What does the girl who’s been happily dating her boyfriend for several months really want for Christmas this year?
An engagement ring.
Christmas music and movies have helped stoke seasonal-hopes for happy endings. Think of the lovers who “face unafraid, the plans that [they] made, while walking in a Winter Wonderland.” Or Miracle on 34th Street, in which Santa helps shepherd a couple to marriage plans over the holidays.
That isn’t to suggest that such aspirations for a Christmas or Hanukkah or New Year’s engagement are culturally contrived. To the contrary, NOTHING could be more natural than for a woman in love with hopes for marriage and possibly children to wish to see her dreams reciprocated during a season centering around family, tradition, and reflections on the year behind and that ahead.
I’m not talking about a movie timeline, like the one referenced above, where Maureen O’Hara meets her handsome neighbor on Thanksgiving and he pops the question on Christmas Day. I’m talking about the couple that’s been happily dating for at least nine months, that is in an exclusive relationship, in which the man has unambiguously declared his love, and at least hinted at his intentions for the future.
The weeks and months leading up to engagement may sound like an ideal, shining time for a woman – and in many ways it is: you’ve moved beyond the awkwardness of early dating to greater intimacy, security and trust. But as I can attest from my coaching practice, it can also be an incredibly nerve-wracking time as well! You’re doing your darnedest to practice patience, keep things light and focus on the present, and yet all these feelings of doubt, ambivalence and even resentment keep bubbling up – particularly if you’ve been dating for over a year, or even years, plural!
Why? Well, because something is awry in the balance of your relationship. Your boyfriend – whom you dearly love – appears to be getting most, if not all, of his needs met. He’s got a lover, a committed girlfriend, and possibly even a faux-wife if you’ve fallen into the error of acting like you were married – e.g. cooking for him, spending too much time with him, letting him see you whenever he wants, keeping clothes at his place, etc. In fact, he might be happy with this arrangement for years. I mean, why not?
But what about you? Are you getting all of your needs yet? My hunch is “no,” otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog. Maybe you’d like to have children one day – and if he’s not going to end up being the father, you might want to make other plans. Maybe you’re thinking of a career switch or geographic move, and don’t want to keep putting your life on hold while he makes up his mind. Or maybe you’re just tired of seeing all your friends getting engaged and married around you – and wondering why your boyfriend seems assiduously dedicated to not noticing the trend.
So what can you do? Here are few pointers:
1) Check your timing. When it comes to fumbling your part of the engagement process, the mistakes women make fall into one of two categories. They either bring up marriage too early (in the first few months of dating) – scaring men away -- or let the issue slide for years as their frustration and despair grows. In a recent seminar in London, The Rules authors Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider told their audience that it’s okay to ask where things are going about seven months into the relationship. In the “ideal” Rules timeline, he proposes after nine months. Certainly by a year you should know whether he plans to marry you or not.
2) Inventory the relationship. Who initiated the relationship? If you met on-line, did you respond to his ad – or vice versa? Who’s done most of the contacting? Has he said he loved you, and asked for exclusivity? Obviously not all relationships are headed toward marriage – however long they may have lasted. But if he was the pursuer, and you’ve done him the honor of letting him retain that role throughout the courtship, then your odds of engagement are vastly better than if you picked him up, called him, asked him out, etc.
3) Stop making excuses for him – as in “he’s still scarred by his first marriage,” or “he’s under too much pressure at work,” or he can’t commit because of childhood trauma, and other such mind games. Also, don’t let him snooker you into pretending that marriage isn’t important or doesn’t matter IF it IS important to YOU and DOES matter to YOU. In He’s Just Not That Into You, Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo argue that “Love cures commitment-phobia”:
“Every man you have ever dated who has said he doesn’t want to get married or doesn’t believe in marriage or has ‘issues’ with marriage, will, rest assured, someday be married. It will just never be with you. Because he’s not really saying he doesn’t want to get married. He’s saying he doesn’t want to get married to you.”
Harsh – but liberating truth – which, the sooner you accept, the sooner you’ll be able to move out from under the deadweight of a potentially going-nowhere relationship so that your real future husband can find you!
