she gets defensive and says i am holding it against her and thats not what relationships are about. (i believe she uses my lack of experience to tell me this is not the way I should be acting and if i would have been in more relationships then I would have known this)
Well, she's right that you don't "hold things against" your relationship partner and bring up grudges. But her saying "you're holding that against me" can also be used as a way to get you to not bring a valid point up. I'd suggest that if she's always going to react by saying that, that you don't bring it up the way you have.
Say, "I don't feel like those two years we spent as friends while you were with your ex gave me the type of relationship with you that really counts" instead of saying, "the two years you were with your ex don't count". There's a difference: I'm shifting from the latter, which is a statement that she can argue with, to the former, a self-reflection of your own personal feelings. And she can't tell you how you ought to feel.
Bear with me as I answer this: If it's a matter of you being off-course or ignorant about making the relationship work, it's fine and wonderful for a partner to lovingly get you on track and tell you where you're off. But you have to see if she's telling you for the sake of the relationship, if she's doing it out of love for you.
In The Art of Loving, pyschologist Erich Fromm defined love as "the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love".
That means, in a love relationship, two people create an environment in which each helps the other to grow, in which they are free to be themselves without judgment.
IOW, it's about *caring* for the other person, not about *needing* something from the other person.
In a love relationship, each partner cares and gives 100%.
So here's my question:
When she makes her case for why you should hurry up and get married soon before waiting longer runs the risk of having unhealthy children, and tells you how you should act in this regard, and what the relationship should be in this regard,
HOW is she showing 100% care and love for YOU? How does this take into account what YOU, her partner, wants?
It seems to me she's totally ignoring what you want and making an argument for what she wants.
In which case she's not asking for a love relationship. She's asking to breed.
This is not about love. This is about her goals.
Lots of relationships go that way ("let's get married so we can start a family! I want to have children!"), but what happens when the goals are reached, vis a vis, the children are born?
Now you've got a wife (and you're tied to her for a LONG time with a kid or two), a wife who doesn't care 100% for you, nor your personal happiness. What happens then?
Something to think about.
