I don't get how people do it

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Bri125 said:
I am thankful to have had the opportunity to speak to others on this topic, it helps immensely to be able to let all of the thoughts out. It is so so painful to think that we may break up over this. He kind of sounds like a jerk the way I described him in this post, but he’s really not. I don’t think I’d know how to move on if he walked away over this 😦 but I know for my daughter’s sake I must do what is right and pray and hope for the best. Thanks to all who responded…it was all sound advice!
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Just talk to him about it. Tell him you are ready to get married. If he isn’t, it is better that you know it now rather than later.

Don’t go in loaded for bear. Just open the conversation and let him give you his thoughts. Maybe he doesn’t think he can afford a wedding or “the ring” or whatever. You know sometimes people have built things up in their heads a certain way.

You need to clear the air and have a frank discussion. If you can’t have a frank discussion-- that’s a problem.
 
1ke said:
Just talk to him about it. Tell him you are ready to get married. If he isn’t, it is better that you know it now rather than later.

Don’t go in loaded for bear. Just open the conversation and let him give you his thoughts. Maybe he doesn’t think he can afford a wedding or “the ring” or whatever. You know sometimes people have built things up in their heads a certain way.

You need to clear the air and have a frank discussion. If you can’t have a frank discussion-- that’s a problem.
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We have already decided to have a simple “picnic” wedding…big expensive weddings are not my thing. Financially we cannot afford big expensive anythings. I have been loud and clear that he could give me a cheap walmart engagement ring for all I care…its the commitment that matters to me, not the expensive ring! He cannot use expense as an argument. 👍👍
 
Dacinom said:
I am so very sorry. When a woman finds a man that is about to commit his entire life to her, these are not the words she hopes to hear.

When my husband and I were about to be married, to be honest with you we couldn’t wait. Once we KNEW, once we knew we had found each other and we were right for each other we couldn’t wait to begin our life together! There was nothing to wait for, why would you stall happiness, why would you postpone fun and adventure, why would you put off having love and contentment in your life? Well, no sane person would ever do that, no one ever would so if someone does that you would want to ask yourself how committed they are in the first place.

Your boyfriend knows you don’t want an expensive wedding, he seems to know your daughter pretty well and he has known you for over two years, at this point he seems clear that he is negative about marriage. What will turn his attitude around? What could you possibly do? My suggestion is to spend some quiet time with friends and build up your support system. Consider gradually having your young daughter spending time away from him should there be a break up, so that she is not so traumatized. I don’t necessarily think your boyfriend will break up with you, but that you might with him. You seem a bright and insightful young woman that is beginning to see this young man may not be all-in, even though he is nice and probably loves you, he might not love you completely the way a man should love a wife which is what you need.

Please be assured of my prayers, I lived this once it is awful but life was so much better once I got out and found someone that really loved me. God bless.
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Excellent. YES.
Ask yourself:
Why do I believe that this is the bets I can do?
Peace.
 
Xantippe said:
Alrighty–if you guys live 20 minutes away, my sympathy for him has just dried up completely.

**An ultimatum is bad–you don’t want to arm wrestle him into marrying you if he doesn’t want to marry you. Ideally, he should passionately WANT to marry you. **

The next time he mentions living together, you can tell him, “Sweetie, the ball is in your court. I would love to get married to you, but I don’t want to move in without marriage. Aside from the moral aspect, I have a child to think about.”

Be prepared to have him break up with you. Also, have a mental kill date set up after which (if there is no proposal), YOU break up with him--no more than six months, I would think. By Christmas, you should either have broken up and moved on or be engaged already. This man has taken up more than enough of your time.
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I was in an even worse boat years ago - 2 years on a dead-end relationship with a guy who wouldn’t admit that all he wanted was a friend to hang out with and was not the marrying type and definitely not type who ever dreamed of being a dad, and I wanted several kids. After I broke up with him when I finally got a clue :ouch: it came to me one day that in any future relationship, what I would do would be to evaluate in my own mind at approximately 3 months in whether I liked the guy, and whether he seemed to feel similarly about me. We might not be completely on the same page at that point, but if there were no serious red flags, I could stay in it and keep track of how it was going.

Then by 6 months, if no progression toward commitment occurred, we would be having the Serious Talk. It would be calm and I would be prepared and tactful, and if breaking up proved necessary, it would be much less painful for both parties after a shorter dating period. (Also, getting back together later could still be on the table depending on the situation - but the break should still be a clean one for the time being, with neither party stringing the other along with false hope.)