4) Scale back on togetherness. Of course you want to be with him day in and day out – that’s why you want to get married! But if you’re with him all or even most of the time, you’ve robbed him of any incentive to move things forward. Ellen and Sherrie say it best in The Rules II:
“In general, the way to get a man to ask you to marry him in a reasonable amount of time is not to live with him before you’re engaged or married and to continue to see him only three times a week, even though by this time you want to be inseparable. If that doesn’t work, you may have to shake things up a little bit – go away for a weekend with a girlfriend, cancel a Saturday night date, get very busy at work, mention that you are renewing your apartment lease, and be mysterious about your activities. All of the above should make him anxious to propose.”
5) Set some internal deadlines. How long do you want to date your boyfriend without being engaged? While I mention that he should know where this is going after a year, maybe you’re not marriage-minded yet – or are still reeling from a divorce. Once you HAVE decided that you want to marry him, set in mind a month when you’d like to aim for resolution. At that point it’s perfectly okay for you to ask him his intentions. He doesn’t need to respond with a proposal – but if you don’t get a clear sense that he’s either planning something or seriously thinking in that direction, you need to be prepared to walk.
Even if you’re in the somewhat early stages of dating – nowhere near where you should be talking about marriage – the holidays DO provide an ideal time to look for signs of whether the man you’re seeing is serious about you. Does he give you a romantic – or practical gift? The man who gives you inexpensive lingerie from T.J. Maxx is more likely to end up proposing than the one who gives you an expensive cashmere scarf from Loro Piana. Does make plans in advance for New Year’s Eve? Does he include you in family gatherings? Does he talk about what you’ll be doing “next year”? Does he want to be with you, even when you’ve come down with the seasonal flu? If he’s making you feel warm and cozy this winter – then there could yet be time to plan a June wedding. But if you’re feeling a bit drafty, then maybe multi-dating should be on your list of New Year’s Resolutions.
Still wondering about whether current boyfriend will end up as future husband? Then try a free ten minute consultation by visiting www.maliburulesgirl.com.
Follow Jag Carrao on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maliburulesgirl
The odds are 50% that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are 70% that your divorce will be filed by your wife. The odds are 80% that your wife will get custody of the children-plus child support, alimony, and/or a hefty chunk of the property, no fault divorce laws only look at the assets.
If your wages are not withheld and you fail to pay your child support, the State will garnish your pay, slap liens on your property, intercept your tax refunds, report you to credit agencies, discontinue your driver's license, suspend your professional and business permits, hold you in contempt of court, put your face on a wanted poster, throw you in jail, and deny you food stamps. But if your ex doesn't spend that very same support on the children, the State will do. . . nothing.
There is also imputed income. This means that your child support will be based not on what your children need, not on what you earn, but on what the court decides you could earn.
Regarding the children, the ex may simply move with the children to a distant community with her new husband, with the law's acquiescence.
I think if the laws were fair and balance, more men would be willing to get married. But too many men know the reality of the situation and it just isn't worth the risk.
Today, we have a class of top professional women who use prostitutes and have never washed a dish or ironed a shirt in their lives. They leave all of their "surplus labor" to the Chinese. They've also handed over the most fundamental aspects of international security, medical security, and education to the Chinese; perhaps unwittingly, because it allowed them an ever increasing sense of personal luxury.
We now live in a society where everything, including the sanctity of marriage, is *disposable*, under the hand of autocrats who feel they are above Church, State and God; expressing flagrant anti-competition methods, and attempting to murder fellow citizens for having alternate opinions. _How_ is this better than the Feudal System?!
Guys, if the girl starts playing 'mind games' with you, that's your cue to exit the relationship. However, if she is straightforward with you and asks you directly where the relationship is heading, you owe her an honest answer.
The reasons why men are cautious about getting married vary but one of the biggest reasons is the divorce legislation in the US. If you marry someone you don't really know (and I'm not sure it is possible to really get to know someone in only nine months seeing her all of three times a week if she follows the instructions), you just might end up being an ATM for your ex-wife. A man needs to be especially careful if he has a successful career and earns a lot of money. I'm not saying that women get married with a divorce in mind but they certainly have a (financially) comfortable way out, especially if the couple has kids and provided that the husband earns a lot of money.
For this reason, I don't think any man should take marriage lightly as they are almost certainly going to be left holding the short end of the stick should the marriage fail, and there is very little he can do about it. It is a sad state of affairs but that is just the way it is.
