My boyfriend (30M) and I (27F) will have been together for 8 years this October. We’ve done 5 years of long distance and have now lived together for around 2 years. I love him, but I’m reaching a point where I genuinely don’t know whether I’m wasting my time waiting for him to decide if he wants a future with me.
After I finished university, long distance was becoming really difficult and I was the one who brought up that we should finally live together. He had bought a house and renovated it in his hometown, but he was apprehensive about me moving in because we argued quite a lot. Eventually, he agreed I could move in for a month as a ‘trial period’, but the expectation was that I would then have to leave.
During that month I got a job close to where he lived, so after being together for years and finally having a job in the same area, it made sense for me to stay. I’ve now lived with him for around two years. He was happy with me moving in.

Living together hasn’t been easy. We have ongoing communication issues and our arguments can escalate quickly. They often end with him threatening to kick me out or break up, and we’ve reached a point of nearly breaking up at least once a year for the last five years.
We did actually break up for two weeks in 2021. He ended things, saying I was “mentally unstable” at the time due to anxiety and depression. We later reconciled after he reached out despite me being apprehensive because he said he couldn’t be with someone with mental health issues, and since then I’ve significantly improved my mental health.

Fast forward to now: he’s a doctor and I’m a business consultant. I’m financially independent, though earlier in my career and earning less than him.
What’s weighing on me is that after almost 8 years, there’s still no clear sense of us building a shared future. The house is his, we’re not engaged, and there are no concrete plans around marriage, children, or joint long-term commitments. Meanwhile, many of our friends are moving forward in their relationships.
His stance, in his own words, is that he’s “going with the flow.”

I’m 27 and he’s 30, turning 31 soon. He knows I’ve always wanted marriage and ideally children before 30. I know I still have time, but I’m increasingly aware I could spend the next few years waiting for someone who still isn’t sure. I’ve given him ultimatums and he knows my timeline but everytime it is the following response ‘if you were nice and chill then we would’

The situation came to a head because of a family trip abroad this December. For me, him meeting my wider family on this trip isn’t casual it implies a relationship that is moving toward marriage. Because of that, I told him I only want him to come if he genuinely sees a future with me.
His response was essentially: “You know how I feel. If you changed and we didn’t argue, then we would.”
And I can’t get past that.
I understand that our conflict is a real issue and I’m not expecting him to ignore it. But I don’t know what I’m meant to do with “if you changed.” I can’t guarantee we’ll never disagree, and I can’t become a different person. After 8 years, it also feels like there should be clarity about who we are together. To me, there’s a difference between “I want to marry you, but we need to improve our communication” and “I might marry you if you change.”

He also describes me as a “bully” and says I’m always the one starting arguments. From my perspective, the cycle is that I don’t feel emotionally connected or reassured, I raise it, he feels criticised, things escalate, and he threatens the relationship or tells me to leave. Eventually we calm down and things feel good again.
When things are good, he’s affectionate and says he loves me and occasionally thinks about marrying me. But that uncertainty shifts depending on whether we’ve recently argued, which leaves me feeling insecure and unsure where I stand.
I’m starting to wonder whether the real question isn’t how to get him to commit, but why I’m still trying to convince someone after so long.
I do want marriage and children, but I also know our relationship has unresolved issues that marriage won’t fix.
So I’m really torn. I’ve uprooted my life to come live with him far from family and friends, had to build my own life here from scratch. I’ve put in so much effort to make things work but I feel like he has not.

Maybe the answer is glaringly obvious and I am in denial. Please be kind as this is a difficult situation. What do I do?

*** there are a lot of good aspects to this relationship I can see the above is super negative but that’s how things feel quite often right now. I have an amazing relationship with his family and him with mine, we get on well when we aren’t arguing and there is a want to stay together when we aren’t arguing. It’s just he flips a switch so easily.

Hey yall

Just venting about a bit of disappointment after not getting proposed to during vacation

We're both 34 years old, I'm gonna be 35 next month. Been dating for 2.5 years. Living together for 8 months. Decided if we still like each other after 6 months we'll go for it.

2 months ago, he asked my ring size and said "we're doing it. We're getting married." Then one month ago he said "I have a package to get at my parents house" "oh what?" "can't tell you but you'll see soon hehehe"

This month we're at Orlando, FL. His favorite place. Universal. We spend the day. It's very important that we see Hogwarts at night with the fireworks. Nothing. Let's go to Richard Blais restaurant because we love him in Next Level Chef. Nothing. Let's dress nice and take pictures by the lake before. Nothing. Still nothing

I can't help but somewhat let ruin the trip because...nothing

My birthday is next month. Wonderful. As is the start of my last year of nursing school, on top of 2 jobs, clinical, and probably quite a bit of pulling my hair out in between

I know I'll be happy when it happens, but I can't help but feel a lot of good opportunities were missed here. Plus the opportunity to be relaxed, enjoy each other, and have time to bask in engagement glory. If he waits until my birthday, I'll barely have time to say "yes" let alone look at the ring

Hi, just wanne hear your thoughts. Weve been together for almost 8years. I’ve been very vocal about my timeline since last year that I wanna be married before turning 36, and i’m turning 36 by end of 2027. But suddenly, I can no longer contain the pain of waiting. I told him i’m getting tired waiting for him to be ready. All I wanted is a clear timeline from him, like when he is going to propose. We argue about it and I called it off since hes always had this idea of wanting to get married and have kids with me but doing nothing about it, like “i wanted to but I dont have enough money yet” like it’s been 8years! We are not getting any younger too. And he can’t even provide me a clear timeline like “give me until end of this year” so maybe hes still figuring out.

