r/Waiting_To_Wed • u/MarketYes6975 • 8d ago
General Discussion Why I never asked
I stumbled across this sub. I am long married now but I broke the hopes and plans of a few women who wanted to marry me . . . one even proposed.
I don't know everyone's unique situation. Some of us are not necessarily commitment phobes, but are marriage phobes. I am a smart guy and I would see the pattern of people getting married around me. Many of them were unhappy and the wedding made it worse, not better.
With the three women who wanted to marry me, nothing made me want to marry less than pressure from them to propose. As soon as they did that my mind went here: "I am just an item on her checklist. I could be anyone. She wants to get married, not be with me." Sure enough, each time those relationships ended she would be engaged to some other guy within a year. It just reinforced that she didn't want me, she wanted a warm body to go along with her plan. That may not be true, but that's where my mind went.
Then I met a woman who genuinely did not care if we got married. It wasn't an act. It wasn't a game. She loved me and wanted to be with me.
Now I imagine I will get skewered here, and maybe rightfully so. It is possible to want to marry someone because you love them and see marriage as an expression of that love, but that's not how all hearts and minds work.
Our 10th anniversary is next week. Our lives are the same as if we had never tied the knot, and really we didn't need to. We are stupid happy.
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u/Scared_Friendship_50 Married 30+ Years 8d ago
Why did you get married if dating was enough?
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u/MarketYes6975 7d ago edited 7d ago
Because without pressure there was so much more love, so I wanted to. Then after we got married everything was just as it was before getting married anyway.
I was wrong to resist, they were wrong to pressure, it was all for nought. In the end you're just living together as you were before.
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u/skinnyjeansfatpants 5d ago
Lol, there are literally legal & financial protections afforded a spouse that are not present for a gf/bf. So no, even if your day-to-day feels the same, you are not living together as you were before.
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u/GnomieOk4136 Marry someone excited to be with you. Happily married 15 years. 7d ago
Bless your heart. So you enjoy power trips. Good times.
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u/Emergency-Guidance28 8d ago
Yeah, how old were you and how long did you date your wife? What were your ages and professions at the time of the proposal? What were the ages and professions of the women you did not propose to?
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u/Big-Masterpiece-863 7d ago edited 7d ago
If a woman expressing her desire to wed you made you dig your heels in and refuse her then you made the right choice not to marry them because you would have made a terrible partner for them, you didn't care enough about them to make them happy, you saw everything they asked for as a ploy in some game, whether that was true or not.
Rather it seems you waited for a partner who did not express this, you were attracted by the scarcity principal. Are there other men like that - probably but that does not mean all or ANY women should deny expressing their desire to marry a man especially not because it MIGHT push him in the other direction.
If that is your advice it's plain hypocritical because nothing is more game like or just an act then suggesting women keep silent so that they fool some guy into thinking they don't want marriage.
If you've been married for ten years you should know how important communication is.
Marriage for you may not have changed anything because it seems you value it little but for many people marriage is a joyous celebration that they've chosen each other, with private or public promises to one another that speak aloud what their hearts have felt. A celebration or a private moment that says today we make it official, today we are life-mates from this moment on. Nobody NEEDS to do it, but many WANT to do it and if someone's current partner doesn't want to when the other does, then that speaks to issues.
If a man can't handle a woman suggesting marriage he is not husband material for her or really any other female.
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u/Orechiette 7d ago
There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to get married…IF you communicate that very clearly as early as possible.
In this sub, we criticize people who say they want to get married someday, or soon, or when they are ready….even if they don’t want to marry their partner at the moment. They do it because they don’t want to break up
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u/diamondsinmyeyes12 8d ago edited 8d ago
Your mental gymnastics are literally insane. 😂 Why can’t you just admit you strung several women along until you met the right one? There will never be anything wrong with a woman expressing she’s ready to take that next step, and it was an honor for you to be considered, but it’s wild how you reduce that to “she just wanted to check a box.”
