Howiestern said:
"anytime you let the female guide the ship you end up crashing like the Titanic"
You're 100% correct here. Man's natural role is to lead. By pressuring you to marry her, she's not giving you the space or the time you need to lead the relationship. Leading implies that the leader takes initiative to make decisions. If she's constantly applying pressure, she isn't giving you the time you need to make the decision on your own. It implies that she isn't willing to leave the decision-making up to you and is trying to lead the relationship by pulling the reigns like a jockey riding a horse.
"She has a lot of great qualities but marriage is a huge risk for a man"
There are a few points you made I'm just going to reiterate. YES. Marriage is a HUGE risk for a man. Financially and legally. Women are going to have to get with the program and start realizing this. There's little to no risk for most women. The risk lies almost entirely on the man. If the vast majority of women stood to lose financially and legally when it comes to marriage, I seriously doubt you'd see as many women pushing for it.
Once again, it goes to a pattern I've seen in many women. If it's a sacrifice they don't have to make, or if it's something they don't have to work for, or if it's money they don't have to spend, then it doesn't count. Many are only concerned with things from THEIR point of view and lack empathy when it comes to a man's blood,sweat, and tears. Once again, a symptom of lack of empathy. They only see it from their point of view. "I want to get married.".
" there were a few things she needed to convince me of before I was certain enough to go down that road. Its almost like she wasn't willing to step up and prove it."
Yes. There were probably some behaviors and attitudes she needed to correct. In this case you were willing to give her a chance because she had some good qualities. This is fine. Sometimes you find a woman with enough good qualities that it's worth it to see if you can make things work. If she has some good qualities and also some problematic behavior or attitudes, sometimes you can get her out of those bad habits. In this case these aren't behaviors that are instant deal-breakers, but could be deal-breakers if the behaviors are consistent, repeated, and long-term. It's like a pipe that leaks slowly. If you can fix the leak, then no problem. If there's a constant, non-stop drip, eventually your place gets flooded and you can't live there.
A lot of women want the marriage but they have to realize that if they have a character or behavioral flaw, they HAVE to work on themselves. Many women have the attitude that the man has to do all of the work but that they are exempt. They just deserve a good man and shouldn't have to put in any effort to get rid of their character flaws. Then what happens is when a woman like this meets a good man, yes, he sees her good qualities and sees her potential, but he notices some problems that need to be corrected and insists, either to himself or verbally to her, that these things need to be corrected first.
If she had been patient and hadn't pressured you and had been willing to work on a few aspects of her attitude and a few things with her behavior, you would have very likely married her or at least been in a committed relationship with her for many years. You had reservations because you saw some issues that needed to be worked out. Instead of working these issues out, she wanted to keep pressuring you. MARRIAGE SOLVES NOTHING!!
MARRIAGE DOES NOT FIX PROBLEMS!! At best things will simply stay the same and at worst things will only get worse. You must correct any foreseeable problems NOW, before the marriage, instead of entering a marriage with some issues that could create marital problems later. If the problems already exist and could be a deal-breaker if they continue to run their course, then you owe it to yourself and to her NOT to get married until these problems are corrected. Anyway, you did the right thing.