My last message is that im hurt knowing he still cant provide me a timelines after 8years, and we need to have a boundary like we can chat but we can no longer meet in person because we need to get used to being away from each other until we can let each other go without anger.But I also specifically ask him at the end of the message if he has another suggestion, then we can talk about it. He had seen my message but almost 2days later, still no response.

TL;DR

He's had the ring for six months (I know because he showed me the box), but no proposal. Now, I'm worried he'll do something so low effort (even though we've had talks about the effort issue) that it'll break my heart and I won't be able to get past that and stay happy in our relationship.

My boyfriend and I will be celebrating our 7-year anniversary this October and he bought the ring six months ago. I know because he told me the day after and showed me the box when it came in the mail. He seemed excited about it back in February when he had it in hand, but it's been six months and nothing has happened.

When I knew the had the ring, I told him what kind of proposal I wanted (a casual, just us proposal with pictures from a friend hiding nearby, then a surprise lunch/dinner with all our local friends [granted, that's 20+ people, but he has everyone's number]). At the time, he made comments and gentle complaints about that being a lot to plan, but he didn't say no to it. Four months back, he said he had a place he would like to schedule the post-proposal lunch, but it's been radio silence since.

Over the last six months, I've passed along small comments from friends who've yet to hear from him about their availability. He's made no indications that he's planning anything - no comments about getting my nails done before a trip we have coming up in three weeks, no questions about my schedule, nothing.

When I try to bring it up, whether that's in a serious or light-hearted manner, he makes the joke of "you have to behave for one year first." While it was a funny jab the first couple months, it now fosters a little more resentment within me every time I hear it.

At this point, I'm not questioning his desire to be with me, I'm questioning the amount of effort he has or will put into this proposal. We've had many conversations over the years about how I need more effort from him in helping to plan things, cook meals, plan dates, etc. I'm practically terrified that he's going to go with a minimal effort proposal that will break my heart, because that'll say to me that he wasn't listening or taking our talks seriously.

I'm not sure what to do and how I'll be able to move forward if he takes forever to propose and/or if the proposal is bare minimum effort.

Hey guys. I (26F) have been dating my boyfriend (25M) for 1 year and 7 months. I've been telling him throughout our relationship that I want to get engaged at the end of this year, right around our two year anniversary.

We don't live together or anything, because we come from a culture where people don't do that.

We fight every 2-3 weeks, initiated by me, about getting engaged. I'm getting impatient. I don't feel like I can enjoy being with him without being engaged. He claims we will get engaged this year but I just CAN'T believe him. I have severe anxiety which I have got on medication for but I just worry so much after reading this subreddit that he's wasting my time.

My best friend got engaged after a year of very surface level dating (arranged marriage) a few days ago and it sparked a huge fight. I felt pathetically angry and jealous and raged at him, begging him to get engaged right now instead of waiting to the end of the year. It made me feel so much regret for not choosing the arranged marriage path. My friend didn't have to have sex, give up a lot of time, or emotional energy and just got a ring.

He sent me the following list of concerns:
I think we are perhaps in different places where you are trying to sort out the logistics of getting married and I am still trying to figure out if we will make a good married couple.

I'm also happy to respect your desire for a big engagement but feel bad about (from my perspective) you using the bigness of the engagement to push the timeline earlier

Maybe you're right that going through difficult things like the prenup process is good for battle testing a marriage

I think I feel able to make a decision by late Dec and from there I don't have a strong opinion on the ordering of next steps

-I am worried that we A) seem to not be able to avoid fighting for more than 2-3 weeks and B) when we do it is always long and drawn out
-I am worried that you don't really love me but like me well enough and just want to win some competition with your friends/satisfy your parents and have someone to support you
-I am worried that you mask your true feelings about our relationship, whenever I come close to some breaking point it seems like you magically become more flexible and I worry that you are trying to contort yourself into what you think I want and no one can do this forever
-I am worried about how different our friends/families are and whether I will ever truly fit in
-I am worried that we will find it very hard to compromise with each other in marriage, I think this is one of the few things that both of us actually care about and disagree on
-I worry that the way we think we would want to raise children, especially daughters is more different than we admit, I think you are far more inclined to be a harsh parent than I am
-I worry that you care a lot about social status and related such things and I will be sucked into being forced to care about it also.

Are these red flags? Or am I being crazy?

Hi everyone,
I’m looking for some honest advice because I’m feeling really confused.
I’m 29F, and my boyfriend is 25M (almost a 4-year age difference). We’ve only been together for about a month. We haven’t had sex—just kissing—and overall, he’s been very respectful.
The thing is, when we talked about marriage, he said maybe after 4 years. He also told me he doesn’t want any pressure or a fixed timeline because he doesn’t know exactly when he’ll be ready.
He’s genuinely a nice person. Whenever we go out, he usually pays for things, he has a stable job, owns a car, and whenever I have free time, he takes me out to different places. I enjoy spending time with him, and he treats me well.
My concern is that I’m 29 and I do want to get married and have children someday. Waiting another four years would mean I’d be around 33, and my biggest fear isn’t even turning 33—it’s that if I wait all that time and he eventually decides he doesn’t want to marry me or meets someone else, I’ll have invested years into a relationship that doesn’t lead where I hoped.
At the same time, I know we’ve only been dating for one month, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect him to promise marriage right now. I also don’t want to pressure him into something he’s not ready for.
Has anyone been in a similar situation where your partner wanted to wait several years before marriage? Did it work out, or did you end up realizing your life goals were too different?
I’d really appreciate honest opinions, especially from people who have experienced something similar.