Yet another proposal question

[DannyM]

Hi all,

 

I am a 24 year old guy and live on my own. I have been dating a 26 year old girl who has a 2.5 year old son for the last 4-5 months.

In the past I have been a bit of a womaniser, having lots of 1 night stands and relationships. Until I met this girl. I was also a bit of a stress head. I have been in love before but not like this. My life is 100% better since this girl came into my life. I am never stressed and the things like career and money just dont matter to me like they did prior to this girl. I love her son and he loves me and love the girl incredibly much. I am weary that we are still in the "honeymoon" phase but am very concsious of this and trying to make decisions around this.

 

All I know is that if I can make this girl happy, make her smile and make her life easier and better then I would be a happy man. We have both already discussed marriage and she wants to as much as me, she wasn;t married to the childs father and doesnt see him at all (infact has a restraining order on him) despite having a child with him she said she has never wanted to get married until she met me. I feel the same. Even when i have been in relationships I never really felt a connection or felt like I wanted to make the person genuinely happy for the rest of their lives.

 

Its also strange that I have not only had to fall in love with her but her son which is a big thing especially for a young 20 something. But even with all this, the connetations it brings and the drain it puts on my currently secure financial situation, all I want is this girl by my side and happy.

 

I was also living with a girl for 2 years and asked her to move out and broke up with her about 3 - 4 months before meeting the current girl. My girlfriend and I have discussed living together but I told her I dont want to live with anyone but my wife! This is because the research I have done and from my own experiences living with a person outside of marriage is not good for marriage and also the greater amount of the 50% of divorces are from couples who lived together prior to marriage. She agreed with this once I gave her that reasoning and I think she appreciates that I think of her in that way as it was genuinely not an excuse to not live with her as I would love nothing more but was more a "Iwant this thing to really work, and want to give it every chance to work" type of thing.

 

So essentially the question is. Is it too soon to propose? Do I sound like a man in lust or a man in love?

 

Cheers

Danny

[ladyinwaiting]

Hmmm...I'm not sure I'd go as far as to make the blanket statement that 3-4 months is too early to get engaged. I do think, from experience, that you can know when you're on a relationship winner within a couple of months - especially if you've had looser relationships before. But (and there's always a 'but' isn't there?) I think you need to be very careful about this kind of thing. You and your girl are both very young, and if you have not lived together let, your experiences with each other are likely to be limited. Do you know how she handles money? How she reacts under stress? What does she want for the future? How do her goals mesh with yours? I don't want to talk you out of it, but I think you need to think about it very, very carefully.

 

As for the downside to living together, well I'll admit that the figures are damning. However, there are heaps of explanations other than the effect of living together per se. Chances are, people who live together have more liberal values, and be okay with divorce when things go bad. Others may have lived together for years and got married in order to try and salvage a dying relationship (I've seen it happen!). If you know that you want to get married eventually, but want to be sure you're compatible, I'd be surprised if living together first would increase your chances of divorce later.

[DannyM]

yeah true.

I think living together first though tends to breed an environment and feeling that you can always just walk away, which continues on and is hard to replace.

 

I am pretty much 100% sure that I "am on a relationship winner" and want to go about things the right way, the way thta has been proven to work, rather than the way that is perceived by gen x and y as the correct way.

 

I spend most weekends either with her living at my place or me at hers and for the last few weeks have been spending most of the week staying at her place (even though that means I need to get up at 5AM to drive home and get ready for work!!!!) and things seem right and there are no worries at all with us. Our goals are similar our ideals are very similar and its hard to find fault, we both accept that things will never be perfect all the time and we will have differences and problems, but knowing this makes it easier to deal with.

 

I thank you for your advice. It has somewhat cemented my ideas. I will let you know how things progress

[I Luv the Chariot OH]

First of all, I don't know where you've been doing your "research," but that statistic sounds ridiculous (did you know 63% of all statistics are made up on the spot?)--you can never fully know someone until you've lived with them. I'd venture to say NOT to get engaged until you've lived together and know all the little nuances of each other.

 

Secondly, 4-5 months is definitely the honeymoon stage, simply because it takes time for love to mature, and there's no way you could know each other significantly enough to be married in such a short time.

 

What's the rush to get married, anyways?

[justagirliegirl]

I would say give it another year or two. If you are both so in love, what is the hurry?

[magda]

I think you should follow your gut on this one. If you two have a strong relationship then go for it. I would suggest you buy a bunch of books for couples that are considering marraige. The kind with hundreds of questions to ask each other... talk about all the standard topics that can be dealbreakers like finances, porn, children, religion, etc. If you keep hitting gold on all these topics, then why not?

 

On the topic of living together, I don't think there's a solid answer for or against. It really depends on the people. Plenty of marriages have lasted for a lifetime without the couple having lived together previous. Plenty of marriages have failed when the partners lived together. There's no right or wrong answer there.