Ask the Lounge About Men

[diebitter]

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She finally gave him an ultimatum, and when the date arrived she left him. Of course soon after that he started begging her to take him back, saying he wanted to marry her, etc. But she found a new man online and got married less than a year later.

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Katy, you should casually tell the guy this story.

[dustyn]

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Any chance a guy who’s living with his girl for 3 years will suddenly agree to marriage after he’s expressed a lot of hesitancy in the past? Is it unlikely? We all would like to know exactly what is going on in that head of his. He knows how badly his girlfriend wants a family because she’s never kept it a secret. Shouldn’t he break it off if he doesn’t want to marry her?

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I agree he probably does want to get married, he just hasn't admitted it to himself. Men, in my opinion, often find themselves in a relationship that they really like but it takes them a lot longer before they admit it to themselves and the outside world. So yes, there's certainly a chance (if not high probability) that he will get married to her.

Marriage is a big deal - perhaps he's concerned that the girl "just wants to get married" because her clock is ticking. I think a lot of guys do'nt want to marry a "clock ticker" because they are marrying people because they're at the age, not because of the guy, although I don't really think this applies to their situation sine they've been together for a while.

What it comes down to is this: they are kind of married already, the guy is comfortable, getting married formalizes it and changes that status quo. When you are comfortable with the status quo, changing it will inevitably bring about hesitation and cause many reasonable people to not want to make a drastic change in their lives. That said, people hesitate about changes they want to make and should make all the time.

[DrewDevil]

I'd love to be Brad Pitt, but not so I could be shackled to Angelina Jolie as she hops around the world on her white-girl missions of mercy.

I'd be laying on a beach in Malibu, organizing that evening's Aspiring Starlet BJ Contest.

God I'm so romantic.

[Blarg]

If the guy says, "One day I want to marry someone just like you," you may be in a little trouble.

[katyseagull]

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Shouldn’t he break it off if he doesn’t want to marry her?

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Yes, but he probably does want to marry her. Eventually. He's just not sure if there's someone else out there he'd want to marry MORE. He doesn't want to close the door on that possibility yet.


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Oh no, this is exactly what every girl is afraid of. See, it's one thing if our guy is simply afraid of committment because he doesn't want to lose his freedoms and doesn't want to be at a wife's beck and call. Or, if he simply doesn't want to grow up. Some girls wouldn't mind if their guy said "Look, I'm just not into getting married. Trust me, if i were into it you'd be the girl no question. I promise I'm not looking for anyone else. I just don't want to get married." But what we do not want to discover is that our guy has been biding his time, waiting to see if something better is going to come down the pike. That's the worst possible scenario if you ask me.

I used to listen to that talk radio psychologist, Dr. Joy, and I remember that she always said men put women into 3 categories: those they will gladly marry, those they will sleep with but have no intention of ever marrying, and those they will not even consider sleeping with ever. I guess I was wondering if my friend's sister (and her non-committal guy) fall into the second category.

[Blarg]

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Shouldn’t he break it off if he doesn’t want to marry her?

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Yes, but he probably does want to marry her. Eventually. He's just not sure if there's someone else out there he'd want to marry MORE. He doesn't want to close the door on that possibility yet.


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Oh no, this is exactly what every girl is afraid of. See, it's one thing if our guy is simply afraid of committment because he doesn't want to lose his freedoms and doesn't want to be at a wife's beck and call. Or, if he simply doesn't want to grow up. Some girls wouldn't mind if their guy said "Look, I'm just not into getting married. Trust me, if i were into it you'd be the girl no question. I promise I'm not looking for anyone else. I just don't want to get married." But what we do not want to discover is that our guy has been biding his time, waiting to see if something better is going to come down the pike. That's the worst possible scenario if you ask me.

I used to listen to that talk radio psychologist, Dr. Joy, and I remember that she always said men put women into 3 categories: those they will gladly marry, those they will sleep with but have no intention of ever marrying, and those they will not even consider sleeping with ever. I guess I was wondering if my friend's sister (and her non-committal guy) fall into the second category.

