Struggling with no marriage relationship

[Ms Darcy]

I think you have skipped over some steps in the normal dating process.

 

I think if you had lived apart, focused on your career - and jobs that are great for your career, you would have been in a much better decision to determine if this guy both 'walked the walk' and 'talked the talk.' In addition, you would have been more able to judge if you liked what he was saying.

 

He's a grown-a$# man. If he wants to leave his house for his current daughter, it's your job to LISTEN ... not try to cajole, guilt, talk out of, talk through. If you don't like that about a future husband, then that means he's not a future husband candidate. If he is willing to marry with a pre-nup, wait around (until your internal deadline hits) for a ring. It doesn't matter how much a man talks about marriage. What matters is when there is a ring and an engagement for the "marriage talk" to be real.

 

So, I think what living together with your child has done is make it very difficult for you to have some objectivity about real points of incompatibility. And instead of having a home you can go to separate from him to clear your head, you have to LIVE WITH HIM and see him and continually be reminded of what he's said, the financial disparity, his so called issues, and all of his well-reasoned arguments.

 

From what you are describing, it's like love is slowly dying. It's not just because you have been pushing the issue. It's because you have incompatible views and you can't just shut up about them because that's not your way.

 

I definitely think you should follow your career.

[mhowe]

^^^^powerfully on point.

[aliceunderice]

yes i think i agree with you. I moved in before having the full picture. Two things I have learned from this relationship 1) are you still living with your ex, OK call me when you are not living with your ex, 2) are you looking for marriage and children in that order within the next few years i.e., while I'm still able to do that. I would definitely approach dating with those questions in mind now, but I guess when I met him I was so buried in my custody dispute, I wasn't thinking clearly about what I wanted for the future, more just focused on everything that was coming at me from my ex. There was a point where we were concerned my ex might try to block me from moving with a prohibited steps order, and at that time i was living 100 miles away from my current partner still, and so there was a impetus to do it. So much had to come into place for us to even be together, that looking back it's a miracle that we were able to put our lives together at all. He did not live near me, but he dropped his daughter off at a town near my mum's house in the midlands and I met him there. So he was living in the east of England and me in Oxfordshire at that point. We saw each other every week or two for about 18 months. At a certain point my ex chose to move far away from me and so we were kind of like yay great we can be together properly, and I moved to live withhim before the next set of court procedings, so that I would not potentially need to go to court again after that if I chose to move in with my partner (as my ex would likely do that just to be difficult, even if it made no practical difference, to get in the way of my new relationship). Everything was so up in the air with the court procedings. I knew the move would have implications for my career, but that was up in the air too. When I moved in my head was still focused on fighting my ex, and my current partner was a big support in the whole custody thing having gone through it himself. I wasn't giving enough attention to ok my career is important to me and getting married and having a family is important to me. My life was on hold really just to get through the custody battle.

 

Since the final hearing in July and things have finally settled down a bit with my ex, I have been looking much more at my situation now and where it is going. My attention is much more on that and what I want for myself in the future, and yes there are issues of incompatibility that were so buried in the noise before that they didn't receive my attention, and I wasn't thinking about how I want to improve my life, just how do I get through this custody battle. Now those things have assumed their original importance to me, I'm like oh hang on a minute, I've moved somewhere where my career options have completely changed (i.e. original career in science is basically not possible) and there is no real promise of marriage and family and those things I would really like.

 

We discussed things after that argument and he clarified that although the house is for his daughter, if he died he would leave any extra money to me being the wife and allow me to live in the house until I died, and I would be trusted to decide how that money got split between the kids. I think he would make sure everyone was OK, there's still the slight fear the original daughter might become an issue in one way or another, in the sense of him not treating everyone else fairly in relation to her, I've seen hints of that in various ways, but I guess that's a pretty general problem with step families, and he is always going to be extremly protective of the little girl who was taken away and damaged as he sees it.

 

Anyway so give it a year, follow my career and I'll be in a better position. I do have difficulty not fretting in this situation. I'm already too involved and then there are issues that cause me concern, I do find it difficult not to worry about it. Hopefully I can manage if I set a time limit on how long I'm willing to wait.

[abitbroken]

My partner has said this solves a lot of our issues in terms of income parity and that this should pave the way to getting married and for a prenup to stand, with more behind me independently.

