This is a throw away post for obvious reasons. My fiancé and I have been together for 2 years and change. We got engaged June of 2022. When we would talk about getting married she would tell me she’s busy (she’s in school and 2 jobs) and hasn’t thought about it. This is fine with me. I’ve been married before, I’m not in a rush. We spoken about marriage and I told her I’d be okay with spiritual or legal. Her mom has been divorced 4 times and had pretty nasty divorces that ended in my girl being treated badly – so there’s trauma from that. I respect it but asked her to make a decision so that we’re not in limbo.
We recently talked about it and got into an argument where she told me she has concerns because of her moms divorces. Argument was resolved and she decided on a spiritual marriage.
I’m happy because I got an answer. However, now I feel like an asshole because I’m having weird feelings – feelings of “oh so this relationship isn’t THAT serious”.
Other than this, we’re a great partnership, sex is great, we have a great bond, love to travel and adventure together. Our only issue is that she needs more emotional support than I’m able to give and I don’t think she has accepted that.
This has made me have thoughts of what it would be like to explore elsewhere and I entertained someone’s messages today that I know I shouldn’t have.
I already feel like shit for this so spare the brutality please.
I know it’s all about communication but she flips about everything and I don’t want to deal with it.
TL;DR My girl [31F] and I [33F] are getting spiritually married and it’s making me take our marriage less serious
5 comments
>she flips about everything
Such as?
So she’s too busy to get legally married, she’s got trauma from her parents relationships, you’re not able to give her emotional support, and she tries to gaslight you about your feelings? This isn’t about spiritual marriage or legal marriage, this is about both of you being unhappy with your relationship but not dealing with it well. Have you tried couples counseling?
It’s perfectly OK to want (real, actual legal) marriage and not be willing to settle for anything else. People are allowed to have boundaries and set their own standards. If you want marriage, be honest with her, but you have to be willing to let her go, because one of her non-negotiable boundaries might be that she *doesnt* want marriage.
Sounds like she needs to be in therapy, less for this issue in particular and more due to the fact that her mothers marital failures are still directing the course of her life to an outsized extent.
On that note, are you sure you want to be married to someone who hasn’t/isn’t dealing with their shit?
Ok. If you don’t get legally married, Run a few *worst case scenarios* through your head and figure out how you would deal with them and/or what legal documents you will need to deal with them. Stuff like you having to make medical decisions for her and future baby when she runs into extreme problems during birth. (Her parents would get to take them unless you have the right documents), how does inheritance work if one of you dies. If you dies does she then own your house with your parents (so now you need a will). And so on and so forth. Legally, marriage is a group of contracts between individuals. Make sure you have the important once set up…or just get married at the registers.
I was going to ask what is spiritual marriage, but then I realized that I don’t care.