Someone in my team just got engaged!!! Man I'm jealous!

Mrs_Ryan

I worked on Christmas Day and one of my colleagues came in with a stonking great rock on her finger then another put on Facebook that his partner had asked him to marry him as well so I did get very jealous I always do when people get engaged I've just had to learn to hide it well. The only time it really upset me was when OH publicly said at his brother's wedding he would never marry me. (despite proposing to his ex three times) Remarkably I was stone cold sober (for once) and got out as soon as could to go and cry to my Mum down the phone round the back of the venue although OH still doesn't know how much that upset me - my Dad was very poorly at the time and I pretended it was to do with that.

Gloomendoom

littlerat wrote: »

True, from what I gather now 50 years ago it was:
Date, become a couple, get engaged (possibly have sex, move in together), get married, have sex, move in together, have kids, live (happily?) ever after.

50 years ago, it was very unusual to move in together before marriage...

"In the early 1960s in Britain, fewer than one in a hundred adults under 50 are estimated to have been cohabiting at any one time, compared with one in six currently." Source

Now the norm seems to be to usually do the kids after moving in or engagement, and the moving in nearly always seems to be pre-engagement.

It is only nearly always. We only moved in together three days after we were married. We were engaged for a year before that.

Torry_Quine

Mrs_Ryan wrote: »

I worked on Christmas Day and one of my colleagues came in with a stonking great rock on her finger then another put on Facebook that his partner had asked him to marry him as well so I did get very jealous I always do when people get engaged I've just had to learn to hide it well. The only time it really upset me was when OH publicly said at his brother's wedding he would never marry me. (despite proposing to his ex three times) Remarkably I was stone cold sober (for once) and got out as soon as could to go and cry to my Mum down the phone round the back of the venue although OH still doesn't know how much that upset me - my Dad was very poorly at the time and I pretended it was to do with that.

I thought you were married with your username.;)

Not getting at you personally but I can't understand why people who want to get married don't make that clear before moving in.

Gloomendoom wrote: »

50 years ago, it was very unusual to move in together before marriage...

"In the early 1960s in Britain, fewer than one in a hundred adults under 50 are estimated to have been cohabiting at any one time, compared with one in six currently." Source



It is only nearly always. We only moved in together three days after we were married. We were engaged for a year before that.

I married in the 80's and moved in together afterwards like you.

ska_lover

Mrs_Ryan wrote: »

I worked on Christmas Day and one of my colleagues came in with a stonking great rock on her finger then another put on Facebook that his partner had asked him to marry him as well so I did get very jealous I always do when people get engaged I've just had to learn to hide it well. The only time it really upset me was when OH publicly said at his brother's wedding he would never marry me. (despite proposing to his ex three times) Remarkably I was stone cold sober (for once) and got out as soon as could to go and cry to my Mum down the phone round the back of the venue although OH still doesn't know how much that upset me - my Dad was very poorly at the time and I pretended it was to do with that.

Thats a real shame hunny, and it does seem that you and your partner are in very different places as far as where you both see your relationship going.

What did your mother say when you told her?

Very insensitive of your OH to make such a personal declaration in public but I dare say you are not doing either of you any favours by NOT telling him how you feel. This is too important an issue to pretend you were upset over a different matter IMO

Honestly, If I were in your position, I would be re-thinking my relationship with my OH, if we were so poles apart in where we saw our future going. And yes, it would rub salt in the wound that he had asked his ex to marry him on multiple occasions - I would be asking myself, SHE was good enough, but I am not? Honestly, that would grate on me BIG time..

Will you really be happy and fulfilled in this situation?

If the answer is no...then your feelings could only get worse as time goes on, give it five years, you could start feeling bitter and resentful..have a think about what im saying, don't waste some of the best years of your life, on someone who does not want the same as you.

Person_one

thorsoak wrote: »

You know, it's not often that I don't think that the young women of today have it better than we had it - but now - oh boy - I think we had it right!

Over 50 years ago we took things more slowly - remember the pill didn't come to the general market for women until mid-late 60s (as a married woman I was refused it until 1968 because I "had not already got a child") - and family planning clinics wanted to know a wedding date before issuing the wonderful "dutch caps". Therefore, we'd be very, very sure of our sexual partners - were they reliable enough to use condoms.

So we would do a lot of talking (and snogging) - we'd talk - about what we wanted in a relationship - careers - families - children - savings - holidays - everything. We'd know, before we hopped into bed, whether our lover liked his tea with or without sugar!

We would therefore know, before we committed ourselves to sharing a flat and bills with someone, whether or not we were in a long term relationship or not ...so we'd "get that ice or else no dice" - to quote Marilyn Monroe from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!

Um, are you sure it always worked like that? Because my grandma married my granddad in 1959 within a few months of meeting him and had their first child much less than nine months after the wedding. :rotfl:

ska_lover

Person_one wrote: »

Um, are you sure it always worked like that? Because my grandma married my granddad in

littlerat

Gloomendoom wrote: »

50 years ago, it was very unusual to move in together before marriage...

"In the early 1960s in Britain, fewer than one in a hundred adults under 50 are estimated to have been cohabiting at any one time, compared with one in six currently." Source



It is only nearly always. We only moved in together three days after we were married. We were engaged for a year before that.

I was thinking of more my parents generation I think. with moving in during engagements, yes more 20-30 years ago than 50.