 

Many, many marriages don't have income parity - especially if the decision is made for one of the spouses to stay home raising the kids, or take a job that is flexible around the needs of an older special needs child or around the other spouse's career that takes them out of town and makes them unavailable for the kids at all (ie, one spouse handles before school and one spouse after). And lots of women DO take on careers that pay less that might be more creative. And in those marriages, the focus is on marrying that person - and how to build a future as a couple as a collective, not waiting until the other person is "good enough". (in my case, my schedule is more flexible due to my career and is perfect if we have a kid and is seen as a bonus, not as a detriment). If he was really serious about commitment and he had to have someone with equal income, he would have taken his time and went with a matchmaker or tried to meet women through business conferences, focused on women with certain careers, etc. Do you think he chose to date you for the long term because you could be someone who would be a bit under his thumb/you would be dependent upon him a little because you couldn't keep up with his lifestyle and/or he didn't want to commit so on purpose he picked someone with a profile income and career wise that he would never commit to? And again "oh good, we will be able to have a better prenup, etc." Just some food for thought.

[Lightattheend1]

Does the UK recognize e domestic partnership?

[aliceunderice]

thanks for people's comments and reading through all this longwinded stuff I've been posting, it has helped me a lot to work through in my own mind.

 

I accept your point abitbroken. Although there is a "roadmap" as he puts it or whatever to getting to that point and getting married with a prenup i.e., get a better paid job, that part still niggles a bit, kind of humph.... so I have to jump through hoops and get myself established in a better paid career to be good enough. There's definitely a bit of a humph there when I think about that. I can look at it though as he just wants the security of more income parity this time around especially with prenups not being legally binding and stepping back on the career stuff it's the right thing to do anyway thinking about this "data science" stuff that's better paid I can hopefully get into. But still nothing is certain, there's no bette paid job yet, it might not come off after all that, no engagement and it will take a pretty sustained period of things settling back down again to even start with that.

 

Either he is really stringing me a line about all this marriage stuff, tossing me breadcrumbs, in which case he is completely untrustworthy or he's not. There's no way in the end you can really tell. He was saying yesterday if he could be sure I wouldn't leave him he'd marry me tomorrow, so he talks as if it will eventually happen, but you know it's not real until there's a ring. All this conflict has got him losing confidence because being married he'd be worried what might blow up and become a big issue and he'd be worried I would walk out over something. Me picking over this stuff is making him lose confidence in that direction. I don't know. I kind of have to pick one scenario and just believe it for a while, bring down the conflict, and shut up about it with him and see what happens in the next year. Or I go with the other alternative, in which case I should leave, because that simmering away in the background will destabilise everything anyway and I'm wasting my time. So confusing, once you start having that doubt and lose faith.

 

I'm in this situation now. I should have ascertained much earlier his attitudes and been clear on what I wanted. I think I'm going to resolve not to mention it to him again, focus on my career and see where things stand one year from now. I've kind of gone full circle to my original position but have thought through everything properly now and there's some change on the getting more financially independent front.

[aliceunderice]

hi lightattheend1, you can get a cohabitation agreement in the uk. It's under contract law.

[FreedomRing]

This is a classic square peg, round hole, situation. The problem, with just shutting up about things for now, is that you can't 'unlearn' what you've learned with regard to your bf's perspective on marriage AND this daughter he has unresolved guilt about...that's why it's proving to be very difficult for you to just shut up and sit tight after the fact. Cat is already out of the bag, and you know what his TRUE feelings are. And they are incompatible with yours, bottom line. Right now, you're doing the dreaded pretzeling some women do, trying to conform themselves, their beliefs, and values to be in line with a partners whose own stance is VERY different, just in hopes of getting a ring, which(seems to be in your case too) was never coming to begin with. Stop settling.

[aliceunderice]

I am finding it very difficult to just settle after the fact. There's kind of an empty anxious feeling underneath. Then I start questioning myself why that's there and I come up in my mind with things like "you feel bad because it's making you wonder what's wrong with you", or I start thinking "if only I'd just not brought such and such up and it having led to an argument maybe he would want to get married" or I think to myself "it's because you don't take rejection very well and it's touching on that". Then I start to feel like I'm being unreasonable thinking "I shouldn't have this feeling he's told me he wants to and the way it can be done". I start thinking, "what's wrong with me, if I really loved him then surely I'd be fine with getting a better paid job and waiting".