My wife and I dated for a year before we moved in together and lived together for another three years before we got married. During that time we went through some rough patches in our relationship that honestly could have gone either way. We made it though because we both knew that if it was really that bad we could just call it off and walk away. If we had felt trapped in a marriage at that point and especially if we had children it most certainly would have destroyed our relationship and ruined a young child's life. When we did get married it was because we knew we loved each other, were committed to each other and that our relationship was strong enough to make it through whatever may come. When it was time WE made the decision to get married TOGETHER (you know, the way real committed couples do things) and three weeks later we were married. Now with another four years behind us and a beautiful daughter together we haven't looked back.
You don't want to be on the hook for expensive and extravagant gifts every Christmas because you started your marriage out with a big ring on that initial occasion. It would be better to pop the question out of the blue, under a pine tree, on Arbor Day, say, then to let your girl think that shiny objects on Christmas are the norm. Just saying, word to the wise.
If your sole purpose in life is to get married, um go for it. If you're unfulfilled, obviously, move on with your life. Incompatible goals? By all means, break up. But why center such an important decision on an arbitrary deadline, or worse, peer pressure from friends? Why trick men into being impulsive? I don't get it.
These days finding out if your partner wants to marry you is a serious issue. In yesteryear there was less anxiety because men were expected to want to get married. These days the benefits of getting married for a lot of guys is can be negligible. Maybe they live with their partners already, or they have a good thing going with a girl who they see a few times a week and is always there for them. There is nothing wrong with being honest with a partner about what your needs are. If you find they don't match up, making a decision to either move on or wait and see isn't manipulation.
i mean i know well the dangers of marriage. but the benefits again? seems like these days the spectre of matrimony and all the expectations, the social worship of young/single life, the stigma of getting old, the social marginalization that comes with the whole deal, i am starting to agree more and more with these hip new couples that forswear marriage and instead go for true love and have families and lives and more. And neither sees it as him getting the milk without buying the cow because they don't think of each other as livestock..well..they probably have their troubles too. We're all human. This marriage thing is being ruined by all the focused attention and pressure and responsibility attached to it and placed on the idea itself. Like civilization depends on it, and like it will hold us all together and maintain the race. Look around. It's wigging us out.
So until we fix the institution of marriage, which seems to ruin more lives than anything, even for the ones who stay together with miserable dysfunctional families, maybe thinking up new mindgames to help get you legally attached to the dude you met 6 months ago..i dunno...if it helps.
i had a co-worker that after seriously dating for 5 yrs they thought they should "sh#t of get off the pot"... they decided to "sh#t" and got married. i was a little horrified to hear her tell that story over and over to co-workers and clients. most people found it funny, though.
they never struck me as in love and i don't think she was aching to get married. it was just sort of expected by their families.
so i understand this article. everyone is different. some people are very personal and emotional about marriage... and some others see it closer to obligation or a business contract.
I was curious about this article because I became engaged at Christmas time three years ago (after two years of dating and three years of living together - something I highly recommend to those who are leaning that way!). Personally, I wasn't ready to be engaged earlier because I was only 21 when I met my husband. When I was ready, I discussed how I felt with him and he shared his feelings and dreams for the future with me. I did not have to use any manipulative tactics to convince him to become engaged because we were both equally committed to the idea of starting a family together.
It is incomprehensible to me that someone would advise a woman to manipulate a man into asking her to marry him after a socially accepted period of time. What kind of foundation is there to a marriage if both partners aren't tremendously committed to the concenpt?
i wish i had read THAT 5 years ago... i'm not in that relationship now... but for a few years, i kept striving to be a better partner when really, he was just afraid to commit.
If your sole brainless purpose in life is to get married, um go for it. If you're unfulfilled, yes, move on with your life. Incompatible goals? Duh. But why center such an important decision on an arbitrary deadline, or worse peer pressure from friends? This article reads like a mixture of common sense, bad assumptions, and the ramblings of a paranoid aging egotist.
The sooner this fairytale ceremony dies the better.
After watching my friends desperately hold onto relationships that will never change, I think all women need to create guidelines and stick to them so they can avoid being burned and unhappy in the end.