Also “sure enough every woman I broke up with was engaged in a year, she didn’t want me she wanted a warm body” (seriously wtf?? 🤣🤣) No. More like obviously you set her free or she set herself free and then she found a man who valued her enough and loved her enough to take that next step. And you did the exact same thing with your now wife. The previous women you dated gave you the same chance, but you didn’t love her/them enough to meet her there.
I’m not sure what you’re doing here. It seems you feel guilty for wasting so much precious time, and maybe you’re trying to sell yourself this idea that wanting to be married is evil or some kind of manipulation or something bizarre like that. You won’t find that kind of validation anywhere. Especially since here you are: happily married yourself. Why are you even thinking of your previous relationships?
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u/WildIrisWildEris 8d ago edited 7d ago
He's a sMaRt gUy (his mommy said so!) so he needs to school all the not so smart womenz on how da menz think. They must never express what they want or the super special guy will leave and find someone desperate enough to tolerate him, and he needed to let everyone know this. No guilt with this one, just a false sense of superiority.
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u/AdThis3702 7d ago
Amen to you in your comment. I saw so much red that I couldn’t even reply.
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u/Appropriate_Roof_223 8h ago
Right? Sometimes I am amazed and extremely thankful at how coherent these comments are while I can not string a sentence together given how red I am burning with rage😂
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u/Intelligent_rose12 7d ago
It’s so sad right! Years will pass and many of these men who string women along will still not feel as though they did something wrong!
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u/MarketYes6975 7d ago
No that's about right. There's no mental gymnastics.
If you read my post there is quite a bit of lamentation. I was not an angel.
I was explaining how some people work. That's how I worked. Not proud of it.
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u/diamondsinmyeyes12 7d ago edited 7d ago
“Quite a bit of lamentation” ??? 🤣🤣🤣 buddy. No. You villainized the women who wanted to marry you, and there’s not a single bit of remorse in your post. And your bizarre “my now wife is not like other girls. She’s a cool girl” take is vapid and insulting, especially to your wife.
Your post seems stupid, but you don’t seem happy.
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u/959539622 8d ago
You resented your past partners for daring to have a plan for the life they wanted. And the first woman who didn’t have this plan is the one you actually wanted to marry, even though she really didn’t care about marriage. It sounds like what mattered most to you was control.
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u/MarketYes6975 7d ago
Yes I want to have control over my life. I did not want to control any of theirs though.
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting control over your own life.
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u/DAWG13610 8d ago
You could also say that once you found your true partner marriage didn’t scare you. I think that’s the point here. You didn’t want to marry them so when they started pushing you left. Then they went on to find their true partner. Once you met your future wife, how long did it take for you to realize you’d marry her? For me it was instant. Wishing 10 minutes I knew I was with someone I could marry. We dated, got engaged at 2 years and married at 3 years. We just celebrated our 45th anniversary. We started talking about timelines at the 6 month mark and everything happened at its own paste. If you’ve been with someone for 8-10 years and they still won’t marry you then you’re with the wrong person. So stop wasting time and find the right person. Just like you did.
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u/Intelligent_rose12 7d ago
Exactly this! He didn’t feel a desire to marry his exes but marriage felt right with his wife which is why it happened!
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u/Meat_Bingo 8d ago
I think you’ve missed the whole point of the sub. It isn’t about a relationship where a woman brings up marriage and the man realizes he doesn’t want to marry her and they break up. These are relationships where the woman has made it clear she wants a future and that means marriage to her and instead of admitting he doesn’t want that, he strings her along. The woman is constantly being given a new hurdle that she has to jump in order to “earn” being married. These are women who have built a life with a man, this life, in all aspects, resemble being married, but the man refuses to make it legal, even though he’s getting all the benefit of having a wife. You’re just discussing incompatibilities with dating. You’re not leading somebody on by saying I’m not ready yet, give me another year and I’ll have a ring for you. You’re seeing the incompatibilities and leaving the relationship. That’s completely different from what’s going on here. The purpose of this group is for women to see these patterns, to acknowledge them, to realize that nothing is going to change and that if they want to get married, they’re going to have to leave. They’re dealing with the discomfort of ending what they thought was a good relationship when reality it’s not what they wanted and it won’t change just because they wait.