 

He has vacillate between various things getting married with a prenup as things stand, getting us to videotape ourselves agreeing to what we would do, putting the house in trust, but what he says changes week to week. I never felt settled because I didn't see him taking any action. Now he has retracted it all to you get a better paid career and then we can get a prenup which is more likely to stand. He tells me things like "before these past few weeks my head was at doing this with a prenup now but now you've pushed me a long way from that", then this feeds in to me thinking "if only I had not brought it up" kind of thoughts which make me feel bad and even more unsettled.

 

I can't quite shake the feeling. Maybe it is just as simple as I don't want the person I'm with to be putting all sorts of barriers up and hoops to jump through about getting married. On an emotional level that really doesn't feel good to me. Then I go round the loop of thinking but it's understandable from his perspective and get myself in a mess again.

 

I suppose the thing is emotionally I want someone who can't wait to marry me and has enough faith in me to take the risk, fair enough mitigate it with a prenup, but not to an extreme. I start thinking am I just insecure or something to be feeling bad in this situation. Then he says it's not I don't trust you, even with a consent order a judge has to sign it off, so even if you agree to an unequal division it could be overruled. Then I'm never quite convinced. With a prenup that will "likely be upheld" according to test law and a consent order that the judge will only refuse to sign in pretty extreme circumstances, it doesn't sit right with me at all. I'd have to really go nuts trying to get the prenup overturned and going for all the stuff I said I wouldn't. I can understand what he is saying rationally given his life experiences but not emotionally from my own perspective. I guess you just can't change emotionally from your own perspective by thinking about it over and over.

 

I've got that uneasy feeling in my gut but I don't want to leave yet. I think the compromise I make with myself and with him is I give it a year. If there is no prenup or ring, I leave. After my life experiences I want to be married this time. I want more kids. I don't want to do that without being married. I need to respect myself enough to hold to that. Giving way on any of that makes me feel bad and maybe I just don't need to be questioning myself on whether that is reasonable and trying to change it.

 

I can't live with uncertainty for very long about whether I'm in a situation which is compatible with my goals. I suppose whatever I am still compromising my desire to be with someone who is much more forthcoming about getting married and I am just going to feel bad about that because that's just what I want. I don't want to leave right now so I give it a year and try to take the focus off this issue in my mind.

[Batya33]

I'm all for giving it a year if there is a reason other than stalling/procrastination from making a decision. If you said that he really wants to see a couples counselor to work through why he needs all these safeguards (that are so stringent that IMO they do a fair job of eroding the reason for marriage in the first place) or that on Monday you will start looking for a therapist or life coach or at least read a book/books so that you can take steps to get to the core of what your values are and what you want, then ok. But your approach -you'll find another reason to stay another year and while I don't know your age, if you want kids - do not squander this precious time.

 

Edited to add -what if you get this better job and then marry and you get pregnant - is the agreement that you keep working full time once you are a mother? If so is that ok with you?

[aliceunderice]

I think I will give it another year. I am struggling with all these safeguards he wants and can't help but take it personally. His attitude is quite hard-headed about it. He wants these safeguards because he's already been through a financially very costly divorce once. He used to work in finance so he's pretty hard headed about money as it is. I get the impression there is a bit of a tussle between head and heart when he comes up with less stringent scenarios, but heart is not winning, and I guess that is what upsets me at the end of the day. I can't imagine him going to couples therapy to talk about why he feels like that. He is the kind of person who when he's come to a conclusion, he's right and that's it kind of thing. Not to an extreme that he is domineering, but it's definitely there, like a lot of men.

 

I have been worried about squandering time to have children. I'm 34 so it could be that I've got years left then again that might not be the case. Without getting checked out I guess it's hard to know. My mum had me at 42 and some of my half-sisters in their mid to late 30's so I guess that's hopeful possibly in terms of years left.

 

Yes the thing about marrying and getting pregnant with the me earning more money scenario kind of did jar with me because it doesn't really make sense. Him saying you get a higher earning career so the prenup will stand. But then if he really does want a child with me once we're married my career will take a hit then anyway, unless he expects me to jump straight back on the earning horse. You're right kind of logically what he's saying does not make sense unless that is the case.