I’m not sure, OP, if I’m reading your description the way you intended, but it sounds like he’s giving you mixed messages - he can’t wait for lots of time with you, but he can’t decide whether he knows you well enough to marry you. It’s confusing. :confused: And I sense you may have your own doubts. Listen to them, find out what message they are conveying. It may not be to break up, but there is some message there.

Finally, the point of marriage is to help your spouse get to Heaven, and any children the two of you have, to do your best to give them what they will need to get to Heaven and then pray they hang onto it. This should be in the forefront of each party’s mind.
 
Bri125 said:
Thanks for replying. I guess the real problem is, my boyfriend is struggling with the “long distance” (not living together) thing more than I am. The way he sees it, we have been together for 2.5 years, yet we have no close couple-y relationship outside of the one we share together with my 5 year old daughter (from a previous relationship…part of the rocky past I mentioned earlier). While having a child certainly makes any relationship harder, you can imagine how hard it is to balance both factors. My boyfriend is feeling like he HAS to marry me now in order to get us all under one roof and living a close family “real” relationship, and that’s the only solution. While we have both been wanting and anticipating marriage since the start, i think he is feeling pressured, like the only way he can get all of me is by marrying me. We tend to disagree on this slightly, since I think that that’s the whole point of marriage. But anyways, thanks again for listening!
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How far apart do you live?
 
Ill be the outlier here…I’ve been with my now (very recently) fiancé for eight years…since we were both 16 in high school! I’m a Catholic and he’s a non practicing Lutheran.

When I was younger I was having problems with my faith, like most teenagers, and distanced myself from the church. It was during this time that we decided to move in together, after we had both graduated college. No one had a problem with it and it was/is considered “normal” now.

But now that I’m older and re-connected with my faith, I wish I would have done it differently…I’m not angry with myself for cohabitating (we’ve had a great go at it…) but now that we’ve started the process of the sacrament of marriage, I feel that most of the specialness has been removed from it…we’ve been together for so long and we’ve been living together for so long…there really isn’t anything that will change in our daily life when were married, it’ll just be another day…

I say, get married if you feel like your ready (even though 2.5 years doesn’t seem long to me…probably because I was barely out of high school at that time in our relationship! 😃 ) and if its in your beliefs that you shouldn’t cohabitate…go with what your heart is telling you.

And if your afraid that he is feeling pressured into marriage, tell him so…tell him that you don’t want him to get married just because he feels “its expected” etc. you want to get married because of a deep love and understanding.

those are my two cents, tell you how it was from the other side. 🙂
 
What I got from this is that your boyfriend is looking for the two of you to be intimate. I could be totally wrong, but that is what immediately came to my mind. If that is what he is really worried about, then that doesn’t sound very mature to me.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Xantippe said:
Alrighty–if you guys live 20 minutes away, my sympathy for him has just dried up completely.

An ultimatum is bad–you don’t want to arm wrestle him into marrying you if he doesn’t want to marry you. Ideally, he should passionately WANT to marry you.

The next time he mentions living together, you can tell him, “Sweetie, the ball is in your court. I would love to get married to you, but I don’t want to move in without marriage. Aside from the moral aspect, I have a child to think about.”

Be prepared to have him break up with you. Also, have a mental kill date set up after which (if there is no proposal), YOU break up with him–no more than six months, I would think. By Christmas, you should either have broken up and moved on or be engaged already. This man has taken up more than enough of your time.
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This ^^^
 
Bri125 said:
Thanks for replying. I guess the real problem is, my boyfriend is struggling with the “long distance” (not living together) thing more than I am. The way he sees it, we have been together for 2.5 years, yet we have no close couple-y relationship outside of the one we share together with my 5 year old daughter (from a previous relationship…part of the rocky past I mentioned earlier). While having a child certainly makes any relationship harder, you can imagine how hard it is to balance both factors. My boyfriend is feeling like he HAS to marry me now in order to get us all under one roof and living a close family “real” relationship, and that’s the only solution. While we have both been wanting and anticipating marriage since the start, i think he is feeling pressured, like the only way he can get all of me is by marrying me. We tend to disagree on this slightly, since I think that that’s the whole point of marriage. But anyways, thanks again for listening!
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Yes, it does sound odd…someone thinking he HAS to marry you rather than thinking he GETS to marry you AND found a domestic church, protect you and his new daughter, lead you to heaven…you know…a man who loves God and His Church way more than he loves you?

Don’t you all have marriage preparation of some kind? A real boot camp type - that will shake you up from the foundation to the rafters and get you ready for marriage rather than just living together?

And yes…even Megan Kelly says “Catholicism is not for wimps”.
 
Bri125,

I see that this thread is a couple of months old, but I just saw it and I want to share this resource with you.