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That's a really bad classification system. "Gladly marry" or "never marry" as men's only two takes on the matter? How about the most common by far, "not sure if I want to marry" or "not sure when I want to marry, if I want to marry" or "may marry later, but now now" and that perennial favorite, "will marry her because I knocked her up."

"Gladly marry" is from fairy tales. She sounds like a lousy psychologist with a fundamental misunderstanding of men.

Men want to screw, not marry. At least not for a long, long time, if ever. Marriage is the woman's achievement of her primary fantasy, and man's abandonment of his.

[revots33]

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See, it's one thing if our guy is simply afraid of committment because he doesn't want to lose his freedoms and doesn't want to be at a wife's beck and call. Or, if he simply doesn't want to grow up.

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Nah, all these things you mention are symptomatic of the larger issue, which is that a better woman might be out there somewhere.

Seriously, "fear of committment" really just means "fear of committment to YOU." How many times have you seen it where a guy dates a woman for eternity but says he's just not into marriage - then he meets a new girl and is engaged in 6 months?

If he knew she was the one he'd have proposed already IMO.

[Blarg]

If he was into marriage. Which tons of guys just aren't.

But I agree with your underlying point that guys are more than willing to be with someone they don't necessarily want to marry.

So are women. If both sexes weren't willing to do that, they'd spend almost all their time alone. What's funny is, thinking relationships inherently have a goal, and that goal must necessarily be marriage. This is very blinkered thinking.

Marriage is not the all-encompassing reason people form relationships. There are all kinds of reasons to have relationships, and to enjoy them, too. Marriage is only one of them.

[revots33]

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If he was into marriage. Which tons of guys just aren't.

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You might be right, but my feeling is that most if not all guys would be into marrying a girl they are head over heels crazy in love with. But a lot of guys end up in a relationship with someone they like a lot, who's pretty and nice and "good on paper", but where the electric connection (sexual chemistry I guess for lack of a better word) is missing. These are the type of girls that men usually have to convince themselves to marry. If the chemistry is there it takes a lot less convincing.

[Blarg]

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If he was into marriage. Which tons of guys just aren't.

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You might be right, but my feeling is that most if not all guys would be into marrying a girl they are head over heels crazy in love with. But a lot of guys end up in a relationship with someone they like a lot, who's pretty and nice and "good on paper", but where the electric connection (sexual chemistry I guess for lack of a better word) is missing. These are the type of girls that men usually have to convince themselves to marry. If the chemistry is there it takes a lot less convincing.

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For sure on the latter part. On the first part, guys being crazy to marry if they find the right girl, I usually see this in really desperate guys who aren't particularly happy with themselves or their lives, rightly or wrongly, and are grabbing for women like a drowning man grabbing onto anything to keep from sinking.

Seems to me that the guy who doesn't want to marry and the guy who does is also largely a function of time and experience. Wanting to marry before you've really sampled the world in any depth or known what it's like to live on your own, especially before your career starts to settle in a bit and you finally get a little time and disposable income to have fun and explore life with, seems more like fear, conformance with societal expectations, immature desperation, or ignorance. Wanting to marry after you get a better grip on life and how you want to live it, who you really are and what you really like, makes getting married make more sense and be part of a natural evolution toward getting things in your life sensible, sustainable, healthy and the way you want them.

So guy who doesn't want to marry and guy who does are not necessarily guy who isn't selfish vs guy who is, or Peter Pan type guy who's maturity is out of sync with his stage in life and guy who is more together and adult. Not marrying and marrying both can be perfectly in sync with a guy's rational, reasonable needs, desires, and stage in life at the time.

Unfortunately, that may have little to do with where his potential partners needs and desires lie, especially since guys don't have that biological clock driving them nuts like it does so many women.

I just don't think interpretations of men's motives should always be explained from the perspective of women and their own goals, which they usually are. That doesn't make for a real explanation at all, and therefore can only confuse matters. You have to explain and understand men in their own terms, or else it's just misleading venting. And holding either sex blameworthy for not being naturally in sync with the other is very silly.