I recently wrote a post on reasons why he hasn’t proposed but none of those explained what you can do about it.
That’s what today is for.
drum roll please…
Contents
…Don’t act married if you’re not married.
This means that living together should be the last “milestone” that you’re willing to hit with your man before he has put a ring on it.
So having sex is fine, meeting the parents is fine, living together is fine, merging bank accounts, NOT FINE.
I currently own a one-bedroom apartment, and both my boyfriend and I live in it togehter. He pays me rent but at the end of the day, I still own the property if things go sour.
One day he asked me if I would be “cool” with him buying into the property with me. Matching my down payment so that we would technically both own it.
In my head I thought: wow, he’s really serious about us *swoon*.
But the answer to his question was a straight up HELL NO.
Ok, I wasn’t that mean but I did say ‘that sounds like a great idea honeykins, but we should probably be married first. That’s a pretty big commitment”.
USING LEVERAGE
I have to use the tiny bit of leverage that I still have or he’ll never propose.
I mentioned that we live in a one bedroom apartment and I will not even move with him to a bigger place without getting married first.
If he wants to move to a larger place (maybe so we can start a family?) he needs to put a ring on it.
No ring? Then fine, we can just live in this one bedroom apartment for the rest of our lives until we drive each other crazy.
THE WORD “Commitment”
I like to use the word “commitment” whenever he brings up big life changing decisions. For example, I know he wants to move away from the city and buy a house. Whenever he mentions this I always say “yeah i’m into that but it’s a pretty big commitment”.
This meaning that it’s a big commitment for me to do that for you without a ring.
Why should I uproot my entire life without any commitment from your side? This is supposed to be a two-way street.
This goes for any kind of major commitment: sharing bank accounts, owning houses, owning cars, owning pets together, having kids etc.
Some of those things are arguably bigger commitments than actually getting married.
Men Who Are Husband Material Turn Into Husbands
If your guy has the same long-term life plans as you do and not getting married is getting in the way of those plans – he will propose.
Men who want to be husbands become husbands…if the alternative means that they don’t get the white picket fence, the big house and the golden retriever.
If you give him all those things before he’s your husband and then he says “we’re pretty much married already so what’s the difference?”
He’s right.
There is no difference.
That’s why you can’t give too much without being married beforehand.
But, What If I Already Gave Too Much?
It’s going to be tough out there girl.
If you’re looking over at your man petting the golden retriever and thinking “omg I fucked up” you’re probably right, but all hope is not lost.
First start with the talk mentioning that you’d still like to get married and asking him how he feels about that.
Find out what’s holding him back. Is it the expensive wedding? Maybe there’s a compromise there. Is it that he doesn’t like wearing a tuxedo? Maybe there’s a compromise there.
Hopefully you can get on the same page for what the wedding and honeymoon will look like.
There is still leverage
Lives change. Change is inevitable and there is always a bit of leverage that you can still use.
Say that you’d like to be married first before you have another child. Or that you want to get married before you move into the retirement home. It’s never too late to get what you want!
The key is that the life change has to be something that he wants. If you’re the one pushing for the second kid and he’s on the fence, this isn’t going to work.
If you guys are a happy healthy couple, he’s going to want to move forward in life with you by his side.
This isn’t manipulative behaviour, I’m SO AGAINST THAT.
But if you’ve given him years of happiness and put in years of effort to build a life with him, I think you deserve this – it’s the least he can do.