Too soon...not soon enough...THEN WHEN!?

Hey, I want to get engaged OFFICIALLY! Not 'ah we are going to get married anyway, everyone knows it...lets just enjoy the way things are now...we can't get married for a another 3 years anyway BLAH BLAH BLAH We have been together for 5 1/2 years - living together for over two of those. Friends of ours of haven't been together as long or aren't even living together are engaged! In fairness we are fairly young still but careers and houses and all that are totally on track so what is the problem! This is a MAJOR bone of contention with us...what would you do? Am I being totally unreasonable to want to be 'officially' engaged after this length of time?

From your ticker, I can see that ye do have a wedding booked, so there is no problem there with the commitment of it. Maybe the H2B's don't put so much store in these things as we do, maybe he wants to surprise you, maybe he is saving to buy you a really nice ring. Whatever you do, don't bring other people who are engaged before you into the argument as this will get you nowhere. Could ye not get a nice weekend away somewhere and just casually bring it up (not a blazing row) about how you are feeling. Maybe you can agree a timescale, between now and Xmas or book a few days away to get the ring abroad etc. I can understand you are excited and but on the other side of it, once you do announce, the madness really does start and personally, if I had my time all over again, I would not have announced so early so maybe that's what he is afraid of.

Ask him yourself - February 29th and all that. I was going out with my OH for nearly 8 years before he proposed. I had told him for years before that if he asked me. I'd say no. I wasn't ready to get married before that, despite an assumption we would. Perhaps he's just not ready to firm up to the committment. I know I wasn't.

Thanks for the replies - the wedding isn't booked but we had decided on a date this time last year....love the planning ahead thing!! However all our plans are less certain now because of a family bereavment... we had a fabulously romantic few days at New Years but nothing. I mean if you had to picture the most romantic setting - we are talking snow and swans and old gas lamps here and NOTHING!! It's just getting sooooo frustrating! I don't want a big wedding....a fabulous long honeymoon is more our style. I've explained how I feel....he dosen't appear to be getting his act together and I'm ready to murder him! I'd never be one of those 'get engaged or it's over' kind of girls but I've had enough

Could it be a situation where he's afraid you'll say no? Or could the bereavement have upset him enough to want to put it off until he's able to? Of does he need to work up the courage? Or would he have a big surprise planned? You could just propose yourself! Alternatively, a very bold thing to do is have a 'pregnancy scare' - tell him you can't have a child outside marriage as your parents would kill you (I know in this day and age it's unlikely but hey, who's to know) and it might get him thinking about the whole engagement thing, and how ideal it would have been not to have had a time constraint placed on an engagement...THEN when it turns out you're not pregnant, he'll be so relieved he'll pop the question so that you'll at least be engaged if you do get pregnant. I know it's very naughty, and I suppose I'm being more tongue in cheek than serious, but that approach has worked for generations of women - and men are thick when it comes to 'women's issues'...

Omigod that's a mad idea I love him and we are honest with each other so the pregnancy thing wouldn't go down too well:) He is just so laid back and I'm less so to put it mildly and for me it seems the right time to be engaged and he is happy as things are....

I'm curious (this isn't a dig at all, I promise...) but what would the 'officialness' change? I know my OH wanted it to be at the right time - men think differently and it can be quite important to them too!

I completely understand your frustration! Myself and Mr.W were together 6 years and living together for 5 of those before he proposed. The only reason he did propose when he did was because of pressure from me! I kinda think you're going through exactly the same thing as I did-we always talked about marriage and kids and dogs and houses together and there was NEVER any doubt that we wouldn't get married but Mr.W is just so frustratingly laid back He was happy to just coast along, the same as normal, even though he did actually want to get married. It was like he needed a bomb under he to actually organise getting engaged. I don't think he realised how much planning actually goes into a wedding either, I think one day he thought he'd just wake up, decide we'd get married and that'd be it-we'd all live happily ever after! Just like you, the most perfect romentic moments would come and go, leaving me so frustrated and upset. It caused us so many fights for about 2 years before we got engaged and tbh it was really getting to the stage of making me depressed, but the more I tried to talk to him, the more resentful he'd get but on the opposite to that, if I tried to leave it and not bring the subject up, he would just happily continue on.....until fcuking kingdom come Like you though, we were and still are really honest with each other and always try to discuss things and work stuff out so eventually it did get to the stage where he saw how unhappy the whole situation was making me-I don't think he'd realised how much it meant to me until them (typical man!!!). We then got the ball rolling and started designing the ring and about 6 months later he proposed No from all of what I've just said it probably sounds like he was guilted into proposing and in a small way he was BUT when he did, it WAS something he wanted as much as I did and when organinsing the wedding he was just as excited as I was. We're married now just over 6 months and still in the gooey honeymoon phase He oftens tells me how happy he is that I'm his wife and I know in my heart that he does not regret getting married! So after all that rant I think what I'm trying to say to you is that for some people they get the whole romantic 'out of the blue' proposal and it's all a big surprise and Hollywoodish, but for others like you and me, we might have to work a bit more to get what we want. It doesn't necessarily mean that our guys love us any less, it just means that they're laid back gobsh1tes who don't realise how good they have it My advise is to sit him down and explani EVERYTHING about how you're feeling about all this, let him see how much it means to you to be married to him....but if he's anything like my laid-back gobsh1te, be prepared to have to do it a few times before the message sinks in!!!!! Best of luck!

Don't get me wrong here but you (both of you) have agreed a date for the wedding which seems great but I see you've been a wollie since 2005 which is a bit strange. I'm sure your boyfriend's crazy about you and wants to marry you but maybe just not yet... I mean it sounds as though you are both still young and only starting off in your careers. We were together over 10 years before we got engaged. The proposal was a bit of a surprise but we had discussed getting engaged and agreed that it would happen within a certain time period. For the past few years although I did see a future with us and wanted to get married I didn't want to get engaged while I was still studying etc. so that had him scared to propose. You could do the whole leap year thing but why not sit down and talk about itJ?

I agree with the other girls. Men do like to propose in their own time and the wont be swayed either. why dont you bite the bullet and ask him on the 29 February?