 

I don't want to be commuting to London for my higher paid job full time right after I've had a kid. Ideally I would want to ease back on work and focus on the child for a couple of years. I suppose in my heart of hearts I would have liked to have 2 or 3 and have stayed at home to look after them while preschool, but that does conflict with fulfilling your own career and making sure you are financially independent things like that, so I would want to work part time, especially as he works flexibly and is really good with you children. Maybe I should ask him straight about that and try to make sure it doesn't lead to any more arguments.

[aliceunderice]

I guess if I ask him and it's apparent that he would expect me to go straight back to work after us being married and having a kid so that his prenup will stand, that would be a definite red line for me, as in pack my bags and leave now. Maybe I should find out what he is thinking there. I'm really exhausted with all this now.

[Batya33]

Yes, it is exhausting -I was in an on again /off again relationship in my 30s- not same issues as yours but major doubts about marriage and on/off/rollercoaster -exhausting! But, it is far more exhausting to try to conceive at age 40 and go through a high risk pregnancy at 42. Far more exhausting also to be single at age 38 and try to find a healthy, happy long term relationship before your clock/options run out. I am not sure how old you are but if you possibly can have as much time as possible in your 30s to meet someone then do it. Today.

[FreedomRing]

It is all too convenient and a bit cowardly IMO, for him to pull the "before all this talk, I was going to move forward, but now I'm not"...that technique is designed to get a person to do, exactly what you are doing now, which is backtracking on your core values and beliefs, to fall in line with HIS perspective. That's manipulative, and it's working, which is why you have so much angst. You have stated several times in this thread, you want marriage and more kids. In that order. He's told you he's against marriage in general without a prenup; he has came up with flimsy conditions that don't make a lot of sense and they change often. Seems to me he is being consistently inconsistent = he doesn't want to be married again(to you or anyone else, IMO).

[aliceunderice]

hi Batya I'm 34 lower end, I guess the clock is ticking if you're sure you want children. People still can but then the percentage who can't goes up rapidly from around now doesn't it. I don't know I'm really confused.

 

hi Freedom ring, I am hurt and angry and confused by the "before all this talk, I was going to move forward, but now I'm not". Then I get to thinking well I shouldn't have got so emotional, said those things, of course now he might be worried you're nuts or that you migth just walk out on him if we were married. But then I think well not really, can't he see how important it is to me and I'm getting upset because he won't commit. Maybe it is just a manipulative play. That really gives me pause for thought and makes me uncomfortable. I mean everyone manipulates to some extent but with most people its unconscious from emotions they can't contain, acting out kind of thing. The really dangerous type of manipulation is the conscious type, consciously planned to have a specific effect, with no uncontained underlying emotion, kind of cold and calculated. If I thought he was doing that in a calculated fashion I'd pack my bags this second because that type of thing is dangerous as hell.

 

The other alternative is maybe he was really thinking along those lines and now he's changed his mind and is just being straight. I'm really confused by all this. I guess I need to stop thinking about it and put a time limit on it. Maybe a shorter one 6 months.

[aliceunderice]

sorry to get longwided again but on the manipulation front this has made me feel uncomfortable on a couple of occasions

 

With the whole changing his mind, he says it's the way I've handled the conflict getting emotional, "throwing things back at him distorted in a horrible way" as he puts it when I said something in heat of the moment. Can't remember what I said it was something like "you just want to get me knocked up without having to put anything on the line" something like that, so not that bad really, given that does seem to be his position, crying about stuff, being grumpy and one evening in particular where the night out was ruined because I felt so bad I could barely talk to him and completely shut down. All this over several weeks. But then I think cut yourself some slack you're talking about major life goals and whether they're unreachable or not, surely someone might cut you some slack there and not be like well now I think you might be nuts so I'm not going to do that now. I've always been pretty contained. The only time I really felt ashamed of my response is when I ruined the evening after we had to go out just after a heated discussion about all this and I felt so overwhelmed I just shut down. I mean that I would say it's fair enough for someone to think hang on a minute, although he didn't make any attempt to engage with me really either, but then I really did feel ashamed of myself afterwards for not being able to pull myself out of that and it did upset him.

