Skyblossom
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I’d be wary of him getting engaged just to keep from losing you if he is ambivalent. The couples counseling is a great idea. If you can discuss his fears, which are probably very real, and deal with them in a healthy way and then he wants to get married go ahead.
I’d give yourself a time frame, say maybe a year, at which point you know that if he can’t be excited about getting married that you move on because you can only put your life on hold for so long. You can literally waste a decade of your life that could have been spent with a partner who wanted you. A decade seems to not be that unusual before a woman gives up and leaves in frustration. My cousin did that with a live in girlfriend. Don’t let someone take a decade from you. You get to say that waiting doesn’t work for you and you can leave. It’s empowering. If you reach that point it also allows you to take back control of your life and gives you the opportunity to meet a guy who wants to marry you as much as you want to marry him.
To go with what SpaceySteph wrote, a man who wants to be engaged will get engaged. A man who doesn’t want to get engaged will come up with delaying excuses.
The man who loves being the center of attention will make sure he does an attention getting proposal. Is this engagement more about putting on a noteworthy show or is it about getting engaged?
Has your friend group or among your relatives is there a degree of expectation that there be a spectacular or noteworthy engagement? Is this peer pressure? Is this him? Have you told him you don’t want to wait until June?
Definitely don’t move until you have the engagement. Are you afraid that he won’t actually propose?
My husband and I have bought two houses and sold one. Around here the prime time to list a house for sale is the month of March. That’s because families like to move when school gets out. They finish the school year in their old school then move in the summer and start the new school year in the new school. If your house could be considered a family home then getting it on the market sooner rather than letter is in your best interest.
As someone else said the two of you aren’t working together as partners to make joint decisions that are in the best interests of the relationship. I think your boyfriend has visions of a great proposal put up on Facebook getting lots of attention. You need him to be focused not on the attention he gets for the proposal but on what is best for the relationship. His focus seems to be off and that is concerning for the long term health of your relationship. Think about whether his focus is more we oriented or me oriented.
I think a few sessions of couples counseling would benefit the two of you. Don’t get engaged until the two of you can discuss anything and everything including the pros and cons of waiting until canoe season to get engaged.
@Fyodor I thought maybe you just didn’t like your snow plain. Unfortunately it sounds a little too flavorful.
The OP did nothing wrong. At the same time there is nothing wrong in giving her advice on how to stay safer. This is about setting boundaries that help to keep her safe. Really no different than locking the door of your house to keep people out. Boundaries are your friend.
I tell my kids that reality is that you can’t always trust the people you should be able to trust. Does that mean you should always be paranoid. No, but it does mean keep your wits about you and question people who push you to do things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. If someone pushes you to drink beyond your normal limits you should say no and be wary of them. Why would they want you to drink too much. In general, there is no good reason for someone to push you past your own limits. A friend will accept your limits and not push.
I think that women especially don’t feel that they can say no to a nice gesture. So when a friend keeps buying them drinks they feel they must drink them. I’ve told both my son and my daughter that they can always so no. They can always leave if they are uncomfortable. They should always be able to get themselves home. Not just assume or depend on a friend to get you home safely but you should be able to get yourself home safely. I expect them to look out for their friends but also be able to depend on themselves.
The trouble with predatory people is that they take advantage of the easy target so our goal should be to make sure there are no easy targets. This is very similar to pickpockets. When we were in Europe last summer we were warned about how to protect ourselves from pickpockets. How they worked in large groups and how they bumped into targets to distract them. While riding the subway in Paris a group of seven young women jumped on and started asking us for directions, pointing up at the subway map. They crowded into us and one began bumping into me and then I knew what she was trying to do and I turned away and covered my purse and wallet with my arms and prevented them from stealing my things. They had gotten close. Both my purse and wallet were unzipped even though I was wearing my purse in front of me instead of letting in hang at my side. Nothing was missing because we had been warned about how these things happened. That warning saved me from being robbed. I didn’t lose my money or my passport. The people warning us weren’t blaming us if we did get pickpocketed but they were protecting us by warning us how it happened. This is the same. Warning someone about how a predator picks them out and preps them for an assault is helping them avoid an assault in the future. It does not say that they are at fault for what has happened or even if an assault happens in the future. What it does is give tools to help protect anyone who reads this from being a victim. It isn’t a guarantee that you won’t be a victim but it lowers the odds.