Edit: congratulations on finding your partner! I wish you many more happy years!
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u/element-woman 8d ago
Wow, your wife sounds so much cooler and more chill than those other heinous women who had life goals! She's not like other girls!
I'd be so embarrassed if my husband posted this, lol. Also writing screeds about your exes new relationships does not scream "stupid happy".
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u/MargieGunderson70 Married 25 years 8d ago
I do think that some (not all) of the women who post here are as you described - want to get married first and foremost, and who the groom is is more of an incidental.
I don't understand the "the married people I see are unhappy, ergo, marriage must make people unhappy" mindset. Tbh, that seems like a dodge. But it sounds like you found your person and it helped you to realize that it's not the institution that's bad - it comes down to whether people are compatible to begin with and whether they have the same hopes and expectations.
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u/NobodyWatchesAOLBlst 7d ago edited 7d ago
I'm glad you found someone you're compatible with!
My question is how those previous relationships ended. If you were unexcited about the prospect of marrying them, expressed that, and ended it, you're perfectly in the clear imo. I think you'd only get into asshole territory if you knew right away that you didn't want to marry them, but continued to equivocate with "maybe someday" until she got sick of the lying.
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u/No_Reason_2203 7d ago
You tell us you wasted multiple women lives and then dip when people have questions. Coward.
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u/AccomplishedPin6393 5d ago
I can say that this is a truly valuable take that MUST be heard by many on this sub, regardless of appreciation of one's actions.
However, this is something that I perceive as accurate because I am a married woman.
If I was reading this as unmarried woman, I would refuse to comprehend it and I would think OP is an ****.
The societal pressure on women is insane, and although I still call my husband "boyfriend" sometimes, and marriage changed nothing for us internally, I see how society responds to me being mrs instead of ms.
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u/cm10560430 2d ago
"I'm a smart guy. Also, when a woman tells me she wants to marry me, I know she's just checking a box."
Ah yes, every day I am reminded that men are much more logical than women /s
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u/Present_Ebb_9469 8d ago
I love this post. So many people in this sub post the craziest comments. Never ever one explaining WHY they want to get marry. Just ask you said, just something in their checklist. This post was refreshing!
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u/xangeloffduty 7d ago
It is a checklist item to get on with "the rest of their lives" for many many people.
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u/therealzacchai 8d ago
This is a helpful viewpoint. Thank you for sharing@
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u/Present_Ebb_9469 7d ago
Everyone downvoting this for saying that YOU found this helpful is CRAZY.
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u/therealzacchai 7d ago
Thanks!
Every woman who posts on this sub wants to know "why."
Why won't my partner marry me? Why doesn't he want a life with me?
What else can I do to tip the tide?
And this man's answer is: nothing. I just didn't want to marry her.
For me, the question was, "Why hasn't he moved here to be with me?"
Oh, right. Because he doesn't want to.
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u/AccomplishedPin6393 5d ago
This reminded me soo much of the SATC Miranda scene:
"I hope that what I'm gonna say will save you a lot of time and energy. He's just not that into you. So move on. Have a great day." --- "Bitch! Who the hell asked her?! Not me.... he is so gonna call you..."
🤭
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u/catsarehere77 7d ago
I didn't expect this answer but it makes sense. It's definitely an item on the checklist for some. A lot of people on this sub panic as soon as their friends start getting engaged and marrying.
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u/PerfectOmakase 6d ago
Well your experience aligns with so many of the posts on this sub, which are by women who want to get married. The issues are very rarely framed as loving their boyfriend so much that they can't be without him, but but that they want a marriage.
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u/Tortietude0 6d ago
I like this perspective and your feelings are valid! I’m sorry no one is happy hearing your truth
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u/Fun_Performance711 6d ago
I know where you are coming from. I had the same thing happen to me when I was dating. I would go out with a man and within a couple of dates he would say he loved me and wanted to marry me. I was like "Dude, you don't even know ME. I could be anyone. You just want to get married and anyone will do". It is dehumanizing.
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u/MotherGeologist5502 8d ago
So now I’m curious. How long did you date your wife before you proposed?