I recently saw a clip from a show/movie where a girl broke up with a man during dinner because she realized he had no intention of proposing. He was confused as to what her issue was with this proposal-anxiety, and she replied something along the lines of "I'm a 28-year-old girl, this is what we do." Yeah, I get it, she's in the epiphany phase so she's craving the ring. There have been hordes of clips from the Steve Harvey/ Dr. Phil show where men are put on the spot for not proposing and horrible advice is given to women to give their man an ultimatum like "I need a proposal soon or I'll leave." I know if I ever get a real ultimatum, I'm ending the relationship. But in the context of just simply talking about the topic, I don't think I can change their minds.
To be clear, I have absolutely zero intention of ever proposing for the usual financial, legal, and child-custody reasons you hear from this space. But after seeing that clip I thought "is this the kind of sh*t I have to look forward to from literally every single woman I date forever? Constant questions about marriage until they realize I'll never propose in which case they'll eventually leave?" All women grow up just EXPECTING that the end-goal of a relationship is marriage, and I don't know how to get past that deep kind of programming.
Men, how do you handle this marriage topic with women?
I'm never getting married but I genuinely don't know the best way to handle this "when are we getting married" stuff. As of right now, I'm leaning toward just telling them "we don't need to get married, why involve the state in our life?" I thought about telling them the damning marriage stats about men and divorce, but I doubt it would resonate with them. So yeah I'm not sure the best course of action here. Appreciate the feedback fellas.