 

What he says is he is more worried now I might just walk out on him over something because I'm picking at stuff. The only time I've "picked" at stuff is when he was living with his ex and wouldn't tell her about me and the no marriage before kids thing. I don't hold onto conflict in general but these are situations where if something is not resolved the situation is untenable and I kind of felt in both situations he was manipulating me being like "oh you're getting too upset about this, this is no good, maybe there's something wrong with your character. This is making me wary of you". When in actual fact the situation is almost the other way round. I had reason to be wary of him, and anyone should be able to see that (e.g, the living with ex girlfriend thing) but somehow he managed to turn that around to "you're getting too upset about this, look how you're picking at it, you can't let go of conflict, I should be wary of you". Maybe I should be worried about him being a manipulative character because he's done that both times the ex living with him and this time too.

 

The basic thing I'm worried about is when there's a situation where yeah of course someone is going to feel uneasy. He is very stubborn and kind of pulls the "you're picking at this, that's a character flaw, this is making me wary of you and putting me off you" card. It is manipulative and kind of the one thing in his character I've seen I've thought, hang on a minute. Should I be worried do you think?

[mhowe]

Neither of you trusts the other. I cannot fathom why you are staying, nor thinking about wicking it out for 6-12 months. It isn't going to get better. It is going to fester.

[Batya33]

34 is only a problem if you stay till 35 and then you have a hard time meeting someone within 4-5 years. Interestingly you still haven't said exactly what you plan to do with this 6-month time period or 12 month. I wouldn't just "wait".

 

I can see giving it one more month and during that time period putting all your ducks in a row to walk out after one month. Then depending on what happens he can have another month, maybe, without in his life AT ALL to see if he changes his perspective on commitment, marriage and kids.

 

Also telling that you don't know what he would do if you wanted to stop working outside the home to work full time with the child.

[aliceunderice]

34 is only a problem if you stay till 35 and then you have a hard time meeting someone within 4-5 years. Interestingly you still haven't said exactly what you plan to do with this 6-month time period or 12 month. I wouldn't just "wait".

 

I can see giving it one more month and during that time period putting all your ducks in a row to walk out after one month. Then depending on what happens he can have another month, maybe, without in his life AT ALL to see if he changes his perspective on commitment, marriage and kids.

 

Also telling that you don't know what he would do if you wanted to stop working outside the home to work full time with the child.

 

I guess I need to find out about the stop working with a child thing and how this fits in with his prenup to stand if I'm earning more position. If I don't like his response on that and he wants me to get straight back to work so the prenup is valid, then that is a definitely no screw this red line for me.

 

Maybe at 34 I should not wait around another year to be 35 if I want marriage and kids, so put a time scale of months on it, I'm thinking 6 months, so I get a new job things settle down and then see.

 

Maybe I should go to get counselling during that time to sort out some of my own issues and explore what I want.

 

My experience also with my ex has made me much less trusting than I would have been in terms of "is he going to screw me over type thoughts". My previous relationship was emotionally abusive, but once the relationship ended, the abuse just escalated and became extremely frightening kind of times 100, and with the custody case, it was really, really bad emotional abuse, kind of being ground through the cogs and gears with someone turning the handle, lots of warping reality and extreme gaslighting, lots of threats and being aggressive, hiding it all, being extremely Jeckyll and Hyde, deliberately seeking to turn family and friends and the courts against me, being very calulated accusing me of things I wasn't doing, never accepting what he was doing to an extreme level, lots of warped behaviour involving our son. Basically after that my perception of the kinds of people that are out there has taken a seismic shift to wow, the spectrum of the kind of characters that are out there has just massively expanded, and now I know there are people out there that operate nothing like me or "normal people" and are downright dangerous to be involved with. Once you've been through that with someone I think your view on people kind of shifts forever, so I don't know, I do probably need to get counselling for that alone.

[abitbroken]

I accept your point abitbroken. Although there is a "roadmap" as he puts it or whatever to getting to that point and getting married with a prenup i.e., get a better paid job, that part still niggles a bit, kind of humph.... so I have to jump through hoops and get myself established in a better paid career to be good enough.

