Sometimes I hear from women who are very frustrated that their boyfriend is accepting all the negative stereotypes that are attached to a man getting married. I heard it from a woman who said, “I don’t understand why men think that if they marry the woman they love, their life is suddenly over. It’s like they think there’s a ball and chain waiting for them at the end.” from the aisle or that her girlfriend is just trying to entice him to fatten him up and deny him sex the moment he slips a ring on her finger. These stereotypes hurt us all. I don’t want to tie my boyfriend. down. I don’t want to limit it. But I do want to marry him. I want us to have a happy life together. But when his friends make the ‘ball and chain’ jokes, he laughs it off. I don’t understand. I know tons of married men who are blissfully happy. How can I show my boyfriend that his life doesn’t end once we get married? He knows I want him to propose, but he doesn’t seem to want to. do that soon. He seems to think that marrying me would stop him. I will address these concerns below.
Understand that you are responding to what society tells you instead of responding to how they feel about you: Don’t think for a second that his reluctance or even his thoughts mean that he doesn’t love you and doesn’t want to be with you. Go to any bachelor party or walk the greeting card aisles and check out the cards for men and you’ll see that society’s message to single men is that getting married is like getting old and giving up. The old “ball and chain” image has been around for a long time and isn’t likely to abate any time soon. So you can’t really delete social messages from your world and you can’t stop your boyfriend from listening to them. But what you can do is show him that your relationship does anything but stop him. In fact, you need to show him that your relationship elevates him.
Make sure he knows that the last thing you want is for either of you to “settle” for anything: Have you ever noticed that people refer to marriage as “settling down”? Well, you don’t want him to feel like marriage is “settling” for a second best life. Make sure that your relationship is full of adventure and excitement. Make sure you don’t talk about the future in terms of settling for anything other than what you both want. Make sure they know you’re not going to push for a family, career, or home just because you’re married. Make sure they know that you support their dreams now and the same will be true 10 years from now. Make sure it’s clear that you don’t expect him to support you financially or compromise his dreams for yours. He needs to know that you want him to share and enhance your life, but not just be your life.
Let him see that you want to move on with him instead of stopping him: Make sure it’s very clear to him that your goal is the best, most exciting, most fulfilling life together. They want to be together because they can achieve more together (and have more fun doing it) than apart. Make sure he knows that you have no reason for him to want to feel like he’s missing out or has to settle. You want him to be as happy as humanly possible because this only makes your relationship better and you don’t have any intention of reaching an agreement either.
It’s true that getting over society’s not-so-great messages about marriage can be challenging. But over time, your boyfriend should see that being with you lifts him up, not holds him back. And if you see yourself chasing your own dreams and encouraging him to chase his, he will eventually come to believe that you don’t really need him to commit and marry you, but you want him to because you love him and want to share your life with him.