101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged by H. Norman Wright is a book written from a Christian perspective which when studied with your boyfriend may help you to really get to know each other before marriage without co-habitating. You can find it on Amazon, along with similar books. Check it out. Get one for your boyfriend and for yourself, and when you are apart you may want to journal seperatley and compare your answers on a date. Or on the telephone if that’s easier. I’m sure that it will bring you closer together, and even people who do live together may not think to talk about the topics in the book. 👍
 
You should definitely not move in with him. If you do, then he has everything he wants. Why should he marry you then?

When I was young, it was much more unusual for a man and woman to move in together. It was called “living in sin.”

There was also a saying that sounds very sexist now. It was, “Why buy the cow if the milk is free?”
 
1ke said:
You have been dating 2.5 years? That is a long time. Get married!
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If you have any doubts after 2.5 years it’s time to move on if not why not get married. If you it’s the big wedding holding you back then maybe the wedding if more important then the marriage?
 
Bri125 said:
Hello friends. Several years ago, I “re-found” my faith and became a devoted follower of my Catholic faith (despite a rocky past). I educated myself on my religion and felt very solid in what I believed in.

So fast forward, I have been in a relationship for almost 2.5 years now, with the intention of being married and living happily every after. Since it goes against my Catholic faith, I decided from day 1 that I would not co-habitate until marriage. 2.5 years later we are still living separately, and I must admit it has been the biggest struggle ever. I understand and agree with the teachings of the church, but it is SO SO SOOO hard to build a solid foundation from two separate houses. Now that we’ve been together for a couple years, we want to get married, but in some sense we feel like there’s so much we don’t know about each other because we lack that close connection. I hate to even think it, but sometimes it makes me resent my faith. I see all of my friends living these “freestyle” relationships with no Catholic “rules” and it looks awesome. I know God’s teaching is the right way to go but it is so hard and I hate it. I feel like I just want to rush and get married just so we can be together but I know that’s probably not the right move either. I don’t understand how Catholics do it. It was a struggle to keep a “long-distance” relationship alive for 2 years, and I didn’t expect it to be. How are people who do not live together expected to keep the relationship alive?

Thanks for listening. I guess I’m not looking for any real advice, I just needed to vent.
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It’s doable, but you need to be able to realize that peer pressure is just pressure and not something you’re actually supposed to comply with. You also need a girlfriend/boyfriend who will not put that kind of pressure on you, obviously. That kind of pressure is still resistible, but it exposes you to powerful temptation to rationalize and justify something (in this case ‘something’ is fornication) you don’t even actually want to do.
I feel like I just want to rush and get married just so we can be together but I know that’s probably not the right move either.
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Not a smart move, yes, because discernment is necessary, but the thing is: marriage is not a crowning achievement for having found your soulmate or some other other half magically separated at birth etc. 😉 Marriage is only the beginning of the path. And no, I somehow doubt that people are supposed to marry only in their middle age and only after 5 or so years of Tolkienesque courtship. Marriage is not the zen of attaning enlightenment together and moving on to a higher plane of spiritual existence intended for those who know (it’s easy to extrapolate that kind of view into a gnostic heresy).

Look at canon law. I know it’s not a work of theology, but as far as I go it drives home the message that after puberty + more or less sound catechesis one should be good to go.
Can. 1096 § 1. For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.
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§ 2. This ignorance is not presumed after puberty.
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Again, marriage is not a higher plane of existence for M.A. holders in theology with an accomplished internship in a contemplative monastery. It’s something a not particularly retarted adolescent should be able to pull off by default.

And the rest is hard, hard work. The part that everybody dreads and some don’t even think about. Including a 16 year old boy who grew up on a farm and didn’t ever go to school, like it used to be.
 
chevalier said:
Not a smart move, yes, because discernment is necessary, but the thing is: marriage is not a crowning achievement for having found your soulmate or some other other half magically separated at birth etc. 😉 Marriage is only the beginning of the path. And no, I somehow doubt that people are supposed to marry only in their middle age and only after 5 or so years of Tolkienesque courtship. Marriage is not the zen of attaning enlightenment together and moving on to a higher plane of spiritual existence intended for those who know (it’s easy to extrapolate that kind of view into a gnostic heresy).
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“Tolkienesque courtship” is hilarious.
 
Xantippe said:
I think Chevalier probably had in mind Aragorn and Arwen, who had really, really leisurely pacing for their courtship.
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I just like the imagery it evokes. Could even have the reception at the Inn of the Green Dragon.

And now I’ll stop before my colleague’s nerd-detector moves from comfortably in the Steve Urkel zone to full bore Skippy Handleman.
 
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