I know. That's why I put the word nearly in front of the word always.


Actually based on a few school friends I fear the current trand is date somebody for between a couple of weeks and a year, "accidentally" get knocked up, separate and get back together repeatedly, have a new bf/bf before your kid can stand, a few have even started on round 2 of that.

I'm not against sex outside of marriage, hell i think it's a great idea But having children before you're 21 (or 18..) with somebody you barely know seems to not be a trend that's working out well for most of them. And I find myself really skeptical about the number of accidents that happen to cause it.

But, that's a whole other debate.


Of course some did it that way person_one. When we traced our family history it turns out my ancestors had a habit of having illegitimate children, a lot of the leads ran cold due to it being hard to say who the father was as the marriages happened years later, surnames didn't match up and all sorts. Both sides. Randy lot :rotfl:

securityguy

Gloomendoom wrote: »

"In the early 1960s in Britain, fewer than one in a hundred adults under 50 are estimated to have been cohabiting at any one time, compared with one in six currently."

(my emphasis)

I don't think that statistic means quite what you think it does. In the same report, turn to Table 1 on page 8. "In the 1960s, living with a prospective marital partner before marriage was relatively rare, with just three per cent of those marrying at ages below 30 doing so." (my emphasis) The data is also, it's worth pointing out, both incomplete (no records for those first marrying aged over 30 until 1970) and as dirty as hell (look at those standard errors: I'm especially enjoying the figures for young men 2004--2007)

The 1% and the 3% aren't incompatible. To take an extreme example, suppose you have a hypothetical situation where everyone lives together unmarried for one year prior to marrying, and then look at the population of everyone who married aged 20--30. At any one time, only 10% of that population are cohabiting prior to marriage. But 100% of that population will have lived together prior to marriage. The report is playing slightlyu fast and loose with the difference between "at any one time" and "at all".

Conversely, the 1 in 6 figure for those cohabiting today understates the vast number of people who cohabit prior to marriage: about 80%, with this time fairly tight error bars. That's the real social change: from 3% to 80% of people who marry will have cohabited prior to marriage. 1% to 16% doesn't quite convey the magnitude of the shift.

One in thirty-ish is a lot more people than one in a hundred. Still not many, but three times more. It would be really interesting to know the demographics of those that did --- in terms of income, education and parental occupation --- to see where the change came from).

Fantastic source, though. Fascinating. Thanks for the link.

securityguy

littlerat wrote: »

Actually based on a few school friends I fear the current trand is date somebody for between a couple of weeks and a year, "accidentally" get knocked up, separate and get back together repeatedly, have a new bf/bf before your kid can stand, a few have even started on round 2 of that.

Not, I suspect, amongst the products of our finer universities :-)

I suspect that one of the social shifts of the past fifty years is one of fragmentation. In 1960, the patterns of partnership and childbearing would be different between working class and upper class, but not very different. Women married young, typically men a few years older than them (hence the original 60/65 thing in pensions, so married couples could claim their pensions at about the same time) and rapidly had children, at least two, often three or more. He worked in a stable job, and they either bought a house or lived in secure, stable council housing.

The average number of children per woman approached 3 in 1964 (the biggest ever year for births, hence why there's so many people turning fifty next year). It then dropped like a stone (access to education, to contraception, very different social attitudes to childlessness and not marrying) to hit about 1.6 within 10 years.

Today my guess (and either there's a PhD been done by a social historian, or I'm chucking it out free if anyone wants a crack at it) would be that the patterns would be violently, violently different by class. Affluent and/or educated women are marrying and having children later, and having fewer children. Total fertility rate is less than 2, population wide, but I suspect (again, a chapter in your PhD) that amongst affluent and/or educated women it's not much over 1: lots of such women with no children, lots with 1 child, some with 2, not many with 3 or more.

Meanwhile, across the population as a whole, look at http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=uk&v=31 and you can see, very clearly, why next year's got a major primary school places problem.

That's going to take us to a very, very divided society, with affluent and/or educated families consisting of one or at most two children, had later in life, with a lot of resources available for their upbringing and education, in relatively more stable relationships. These children will live in the same area, attend the same schools and be with the same parents for most of their childhood. Rates of divorce amongst the middle-classes are low: I can't put my hand, at 2am, to UK figures, but in the US 11% of college-educated couples divorce within 10 years, as against 37% of the population as a whole, and that figure for divorces drops the more tightly you define "college".

Meanwhile less affluent and/or educated families have more children, younger, in less stable relationships and housing. Jobs are less secure and their chances of either home ownership or secure rented housing are lower, and divorce/separation rates are higher. Children are much more likely to be moved from school to school, while being raised in larger families with less time and money.

Social mobility? Think it's bad now?

jackieblack

Torry_Quine wrote: »

We all have things which for some reason we feel unable to compromise on and it's important to be clear about that before making the commitment of marriage.

Exactly!
But how do you do that if you don't discuss these things BEFORE getting engaged?
Unless you don't consider 'getting engaged' to be making a commitment to marry?

:think: Maybe we're just disagreeing about at what point you're committed to getting married?
For us, we had the discussions, then decided/committed to marry and 'got engaged'.
For you, it sounds like you got engaged, then had the discussions, then committed to marry?

As I said, all relationships are different, each to their own etc. If it worked for you that way, great! I'm happy for you.