I’m a guy who is of the belief that when you read stuff intended for women, you learn more and best about what women want and how women think. As such I find myself reading sites like Yahoo! Shine, which has a section on Love and Sex. In that section today was an interesting article about commitment, wherein a woman who had been with her boyfriend for nine – that’s right, nine (9) – years was wondering why he won’t “commit”.
Let me put it this way, if you are a woman, and you think that a ring worth… oh… 1/4th his annual salary, given to you on bended knee, with tears rolling down his eyes as he pops the question is the only way he can truly show sign of commitment, you are basically little more than any guy’s worst nightmare.
For some reason, many, many women have it in the back of their minds that
Marriage = Commitment
Even if you’ve been together for years, living together for most of that time, both of you are faithful to each other and talking about your future together, without the marriage certificate and the wedding rings, somehow the guy is not or has not committed? Somehow I find that very, very hard to believe, and downright insulting to say the least.
So does that mean I’m not committed to my fiancée? Granted we are engaged, and we are planning to get married, albeit three years after our first intention – hey we ran into difficulties. Anyone who tries to tell me I’m not committed to my fiancée until we are married has earned themselves 32 missing teeth.
Our relationship has been built up to the point that when we do get married, nothing about our relationship should change. And that, I feel, is the best way to do things. Now “studies” show that couples who have lived together before getting married are statistically more likely to get divorced. My question is what happened in those individual relationships prior to the marriage. Did they prepare their relationship for marriage by living and acting like they are married?
The question that you need to ask yourself is how important the word “married” is to you. Is it really that important you be able to refer to the man in your life as “my husband”? And if so, why? What are you hoping to gain from getting or being married that you cannot have without the marriage certificate? In actuality, from what research I’ve done, there is virtually no difference – if you build your relationship properly.
In the company that employs me, one aspect of a promotion to the next pay grade is that you have already started doing work applicable to that pay grade. You do the work, then you get the title, not vice versa. Relationships really should be the same thing. After all you wouldn’t call a guy your boyfriend unless he actually acted like a boyfriend right? So why jump for “commitment” into marriage if he’s not acting like a husband? Do you think getting married will make him a husband? Fat chance.
