Waiting for a proposal - how did you stay sane?!

heartbreak_star

I've given up. I'd rather have my beloved without a wedding ring on than anyone else with...so I'm going to stop hoping!

(Incidentally, there was a radio show on yesterday where they were asking if women should buy or contribute to their engagement rings - we are both in agreement they yes, they should!)

I will keep checking back on here to see how you are all doing.

Good luck everyone!

HBS x

Alarae

Well... In just over a month since I've posted things have had a dramatic downturn in the excitement to call my partner my 'fianc!'.

We haven't broken up or anything, still live together, however I'm beginning to have doubts whether I will now say yes if he asks. He feels as if he has become distant to me, and it feels as if we are roommates, not partners who love one another. This feeling culminated in an outburst of tears in London, and just outright ruining my time off work I took to spend with him, as a couple, instead of returning back to my hometown to spend a week with my family.

He was a bit alarmed to say the least, since to him nothing was wrong. And THAT made me feel worse- like he has become complacent in our relationship. I don't need presents, or fancy dinners, but just simply us watching a show together on the sofa, cuddled up like we used to. Now he sits far away on his phone all the time, not really interacting much at all.

I've put so much effort in the last couple of weeks to try and get rid of this feeling, and make us feel more 'coupley' again, but it's just not working. I do love him, I really do, but when I broke down and said that it felt like he wasn't putting the effort in anymore he said he would try harder. Unfortunately, he hasn't. He's not changed at all.

I'm just not sure I want to stay in such a distant relationship. I have invested so much of my life into him (I know it is only 3 1/2 years, but this has been throughout my whole University experience) and as such other aspects of my life have suffered. I have moved away from my friends and my hometown, and unfortunately due to my shift-based part time job my work friends are often not available due to different shifts.

It just feels like I have no one at the moment, and it's genuinely breaking me inside. If this is what my future will continue on like with my partner, I'm not sure I want to be a part of it. It's a trivial thing but I've taken off the necklace containing his nan's engagement ring that he gave me three years ago, which I've never taken off.. until now. I felt so special and loved when he gave it to me, and I can't bear to wear it now as I feel so unloved and broken.

I hope someone else gets a better ending then I do.

(Sorry about the depressive post... I think I just needed to vent and tell someone.)

GoldenShadow

Yesterday my OH told me he gets confused over what to prioritise; house deposit fund or engagement ring

He never really brings marriage up, says I talk about it enough that he doesn't feel the need :rotfl: But it was nice that he has thought about it of his own accord and brought it up as a topic of conversation.

He also said he doesn't feel entirely confident in choosing something himself. Basically he doesn't want to propose with nothing or a token ring, nor does he want us to just walk into a jewellers and have me pick something. So essentially I need to simplify the 'what kind of things GoldenShadow likes', and then leave the ball back in his court.

Works for me, vague hint of what may be to come to avoid a complete surprise. HATE surprises :eek:

heartbreak_star

Was away at the weekend, and a mutual friend referred to OH as my husband.

He looked really confused when I corrected him! *chuckle* He was absolutely convinced we had gotten married

I then got sad and a tad tearful. I know, I'm silly.

HBS x

Georgiegirl256

Awww HBS, I know how crushing that feeling can be.

heartbreak_star

Bah to people getting engaged, another friend has done it! Bah I say

HBS x

lika_86

Hi ladies, I was wondering if I might join you? I never thought I'd be posting here as, to be honest, I thought that the whole thread was a bit nuts (sorry but it's true, please don't hurt me!). However, after six years I now myself joining you in feeling like I'm waiting.

Bit of background

We got together just under six years ago, we always knew that I would be moving to London for work (I had the job offer from the start) and three years into our relationship I did. We spent almost a year doing long distance and making it work but he then quit his job and found a job down here. He moved in with me and we have been living together for two years now.

He's older than me and has been married before (proposing after about 18 months and knowing it was wrong pretty soon after, they were together for years but apparently it wasn't good and he doesn't really talk about it so I don't know much). However, out of curiosity I have asked him before whether he'd get married again and he said yes. So he hasn't been put off for life or anything.

I was never really into marriage and I don't want kids. I am fiercely independent by nature and he's the first man I've wanted to compromise for by not getting my own way in life all the time (oh so easy when you're single).

In the first few years of our relationship I suppose long term plans weren't something we thought about as it was early and I was moving, but now after two years living together and six years together, I'm left wondering about what now. Whenever I ask him about the future he says he sees us being very happy but nothing more concrete.

At our work Christmas party we were discussing relationships and one of my colleagues (his age and married) on finding our we'd been together over five years told me, not entirely seriously, that I should leave him and that he wouldn't marry me. I drunkenly later got home and told my boyfriend that he was getting some stick for not making an honest woman of me (partly to see his reaction) and he said that that wasn't fair and that I'd said at the start of our relationship that I never wanted to get married, which does sound like something that 22 year old me would say. I told him that I was entitled to change my mind and stuff like that without overtly being the mental girlfriend. When friends at a recent wedding said the same thing, he repeated that same thing and I again told him that that was then.

So we're on holiday now and for various reasons I thought that if it was going to happen it would happen here. It's our last night tonight and it won't, I just know it and I am disappointed and I feel like I shouldn't be.

I feel like I've found someone I want to spend my life with and let him in to the extent that I feel that I want to say yes and make it formal and everything but that he just doesn't want to be with me enough to ask me. It's not the bad experience before that's stopping him I'm sure. So in short, we haven't had 'the talk' but to be honest, I don't want to. He's the kind of person who would do anything to please me and this is something that I want him to do only because he can't bear the idea of not having me as his wife.

Ugh, sorry, this is really long and a bit mental but I had to put it somewhere so I can just fully enjoy my last night on holiday. I hoped you ladies might understand.

heartbreak_star

Lika, I could have written that post! It's a hard talk to have though

Hopefully he will understand that people change their minds!

HBS x

tillyenna

Ahhhh Sophie (and I know I shouldn't be on this board you guys) DO NOT GIVE UP HOPE.


Just be blunt with him. My OH was supposed to propose in May last year (long story, we went from being friends to deciding we'd get married, and he decided that May would be the appropriate month) and I was FUMING by the time May finished... literally FUMING with him, we'd talked about marriage, he'd had plenty of opportunity - but no proposal. I sulked for a while because I'm like that, and eventually I sat down with him and we had a 'wedding' talk, (not an engagement talk) about when we'd have the wedding, and he confessed he was really worried because of his money issues, and he couldn't even afford an engagement ring for me and had no idea how he could afford the wedding...


At which point I told him that the engagement ring I wanted was under £200, and that I'd planned a saving budget and could afford to pay for our wedding by myself within a year. This seemed to calm him a lot, and he actually set a date with me (three months today, eeek, panic!)


But still no ring appeared... we had meetings with our minister at church to discuss the day... no ring... no proposal. Until the day when I snapped a picture of the ring I wanted in the window of the jewellers and sent it with a message going "This is the ring, it's half price at the moment"... EVEN THEN, he was all "I don't know when I'll have time to get it" so I decided that since we were at a friends wedding that weekend, and had time to spare in the day and it was a chain store jewellers, so I said "right, at this time, we go and buy the ring"... and he did


It had to be ordered, but bless him, he did propose on the day it arrived (took me out to dinner and everything)


So seriously... they're just rubbish about it, and he might have fears that he hasn't been able to bring up with you


Don't lose faith ladies! It will all be OK :-D

tillyenna

Also, I think I win prizes for the least romantic proposal ever - but since I hate surprises, and we're already like an old married couple, it totally suits us!