She Rolled Her Eyes At Her Boyfriend’s Proposal Because She’d Been Begging Him To Get Married For 25 Years, And He Never Popped The Question
This 52-year-old woman has been dating her boyfriend, 53, for 30 years. A couple of days ago, after having dinner together, her boyfriend finally proposed.
He walked up to her with a box in his hand, handed her the box, and asked her to open it and look inside.
When she opened it, inside was an engagement ring. She had envisioned this day over and over for decades.
However, her apathy was something she never could have predicted. During his proposal, her boyfriend told her that because he was now in retirement, he wanted to be able to relax and soak up as many happy memories with her by his side as he could, adding that he wanted to enjoy their future together as husband and wife.
“A nice speech and all, but from the five-year mark of our relationship onwards, I had been making clear my deep desire to marry and was consistently dismissed, given empty promises, and gaslit,” she said.
Over the years, they have been to couples counseling multiple times. One therapist, in particular, suggested that her persuading her boyfriend to go to therapy wouldn’t mean that he would suddenly decide to marry her.
This seemed to be true, despite how much she wanted to ignore it. For 25 years, her boyfriend delayed proposing to her.
They have four children together. Their oldest three kids are adults, and their youngest, a daughter, is 15-years-old.
At the time of her boyfriend’s proposal, their daughter was sleeping over at a friend’s house.
meghann – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“All of our kids went to a private school filled with typical Southern soccer parents. I had to endure PTA moms’ jabs about me not sharing a last name with my kids. Preteen years were awful because the other kids would taunt my kids, saying, ‘Your dad would rather sin than marry your mom!'” she explained.
On a constant basis, her boyfriend’s mother told him that she was self-centered in wanting to get married because, according to his mother, marriage was only “a piece of paper.”
Throughout her boyfriend’s career, he rose up the corporate ladder, eventually earning an executive at his company.
She was a stay-at-home mother, and because of their vastly different roles, she didn’t feel like there was equality in their relationship.
All the time, she was worried that he could break up with her at any moment, leaving her without any money of her own saved up.
Even though she didn’t always have confidence in the longevity of their relationship, she wanted to stay with him so that their children could experience stability.
Plus, she felt grateful and happy to be with someone who was so smart and accomplished. She was also deeply in love with him.
In recent years, her boyfriend has struggled with his career. While his finances have never, and will never, suffer significantly, the company he worked for began to struggle in 2020 and on, like many other companies experienced during the pandemic.
“He had made enemies out of associates/board members. He decided to step back from his role and take the generous severance agreed upon. Now, he is living off investments and wants to relax. I did not like how his career ended and how he treated people,” she shared.
When her boyfriend retired from his job, she was debating on whether or not she should break up with him and date someone new. Her plan was to wait until their daughter turned 18 to end the relationship.
Because recently she had been leaning toward eventually dumping her boyfriend and no longer brought up getting married, she was stunned by this proposal.
During the proposal, her boyfriend kept going on and on about how he wanted to downsize the house he owned that he referred to as their home. His hope was that they could spend less money on other expenses so that they had more money to spend on traveling together.
Since they’re not married right now, her boyfriend has ownership of all of his finances and his home, so she didn’t understand why he was pretending that what he had was hers by any means.
At one point, she rolled her eyes, and her boyfriend caught this. He was hurt and questioned what was going on.
She told him that the only reason he finally thinks she’s “good enough” to be his wife is because he wants to downsize.
In response, he was furious, claiming that since he’s retired and not an executive at the company he used to work for, she seemed to feel like their relationship wasn’t reputable enough for her. He went on to suggest that he thought she only cared about him because of his money.
This infuriated her, and she walked out of the room. Before she left the room, though, she told her boyfriend that now she might as well start searching for a partner who respected her since she’s gone so long without experiencing someone respecting her.
What advice would you give her?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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