Not all predators are men but all predators search for easy targets. As foreigners on a subway we looked like easy targets and would have been if we hadn’t been warned about how groups of young women were pickpocketing. Drunk young women look like easy targets. The group who distract you by having you look up at a map and repeatedly asking questions while crowding you and bumping into you aren’t that different from the young man who buys you drink after drink until you are blacking out and then follows you to your room. Both are trying to make you unaware of your surroundings so that they can prey on you. Knowledge of predatory behavior protects you.
Not only was this not your fault I suspect the guy planned it out. That’s why he bought more drinks at the end but kept himself sober. That’s why he rode home with you in your car. He was acting like a predator. Were you the only one who was this drunk? Could he have slipped something into your drink.
This is one of those situations where you learn the hard way. You need to be in control of your own drinking. You need to know when to stop. Just because someone buys you a drink doesn’t mean you need to drink it. Even if they put it in front of you and say you should have it, you say no. Especially if someone is pushing you to drink you say no. Why would they want you to drink past your comfort level? Certainly that doesn’t show concern for your well being, your health or your safety.
If someone is especially pushy consider not going out with them again.
I agree with Kate. I don’t think a life partner can be someone who refuses to find a middle ground that works for both. The one thing that is guaranteed in life is that things change. Kids certainly change things and you have to both be able to try to find a workable solution. If one of you can’t do that I don’t see how your relationship could last long term.
@ktfran I think you can talk about things but you can’t always figure out what will work until you try various things. You can’t always make the agreement before moving in together because you don’t know what compromise will work.
@BubblegumGirl You’re young enough that you haven’t run into this before so you didn’t realize that his comments meant he was wanting a romantic relationship and wouldn’t be content with a regular friendship. You assumed that he wouldn’t try to ask you out because you told him multiple times that you weren’t interested.
For the future know that if someone brings up dating more than once they won’t be satisfied with friendship. They are hanging in there hoping for more and waiting for your current romantic relationship to end. The person who has expressed interest in dating you is someone you should never discuss your current relationship with or ask their advice about it or whether it should continue or end. There is no way they can give you unbiased advice. They will want the relationship to end so that they can start a romantic relationship with you.
When your relationship ended it was what he had been waiting for. It was great for him. It didn’t occur to him that the same situation would be a sad time for you and that you would need time before dating anyone and that’s totally skipping the fact that you already told him you didn’t want to date. The two of you were reacting in totally opposite ways to the end of your relationship.
This is a learning experience for you. Don’t ever discuss your relationship with someone who has expressed an interest in dating you. Don’t assume that a person who is interested in dating you will fade away if you say that you don’t see them that way. People with a crush tend to hang around and hang around and hang around. Their favorite thing is to be around you so they won’t usually seek distance. They will hang around hoping that you will end up liking them and that when you are available you will like them too.
My guess is that she felt that if she moved in and the sleeping arrangement didn’t work he would be willing to try something else and he assumed that if she moved in she would get used to sleeping with both him and the dog.
Ultimately he is willing to try something else but the something else is him sleeping in another room with the dog. I think she had in mind that the two of them would sleep together and the dog would move not the boyfriend with the dog. It is very hard to know ahead of time what choice you will make.
I think they aren’t compatible.
When you are a couple living together all you should need is for one partner to say this isn’t working for me. Then the couple should start seeking a solution. The idea that one person has always done something a certain way and so can’t possibly change is a great way to end a relationship.
Otherwise you end up with
“This isn’t working for me.”
“Too bad. I’ve always done it this way and you knew that.”
You can draw a line in the sand and say that you’ve always done it this way and you won’t change but that will leave your partner unhappy and so the relationship will be unhappy and so it will fail. This comes down to whether the way you do something is more important to you or whether the relationship is more important to you. It is a choice. Maybe it isn’t worth finding a compromise and you should move on. Maybe you want the partner enough that you find it no problem to compromise. Maybe the compromise doesn’t change who you are and is okay or maybe the compromise is soul sucking and you move on. You have to consider what you value and go with it. Neither choice is necessarily right or wrong.
