My boyfriend of 4.5 years changed his mind about marriage?

A 28-year-old woman is grappling with the sudden revelation that her boyfriend of 4.5 years no longer believes in marriage. While she had always envisioned marriage as the next step in their relationship, he now questions its importance.

Feeling blindsided and heartbroken, she struggles with the possibility of sacrificing her dreams of a wedding and symbolic commitment, or losing the man she deeply loves.

‘ My boyfriend of 4.5 years changed his mind about marriage?’

Here’s what Redditors had to say:

JinnJuice80 −  “What’s the rush”. Also: it’s been 5 years 😂. Not a rush dude.

JMLegend22 −  Tell him you no longer envision a future with him after your most recent conversation. He made his opinion clear, now you’ll make your opinion clear.

ordinary_kittens −  I think you’d have to qualify what “open to marriage” meant for us to answer the question. Marriage was important to me, but I made sure to date someone who also valued getting married.

So, by the time we were talking about getting engaged, we’d already been talking about our valuing of marriage throughout our relationship. Was he having conversations with you your whole relationship about how you both valued marriage and felt it was important?

Or did you mentioned how you’d like to get married a few times and he was like “yeah, maybe that’d be cool, I dunno” As to whether it’s a deal-breaker – that’s up to you, but it would be to me.

DolceVita1 −  You are NOT unreasonable at all. You are 28 and still young. Cut your losses! There will be someone who treasures you and wants more than anything to marry you. It’s very different being newly single in your 20s than 30s or 40s.

He did you a favour by showing you his true intent, now the ball is in your court. Time to act and design the life you want.

TheErrorist −  Not being married protects him, not you. I’ve seen so many cases of unmarried couple that are together for years, sometimes decades, and when the man dies the women is left essentially homeless, with no say in medical decisions, no access to what she thought were shared finances,

and his family pushing her out penniless and heartbroken. Not being married is a huge liability long term, for both of you really, but particularly for whoever is not the main provider (if there is one).

My compromise would be a visit to an attorney to make sure your ducks are in a row and you have power of attorney or something that legally allows you to make medical decisions if necessary, should either of you become incapacitated,

make sure each of you has updated beneficiaries for insurance policies, make sure jointly owned property is documented as such, make sure that whoever is paying the bills leaves access for the other person to accounts and money.

There has to be extra effort to make sure you both have the financial protection of marriage if you forego the legal process of one. If he refuses that, we’ll I’d cut my losses. He’,s showing that he doesn’t care about you like you care about him.

On the other hand, you absolutely do not have to compromise and you deserve someone that wants to marry you. It’s best to leave now and find that, especially if you want a family.

kittywyeth −  he didn’t change his mind about marriage he changed his mind about you

morgaina −  I mean, it sounds like he has no reason to change anything, because wasting your time won’t have any consequences. He doesn’t need to do more or make a real choice, right?

You might need to be really straightforward with him. Maybe even straight up ask *him* if he wants to get married, yes or no, and make a decision going forward from there.

noninonya −  Don’t let him waste another year of your twenties! I know it hurts but be grateful that he told you now

PancakeQueen13 −  This exact same thing actually happened to me. We would literally talk about nice locations to get married or where we’d travel on a honeymoon and 4 years into the relationship, I proposed to him and he rejected it, saying he didn’t really believe in marriage.

I will say from experience, it didn’t work out. I was so convinced he was “the one” and that this would be no big deal because we truly loved each other, so I maintained the relationship for another 2 years, but that was when the rose colored glasses slid off and I started noticing other things about our relationship that ultimately led to our break up.

For me, I realized once I stepped away, that I always wanted the marriage and I didn’t want to just stay boyfriend and girlfriend for eternity. It was something I decided not to compromise on in future relationships and I met my now husband, who knew from Day 1 that marriage was important to me.

Don’t expect your boyfriend to change or be “convinced” to marry you. He’s shown you his feelings deep down. It’s up to you to decide how important marriage actually is to you, and if it is, you might just not be compatible in the long run.

24-sa3t −  Five years is a really long time. That’s 1/6 of your entire life so far. You wouldnt be out of line to tell him what you expect and what will happen if he doesnt propose. Not unreasonable at all! I wonder if he’s worried about finances or maybe he has bad credit and hasnt told you or something