Last year, I thought we were getting married. My parents helped me prepare, and I was making decisions around the life my boyfriend and I were supposed to start together. Then the wedding didn’t happen. He wanted to start a business first.
A year later, he says he’s still saving money. We’ve been together for five years, we’re both in our late 30s, and we don’t have another date. Marriage mostly comes up because I bring it up.
I’m not hoping for an expensive wedding. I’d be happy with a simple civil ceremony. His family is financially comfortable, although that doesn’t necessarily tell me what he can afford himself. What I struggle to understand is why money keeps postponing even a modest wedding, without a clear timeline.
I’m currently working abroad. The plan was to get married, leave my overseas job, and settle down with him. I’ve already made choices because I believed that future was coming. I passed up a government career opportunity and chose to teach in his home province. Those were significant decisions, made with our life together in mind.
I respect his ambition to build a business. I understand wanting financial stability. But when last year’s wedding plans fell through, he didn’t seem particularly disappointed. He didn’t take the lead in choosing another date. That has stayed with me as much as the postponement itself.
My parents and siblings are worried too. They think I’ve waited long enough. Hearing that from them is painful because I don’t want to defend a future I can no longer describe with any certainty.
I don’t want to pressure him into a wedding he doesn’t want. I want him to want to marry me, and to have some idea of when we might actually do it. At the moment, I can’t tell whether he’s asking for more time or whether we’re imagining different lives.
If he’d given me a timeline, at least I’d know what I was considering. Instead, I’m trying to decide how much longer to wait for a plan that keeps moving. After five years, do I give him more time, or accept that the future I’ve been arranging my life around may never happen?
