Why Won’t My Boyfriend Propose?

Its been a couple of years that you’ve been together. You know everything about each other. You’ve met each others families, you’re there for the holidays, maybe even been on vacations with them. You know each others friends and they’ve become your friends. You know everything about him. You know his coffee order, the fave Thai place he likes to get takeout, and when his weekly golf league meets.

You have half of your wardrobe over at his place, you for all intents and purposes live there. You’re at his place more than your own. Or you already live together. You might even own a house together or have children together. You’re doing all the things married couples do and acting in ways married couples act.

You’re practically an old married couple already.

Except you aren’t.

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At the beginning of the relationship you discussed the topic of marriage. You said quite plainly that its very important to you and ultimately what you are looking for in a relationship. You have given the relationship time to grow and flourish organically. You’re a nice person. And patient too. You’ve waited a good amount of time and you haven’t been pushy at all. You’re understanding and you’re giving him time to get his life goals in order.

He said he’s not ready so you waited a bit more. You let some time go by. You didn’t bring up marriage and you figured by giving him some time and space, he will eventually propose on his own. After all, doesn’t he realize and see what a wonderful, beautiful, smart, funny, nice, kind, caring woman you are. You’re an amazing woman. Why wouldn’t he want to propose to you?

So….why hasn’t he proposed yet?

You are not getting any younger here.

The longer he waits the more you are feeling the resentment start to creep in. You are trying hard not to feel this way towards him, but you can’t help it. You’ve been together for so long and this should be the natural progression of your relationship. Now, it seems like its not progressing at all and is in fact stagnating. You’re starting to fear that you are in a long-term dead-end relationship.

Is marriage even on the table anymore?

Anytime you bring up the topic, the response is always the same. Either “Yes someday we will get married” or “I’m not ready yet I need more time. We will when I’m ready” or “I’m not financially ready” or any list of varying reasons.

Its as if its his decision and his alone. You’re tired of being strung along and feeling like you’re not enough. All of your friends are now either married, or engaged, even having kids. You feel like for you it might not happen ever. Which I gutting because you’ve dreaming about getting married and planning your wedding since you were 5 years old.

What is going on here?

There are so many reasons but in the interest of read time I will just discuss the most common ones, from my experience personally and those I know closely who have gone through this.

Marriage scares him

He may be surrounded by family members or friends that have been put through the wringer of a disastrous divorce. Plus the divorce rate in the United States is quite high at 41% for first marriages, 60% for second marriages, and 73% for third marriages.

These stats can scare him off and especially if no one he knows is in a happy, satisfying marriage. Men usually end up worse off financially after divorcing with having to pay potentially a heavy sum of alimony and child support if kids are involved, so this could be another factor causing him angst and trepidation too.

I have a friend that is now in his forties that dated several wonderful women for a few years each. He had two very serious relationships. One was for about 7 years and another for around 4–5 years. They all wanted to get married and start a family, and were in their early thirties when you have to start moving ahead on these things.

Well long story short, he wanted to stay with them long term in a relationship but never wanted to get married. So after a long time, they finally had to break up with him and move on. He is still currently a bachelor.

He had a bad divorce

He tells you he had a bad previous relationship, a bad marriage, a bad divorce, got hurt, was cheated on etc. and now has cold feet about ever getting married again.

We all have been hurt in relationships. There is not one person that hasn’t been hurt at one time or another. While it’s understandable to take precautions to not repeat the mistakes of the past, you are not his ex. The problem here is that he can play the “I got so hurt” card, and there you are feeling sorry for him and because you are so caring you let it slide. Often for years.

You have to watch out for this one as this could be a stalling tactic to prolong the relationship without the commitment of being engaged. Since women can tend to be overly nice, patient, understanding, and think it’s their job to fix their man, they can let these delay tactics go on for way longer than they should allow.

He wants to get his ducks in a row

Women are hopeless romantics and in their mind after they are married they will figure out the finances and logistics later, together as a partnership.

Men on the other hand prefer to have their finances, career trajectory, savings, maybe even trips they wanted to take, in order before they settle down. Men actually take marriage very seriously, sometimes even more so than women. If they are making a lifetime commitment, they want to make sure they can afford to support their wife and potential family.

Men are thought to be the financial providers traditionally and even now in modern times, so they want to ensure they can fulfill their role and have enough money and a high enough salary to do so.

They also might have things they wanted to do before settling down such as traveling to a bucket list location, buying a house on their own, getting promoted to a higher level in their organization etc. They often do not want to move forward with marriage until their personal checklist of items is completed. This likely has nothing to do with you or how he feels about you.

What to do about it

This is probably controversial advice but hear me out. Most of the advice out there will be: Communicate communicate communicate. Tell him what you want, how you feel, and blah blah blah etc etc.

I’m not sure who ever came up with this type of advice but I have never heard of it actually working. Men have a short attention span when it comes to anything wordy, long conversations, long texts, and long soliloquies of how you’re feeling. In fact, using the word “feeling” is automatically going to make him check right out of the conversation.

Men respond better to logic, than feelings.

If he knows you want to be engaged and eventually married. Don’t bring it up again if its already been discussed.

Talk about your own future, career, where do you see yourself going. Talk about getting married, buying a house, having kids. But talk about yourself on this context. Not doing it with him specifically. Talk about these goals in vague terms of what you plan on doing. These are your life goals and you plan to achieve them, with or without your current partner.

If he doesn’t want those things with you, then someone else will love to have them with you. You’re quite the catch and its in his best interest to hang on to you by putting a ring on it!

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If not much changes, you might have to start doing what I would call the fade away. Pull your energy and attention back and make a plan of what you’re going to do. Don’t issue an ultimatum. Ultimatums rarely if ever work, especially with men. Don’t give an ultimatum if that if you’re not engaged by X date you’re leaving the relationship. A better approach is to decide how much longer you are willing to wait for a marriage proposal of engagement. Then decide if it doesn’t happen what your game plan is. If it gets that your determined timeframe and nothing has changed then gradually start pulling back and focusing on other priorities in your life and not him. Your silence and lack of energy going towards him is your power. You don’t even need to say anything. He will notice and will likely bring it up to you.

When he brings it up then that is the time to explain your position and your hopes and dreams of marriage. That you’ve given him time, oh so much time, more then you probably should have. Because women hang on too long, with false hope that something will changes.

But often it doesn’t.

Then tell him if he doesn’t want to get married, then that’s fine, you’re not a controlling person, but you have to do what’s best for you and move on to other potential mates. You can be vulnerable and say it is a desire of your heart and you do not want to give up your dream otherwise you will be heartbroken and unhappy if you continue on with him with no ring. But you are not the type of woman who is going to force him to do something he does not want to do.

If your boyfriend doesn’t want to get married right away, it does not necessarily mean you have to leave the relationship, pronto. But you have to clarify and decide for yourself what you really want and what will make you happy. If down the road you will be sad and resentful for the rest of your life that your dream of being a wife never happened, you know what you have to do.

Thank you for reading!

Come by again soon!

❤️ Xoxoxo Harlyn

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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