Friday afternoons are simply delightful. I spend the entire week working on assignments (and stressing about them way too much), squeezing in time to go work out early in the morning, desperately trying to catch up on my beauty sleep…so when Friday afternoons promise a half-day in class (whoo-hoo!) the other half of my day is all about me. I can kick back, relax, maybe take a 2-hour nap, watch yesterday’s episode of The Office and savour ridiculous amounts of cookies and other sweets.
After catching up on my TV shows, I perused globaltv.com in the hopes of finding other episodes to watch. To my great delight I found an old personal favourite, The Nanny. Let me tell you something: I don’t care what people say about Fran Drescher’s voice; the show wouldn’t be as funny without it.
I think about Nanny Fine’s relationship with Mr. Sheffield, how she’s waited 5 years for him to admit his love for her (and not take it back) and another for him to propose (to Niles’ delight and C.C.’s demise) and I realize that, naturally, there are millions of women out there in a similar situation. No, not that there are millions of nannies who fall in love with their bosses and that they cling to the hope that they will be swept off their feet, just like Captain Von Trapp did to Fraulein Maria. Although, The Sound of Music is based on a true story…
What I mean to say is, I know plenty of women who are currently in a relationship, a serious relationship, with great men (actually, they don’t all have great men: some are jackasses, but for the purpose of this post let’s just focus on upstanding men, ok?), and being with their boo for many years now, these women are getting anxious and are wondering “when will he pop the question?” Most of these women I’m referring to have already discussed marriage with their men, so there’s no awkward situation where the guy feels he has to change the subject abruptly whenever his girl mentions the latest episode of Say Yes to the Dress.
Some may feel that, after being together for 6 years, their men are stringing them along. They believe that if after all these years he still can’t figure out if he really wants to marry them, then maybe he’s not that interested in marriage in the first place. Others feel the pressure from their families and their boyfriend’s families who keep pestering them, “Where’s your ring? What’s he waiting for? He shouldn’t be spending all that money on a new car; what he should be doing is saving money for your wedding and a house.”
In a committed relationship, it appears you have to play the waiting game. You wait for the ‘right time’ to get married: for your finances to be in order, to have a more secure job, to be in a ‘right’ place in your career, etc. You wait for your man to be in that ‘right’ place as well, free from debt, with a better pay, and all that jazz. You suspect your man’s reasons for waiting are not all that valid anymore and they start to sound like broken records. In reality your man thinks you sound like a broken record because all you talk about is how so-and-so was dating what’s-his-face for two years and they got married last month and moved in their new house in Repentigny, “When are we gonna get married, honey?!”
There’s no more excitement in waiting for that perfect moment, that instant that’ll mark, hopefully, the beginning of a promising new chapter in your couple’s journey. No, now there’s too much stress. Women feel there’s a deadline fast approaching and if they don’t get proposed to (not married) within the next year, then there’s something wrong with the way they planned their life. Guys feel so much pressure; they have to live up to their girlfriend’s standards, dreams, and expectations of how a perfect hubby should be. No wonder some guys would rather wait a while before taking that giant leap, they don’t want to screw it up.
But let’s be honest: there are women out there who are being strung along by men who clearly do not want to get married. If a woman wants to get married some day, why would she stay in a committed relationship with a man who doesn’t? If a man doesn’t want to get married (to her, or ever), why would he stay in a relationship with someone who obviously does, to him? Things that make you go ‘hmm’…
Talking to my girlfriends who have gone through and are going through this very situation, I understand that there’s no simple solution. If you know he’s the one and he knows you’re the one, then when the time is right, he’ll propose, you’ll have a beautiful wedding, build a strong marriage and pop lots of screaming but cute babies. If he acts a little sketchy whenever you talk about marriage and you’ve been together for 7 years through thick and thin, and he’s still debating whether he should spend the rest of his life with you, well…Who am I to judge? Maybe you can wait another 7 years to figure out if you really want to be that chick who let her life pass by because she was waiting for her man to propose.
And if you’ve got a great man by your side who actually loves the idea of being with you for eternity and beyond, don’t stress him out about popping the question. That’s the best way to make a man resent the thought of preparing an elaborate and romantic wedding proposal; your incessant nagging might have a reverse affect, you know.
Here’s another advice: don’t go talking about your love woes to your friends who are a bit salty about being single, ‘cause you’ll get advice like, “Why you complainin’? (insert attitude and neck rolling) You should be happy he’s not cheating on you”, or “You’re better off that way anyways. Why you wanna get married if you know 50% of marriages end in divorce?“
If your man says he wants to marry you some day and he really means it (not said in an evasive way, followed by “So is that a ‘no’ on the steak or are you still gonna cook it?” don’t sweat it. Armed with the patience of Job, waiting for your man to propose shouldn’t be that dreadful. Hey, at least he's already expressed his love for you and didn’t take it back.
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