 

This point is valid if you guys are 19 years old and want to start a family - deciding that your part time job at the roller rink and his under the table seasonal snow shoveling is not going to cut it. If you had 10,000 in credit card debt from buying shoes that you liked, then there is a valid roadmap needed. But if you are working full time, and your only debt is your custody bills, and you are not frivolous, its a case of him accepting you as you are and for who you are or your choices.

 

With the whole changing his mind, he says it's the way I've handled the conflict getting emotional, "throwing things back at him distorted in a horrible way"

 

But the only thing you were throwing back at him was the truth - he intended the house for his daughter only, that your child with him wouldn't be an equal, that he was uneasy that you didn't have the illustrious career he does, that there is no collective - that its you on your own and him on his own financially. It was all solid truth that he said himself, but people don't like hearing the truth sometimes. The only thing different is you may have said it emotionally, but nothing was stretched. It was exactly what he has been saying or inferring.

[abitbroken]

He has vacillate between various things getting married with a prenup as things stand, getting us to videotape ourselves agreeing to what we would do, putting the house in trust, but what he says changes week to week.

 

Sounds like blackmail to me.

 

And it sounds like he is preparing for a future divorce, not a marriage.

 

And the "if only i wouldn't have brought this up" is like a codependent or abused woman talking - blaming HERSELF for her other half's disappointment, lack of acceptance or lack of commitment. I am not saying he is abusive = but you are doing a number on yourself - I thought I was unworthy of a commitment because my ex wouldn't commit. Sometimes its not you - its the other person. You are worth of a commitment, but he is not in the market to give one. He has too much baggage and if you do get married, mark my words, he would be the first one out of it - you would never be able to relax.

[aliceunderice]

I guess I am doing the same thing I did with my ex which is taking a situation that is not right for me and prioritising the relationship and trying to change myself to fit. A lot of the talk I've been doing with myself is that. I guess at least this time I recognise that is codependence and not what I should be doing. I guess I need to put the focus on what do I want here am I getting it. Put a strict time limit on how long I'm willing to wait, and stop questioning myself and trying to get myself to bend on it.

[Ms Darcy]

It is all too convenient and a bit cowardly IMO, for him to pull the "before all this talk, I was going to move forward, but now I'm not"...that technique is designed to get a person to do, exactly what you are doing now, which is backtracking on your core values and beliefs, to fall in line with HIS perspective. That's manipulative, and it's working, which is why you have so much angst. You have stated several times in this thread, you want marriage and more kids. In that order. He's told you he's against marriage in general without a prenup; he has came up with flimsy conditions that don't make a lot of sense and they change often. Seems to me he is being consistently inconsistent = he doesn't want to be married again(to you or anyone else, IMO).

 

I agree with this. The more you talk about his back and forth from week to week and his ever-changing conditions, it makes me think he doesn't want to marry you but he doesn't want you to leave either. He just wants you to stop talking about it and have a nice live-in relationship where you have his babies and he occasionally gushes about marriage.

 

Wait six months or a year, I'm concerned you are just waiting to figure out he is not going to marry you. I do think it's a good idea for you to get yourself into counseling so you can get an outside perspective on the situation.

 

I would also say it is also still not good you are trying to pretzel for him because it's making you anxious. Waiting with no real understanding how much money he expects you to bring in while you guys have children.

[Ms Darcy]

Also, I would encourage you to stop trying to make excuses for him and get in his head. You are saying "he's stubborn" ... no, he's not stubborn. He knows he doesn't want to marry you so he's saying what he feels he needs to say to make that goal line more difficult for you to reach while continuing the live-in situation. Also, you are saying "he's battling between his head and his heart." IF that's the case, which may or may not be, that's a decision he needs to make on his own without you talking about it. And you cannot possibly expect yourself not to keep talking about it while you guys are living with each other.

[abitbroken]

I guess I am doing the same thing I did with my ex which is taking a situation that is not right for me and prioritising the relationship and trying to change myself to fit. A lot of the talk I've been doing with myself is that. I guess at least this time I recognise that is codependence and not what I should be doing. I guess I need to put the focus on what do I want here am I getting it. Put a strict time limit on how long I'm willing to wait, and stop questioning myself and trying to get myself to bend on it.

 

Yes. Exactly this. But minus the time limit. You already know his full intentions. One more month won't change his nature. It will only put out the fire under you right now that you have to leave