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I want to ask my girlfriend of 8 months to marry me and get engaged. We won't get married this year maybe next but 8 months is a long time isn't it?
My sister and friends are saying no but my mum is supportive saying do whatever makes me happy.
Is it normal? I know my girlfriend is fine with it. We already talked about marriage within the first 5 months.
Ty
I knew my girlfriend for two years before moving in together. Marraige is just a government sanctioned living arrangement. Really get down what you and your partner expect out of a marriage, figuring out ahead what being a husband or wife means to you both. By the time we got married it was mostly just doing the paperwork.
Infatuation is unfortunately a well documented stage of love that blinds you to flaws and beliefs at the front end of a relationship to make it more likely you'll breed. Committing is much harder and much more challenging to sustain. My wife did a white dress church wedding with her first husband and all her friends and family there she knew basically from childhood planned out well in advance, cost thousands and was indescribably miserable. We got courthouse married for about $60 with just her immediate family attending and couldn't have been happier, because she got the wedding she wanted.
Engaged is fine if you want to make it a social inevitability, but be crystal clear about where you and your partner are headed. Also your mom is right, screw everyone else's opinion and just do what will make you both happy. Just be willing to live with it.
Are you currently living with her? If not then you two should be for about a year before thinking about marriage. I didn't follow my own advice and now I am in a sexless miserable marriage that the sooner it ends the better.
I'm wondering why your sisters and friends are discouraging you. Is it because you're wanting to get married, or is it because you're wanting to marry this particular woman?
I've been married three times (divorced once, widowed once, and currently married), and I think marriage is overrated. Also, far too many people - women, especially - turn weddings into a huge thing. It's like they see their "Big Day" as being their chance to be a real-life Disney princess for a few hours, and the wedding becomes an end in itself.
In fact, the wedding ceremony itself doesn't matter a damn. KiwiWisdom's tale about his wife's first marriage is unfortunately not that uncommon. Where and how you get married doesn't matter at all; what matters is making the commitment to each other and how the couple treat each other from minute to minute, before, on and after their wedding day.
The only real benefit of marriage is that the legal entanglement encourages the couple to sort out the problems that will inevitably arise between them. It's simply not possible to stomp out the door and ghost the other person after an argument. This is particularly important when kids are involved, but being forced to deal with tensions and conflicts and coming out of the process feeling better about the other person and yourself can be a very positive thing.
If you and your girlfriend are certain after eight months that you want to spend the rest of your lives together and you're convinced that this isn't just due to you both being high on happy-hormones, then go ahead and get engaged.
However, I think that cohabiting and making a private commitment to each other to work out any problems you may have and stay together is a far better arrangement than marriage. Things change once any kids are involved, but any sensible person does their best to avoid putting themselves into an arrangement that can only be terminated by involving lawyers and the legal system.