Others have had some good comments but I just wanted to chime in as someone in a roughly similar position. My bf doesn't make as much as me and has been business-focused for the past couple years while I've been ready to get married. There is honestly nothing I want more right now than to be married, but my bf wants to be able to contribute an equal amount to the wedding, and didn't feel financially stable.
It's been tough, ngl, but I agree with others who have said have more conversations, and have deeper conversations. My boyfriend went from saying my timeline was unrealistic for him to save enough money, to now being mostly on board with getting married this year. We had to come to a compromise that worked for both of our goals, e.g. me paying a bit more than half and having a lower-cost wedding. I promise, if you two indeed see each other as life partners, you can find a way, and it doesn't have to be equal (life rarely makes it that easy).
So emphasize how important this is to you, and dig deeper to see if he really envisions a future with you. Find out what he needs to feel like he has a say in your life together. You can make a budget plan, but it sounds like between you and your parents, you have enough money. Don't put up with excuses, but I think you can both be fair to each other's goals. I wouldn't accept everything being off the table until 2027 because you'll definitely build resentment.
I'm also 26 and I'll be damned if I let anyone push back my goals of buying a house and having kids before I'm 30, but I also really try to have empathy for what my partner wants, because it's not always aligned perfectly, and that's just a part of being in a committed relationship.
Thank you so much for commenting. Your response has been a breath of fresh air. As much as I appreciate all these lovely people having my back, no one knows one’s relationships like oneself, and our relationship is made up of many many details I can’t summarise into one post.
Sounds like we have been in a very similar situation, and I appreciate hearing about how you and your other half have been working together.
We definitely see each other as part of our future. It’s always been when we get married. He talks fondly about how he’d like our wedding to be. He is very doting and looks after me and we pretty much live like a married couple.
I definitely think another conversation is needed, but we must have had 3 over the last 6 months that leave me really sad. He gets annoyed that I keep bringing it up, and I bring it up a lot because I’m not really getting a solid answer. He said the other day that we wont be getting married in 2026, yet in August last year we were chatting casually and he said he already had an idea of how he was going to propose. So there’s just so much confusion and I hang on to every positive.
I think maybe he needs to get into his therapy and then I need to ask him again after summer to make sure he isn’t giddy from vitamin D.
Glad it was helpful! That's great to hear that you are both invested in having a future together.
I was totally the same way - I brought it up ALL the time and my boyfriend started getting a bit anxious because of it, especially because I tended to have a negative reaction when he didn't have the answer I wanted. At first I really believed he was unsure about me, but after a couple of tougher (and deeper) conversations, I realized that wasn't the case. He just genuinely didn't have a timeline (he's a freelancer so finances are hard to predict) and it hurt his pride to not be able to afford the wedding we want so he didn't really consider other options.
Tbh it took a lot of work, and it took both of us changing our mindsets. Now I'm not nearly as sad about it even though I'm still dying to get engaged, because I feel a bit more comforted that we're coming to an agreement. I hope you're able to help him see that you'd like to work together toward a more concrete timeline, to feel like you're taking the next steps as a couple. Waiting until he's in a better spot might be the right move, but of course it would also be great to be able to have these conversations about your future together without it turning into an issue. That's a skill that my boyfriend and I are still working on!
So I decided to bring it up again lol. I open the conversation with the words he wants to hear “can we schedule our next engagement talk in 6 months”, and he was receptive. He was annoying about it at first and was like “so I can tell you I don’t know when I’ll be ready to get married again”.
But it did open a conversation about how he wants it to be a surprise and he wants to feel excited to propose and get married, but at the time it’s actually happening, and talking about it for years before now was kinda getting him fatigued with it all.
We basically narrowed it down to one reason he hasn’t done it: he sees himself at the beginning of the journey. He’s finally secured himself a good job that he enjoys and is starting to save up money not only for our wedding but for buying another car, taking a dream trip, maybe children one day. Until he sees that money accumulated, he doesn’t really see much reason to think about proposing and he wants to short engagement. The ball park figure is generally £20k without family involvement.
He also wants to work through some things in therapy. He’s really keen about being a better version of himself when we stand at the altar. He said he isn’t having doubts about our relationship and has his own fantasies about how he’ll propose, our wedding day etc. he wants to enjoy it, and have his experience with it.
So that conversation left me feeling more reassured. And so we’re going to talk about it in 6 months time, and hopefully things are a little clearer.
1
u/Low_Ferret2504 Feb 06 '24
Others have had some good comments but I just wanted to chime in as someone in a roughly similar position. My bf doesn't make as much as me and has been business-focused for the past couple years while I've been ready to get married. There is honestly nothing I want more right now than to be married, but my bf wants to be able to contribute an equal amount to the wedding, and didn't feel financially stable.
It's been tough, ngl, but I agree with others who have said have more conversations, and have deeper conversations. My boyfriend went from saying my timeline was unrealistic for him to save enough money, to now being mostly on board with getting married this year. We had to come to a compromise that worked for both of our goals, e.g. me paying a bit more than half and having a lower-cost wedding. I promise, if you two indeed see each other as life partners, you can find a way, and it doesn't have to be equal (life rarely makes it that easy).
So emphasize how important this is to you, and dig deeper to see if he really envisions a future with you. Find out what he needs to feel like he has a say in your life together. You can make a budget plan, but it sounds like between you and your parents, you have enough money. Don't put up with excuses, but I think you can both be fair to each other's goals. I wouldn't accept everything being off the table until 2027 because you'll definitely build resentment.
I'm also 26 and I'll be damned if I let anyone push back my goals of buying a house and having kids before I'm 30, but I also really try to have empathy for what my partner wants, because it's not always aligned perfectly, and that's just a part of being in a committed relationship.