home, my parents and moved in with him in September, and we got married in December.  I want to have children and he doesn't.  He has convinced me that at our age it's not a good idea and I kind of agreed because I don't want to lose him.  I knew he didn't want children before we got married so I'll have to live with that.  He tells me he loves me every day 10 times and that we will always be together for ever.  That we are soul mates. Recently, when he wanted to visit his family whom we visit almost daily, I didn't feel like going.  He was upset and wrote me an e-mail the next day saying he was mad because he can't stand being away from me for more than 3 hours.  I thought that was so swee but a bit weird.  He says he doesn't believe in couples who travel alone.  Do you think I have made a mistake?  We are both from the same cultural background but I was raised more free.  Having read the whole story, do you think I made a mistake?  I do need to say that he is so kind and sweet to me.  I don't know how his past relationships were.  But I'm starting to feel he might be a bit controlling.  I know no body in California and he's all I got.  I'm not working yet and sometimes I'm so bored that I demand he come home and be with me and he does immediately.
He also has told me very sweetly that he doesn't want me to have contact with my ex boyfriend who is a dear friend yet he has female friens and I'm fine with it.  Did I make a mistake?  

The mistake was getting married so quickly. What was the rush? It is understandable that you had intense love, however, you don’t truly ever know someone for at least one year- sometimes even more then one year. It is great that he is sweet and he loves you, but you are right, it does sound like he is controlling. However, when you ’demand’ that he come home right away because you are bored - that sounds controlling, also.
My advice to you is to get a job, any job, so that you aren’t so bored all the time. You need to have contact with the outside world. It isn’t healthy to have contact with only one person, its time to make meet some people and a great way to do that is through employment. If, for some reason, employment isn’t possible right now, consider volunteering. That is another great way to get to know people in your community. If you are an animal lover, volunteer at a local animal shelter; if you enjoy books, the local library is always looking for volunteers. Something for you to think about. 

My boyfriend and I have been dating for over 14 months.  We have talked about marriage and although he has not "officially" proposed to me we have talked extensively and both agree that we would like to marry each other.   I have been divorced for 7 years and have had plenty of time to "date around" and do a lot of healing.  My boyfriend, on the other hand, has only been divorced for 5 months.  He was seperated pending divorce (children involved) when we met.

I have asked him repeatedly if he is sure he is ready for marriage. He insists that he is and I want to believe him.  I also want to do everything possible to make sure our marriage lasts.  Is there a certain suggested time period to wait for getting married again?  How do you know when you're ready? I know this is a silly question as it  surely depends on the individual person but was just curious what your experience has been.

Thanks.

 This will be kind of long & complicated but please help me out ! I really need some advice.

My Fiance & I have been dating for a little over 2 years now, and back then I was a bit controlling of my boyfriend & eventually he cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend which was about 8 months into our relationship. he was seeing her behind my back for a month before i found out that he was cheating on me. once i confronted him about it, he told me he did like her, but he wanted to be with me and he broke it off with her and i took him back. even though i tried really hard to forget the past, thinking about what he did still hurt me inside and in some ways, you could say i wanted revenge.

my fiance left for the air force while we were dating for about 2 years and when he left, i found out he lied about some stuff that was a big deal to me at the time, but not so much to me anymore now. the reason i was so upset at the time was because of the fact that he lied to me and he has a history of lying to me about everything, constantly. So, i took that chance of him being gone for me to dump him and forget him. i thought " this is my chance to finally move on since he's not here anymore" i dumped him through a letter and then about a week after, i went out with this guy who had been interested in me for quite some time. while going out with this other guy, my fiance was still in the back of my mind constantly but that didnt mean i genuinely had feelings for this other guy as well. once my fiance came back, he we talked and ended up getting back together.

Later on, however, i found out he had been talking to this other girl behind my back for several months while we had gotten back together. He told me it was nothing but then when i looked at the phone bills, he had been talking to her for days straight and for LONG hours. sometimes even at 230 in the morning. He told me that he wanted to get back at me for what i had done.

when i had dated the other man, i thought that him and i were even and i felt a little better about everything. i felt that we could move on. but him doing that again makes me feel like i need revenge again for me to move on with this relationship happily. i know it sounds wrong but i just cant understand why he keeps doing that to me. its not even like i cheated on him. i don't know what to do. i'm scared that he will continue to do this in the future if he is unhappy with me or something. but he constantly assures me now that he loves only me and wants me to be his wife and that he cant imagine being with anyone else than me. should i believe him and give this marriage a chance? is it wrong if i "settle" the score again ? please help me with this confusion.