This has been bothering me for a while. I apologize in advance if this gets long and rant-y.
Has anyone ever been in a relationship in which your significant other’s family seems to take it way more seriously than you do? Have you felt pressure from an SO’s family to make serious life decisions when you know you’re not even close to being ready for it?
About two months ago I got out of a two year relationship. He’s a good guy but I think I eventually outgrew him and in hindsight, the relationship was full of dumb issues, mainly jealousy and insecurity on his part. Before I go into this, I should mention that I was 18 and had just graduated high school when we started dating. This was only the second relationship I’d been in and it was the first long-term one. So basically, I was very inexperienced in relationships and really just inexperienced in life in general.
My ex still lived at home so I spent a lot of time around his family. I always liked his parents and I enjoyed hanging out at their house. They really liked me which was nice. I also knew a lot of people in his extended family (grandparents, cousins, etc) and they were pretty cool too. I would get tons of Christmas presents from his immediate family and both sets of grandparents, I would get invited to a lot of family gatherings, etc.
Probably about a year into the relationship his mom started bringing up the marriage thing. At one point his parents were considering moving into another house and asked me if I would move in with all of them because my ex-boyfriend and I were in a “committed relationship.” Another time, she referred to me as his “girlfriend…fiancée…something like that”…keep in mind it had never been established that we ever planned on getting married. I just kind of brushed it off, though.
I should mention that we lived about 45 minutes away from each other. He spent a lot of time in my city for work/school so most of the time I spent with him was at my place. I’d go hang out at his house when I had the time but due to college and a part time job it didn’t happen a lot during the school year.
So last year I wasn’t around his family very much but he started telling me things his mom and sister-in-law would say. Around Christmas his mom told him he should “rethink the relationship” since he wasn’t going to my grandma’s house for Christmas. His family and my family are completely different. I’m “close” to my dad’s side but only in the sense that I see them at pretty much every major holiday. We’re not involved in each other’s lives to the degree that anyone really gives a crap if me or one of my cousins is dating someone. If anyone brings a significant other to my grandma’s house it’s because they’re actually engaged. And we were NOT engaged.
His mom frequently asked him when we were getting married and why he was dating me if I wasn’t going to marry him. She would also make comments like “Well if two people love each other, they should get married!” not referring to us directly but it was pretty obvious what she was getting at.
The thing I found out about that made me especially uncomfortable was that she told him she would hate me if he ever got me pregnant and I had an abortion. It just freaked me out because apparently it came up out of nowhere and that’s such a personal thing anyway. The funny thing is that she’s pretty liberal so it was really surprising to hear that she’d been saying this stuff.
Also like I said, my ex still lives at home and doesn’t have enough money to get his own place. He’s also just not ready to get married in general. So if we had gotten married, we’d be living with his parents. On top of that, I would have had to commute to a college in my hometown or just stop going to college in general. That really doesn’t appeal to me.
It got to the point where I didn’t want to go to their house anymore because I was too uncomfortable being around them knowing all this stuff had been said. I feel kind of bad writing about this because they really are nice people. But also, I don’t appreciate people pressuring me to make big life decisions when they have absolutely no say in how I live my life. Marriage is something I won’t do unless I know I’m absolutely ready for it. I think I’d like to be married someday. However, seeing as the idea of being married at 20 years old terrifies me, I think it’s safe to say this is not the right time for me.
So has anyone else had to deal with this? Any thoughts on the matter? The whole “Why are you dating her if you aren’t getting married?” thing was so weird to me. Can’t people be in long-term relationships without bringing up the marriage thing? Especially at my age, holy crap. Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope this made some sense.
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Hm, it's nice that you can pinpoint where your ex inherited his feelings of jealousy and insecurity. It sounds like there were a lot of boundary issues here.
I'm currently in your ex's position. My family hasn't made "rethinking your relationship" type comments or anything too out of line, but we have put up with comments about having kids and getting married from them. My BF and I haven't had a specific conversation about his feelings, but I've shared how annoying, frustrating, and intrusive these remarks are to me. Meanwhile, he's encouraged me not to let my family set me off and see them as clumsy attempts at expressing confidence in my choice of mate and how much they like him.
As for your main question, can a heterosexual couple date for long period of time without addressing the question of marriage?
Yes and No. You don't need to worry about marriage. You certainly don't need to put up with crazy, intrusive comments about the question from anyone outside your relationship. Or put up with pressure in your relationship once you've discussed your position. However, you should have a conversation about your general feelings on marriage and on your sense of "where this relationship is going" with the person you're dating long term once you or he finds the topic salient to your relationship.
This may not ever become an important issue in your future relationships. Furthermore, it's perfectly alright to be fully committed to a person and want to wait until you're ready for marriage as a person and as a couple. This does not signal your lack of commitment to a relationship. Any person(s) who would have trouble with that concept has control and boundary issues.
"However, you should have a conversation about your general feelings on marriage and on your sense of "where this relationship is going" with the person you're dating long term once you or he finds the topic salient to your relationship."
Oh yeah, definitely. My ex would even bring up the marriage thing really early on in the relationship and it was one of the things that made me realize "I'm not getting married for a LONG time" because it just freaked me out.
And whenever I mentioned that I didn't want to marry ANYONE for a long time he would take it personally.
He would also talk to his mom about it in the "Well if we get married, __________" which I hated because it just reinforced her idea that we were "engaged".
The whole relationship was so full of weird personal issues that I kind of wonder why I stayed in it for so long, haha.
As you mentioned, twenty is far too young to get married. I nearly got engaged at 21, but her father pitched a fit and the engagement was quickly broken. Marriage is something I am only now beginning to consider, not necessarily just for this relationship, but in general, because I was not ready for this degree of commitment and emotional unselfishness until very recently, and I am nearly 29 now.
My folks know that she is good for me and have been acting as though she is some sainted soul, which kind of freaks me out a bit, but after having dated so many women who were not capable of being stable enough to be anyone's wife, much less mine, I understand their hopes.
I don't mean to be a jerk, but it kinda sounds like to me that you're ex's parents probably just really wanted your ex to "grow up" and move out of the house.
I hate how some people still think that marriage will make someone become more responsible.
Maybe that's true, but I think I would be in trouble if I thought a piece of paper would make drastic changes to our relationship.
Nah, you didn't sound like a jerk.
Part of me wonders if that had something to do with it. At the same time, whenever he bitched about his parents and I suggested he save his money and get an apartment he'd claim they'd get mad. But my ex had a very negative "Everyone wants to screw me over!" attitude so it was most likely an exaggeration.
And yeah, the idea that getting married will make a person more responsible is pretty silly.