I Was So Happy When I Got Engaged But Now He Won’t Set A Wedding Date – What Now?

I sometimes hear from women who were ecstatic just a short time ago thinking that they had finally reached their ultimate goal. Their boyfriend has finally proposed and they think that they have finally got what they have wanted. Many want to start planning their weddings and their futures right away. But sometimes, the fiancé doesn’t share this sense of urgency. Sometimes, he’s very obvious stalling or dragging his feet about actually having a wedding and a marriage.

I heard from a woman who said: “after three years of pressuring him to marry me, I was finally successful. My fiancé proposed about eighteen months ago. I was so happy. I thought this was a new and wonderful phase of my life. I didn’t expect to start planning a wedding right away but I certainly expected to be married by now. My fiancé seems to be obviously stalling. At first, when I asked him about this, he would say that some short time in the future, we would get started. And then weeks would go by and nothing would happen. Finally, last week I confronted him and asked him why he was stalling, all he would generally say is that the time really wasn’t right and he didn’t know when it would be right. I feel like I am right back to where I started. I worked so hard to get him to propose thinking that was my end goal. But now I realize that the end goal is really to get him down the aisle. And I’m starting to think that it’s never going to happen.”

This woman’s turmoil was very obvious and I felt deeply for her. But it was also obvious that she was about to go down a path that could potentially make things worse. Because it was relatively clear was that her plan was to apply the same type of pressure that she used when she wanted to get engaged. Yes, she had apparently been successful, but not successful enough. Because the same doubts that he had about proposing were potentially still present and were causing him to be reluctant about actually setting a date to get married. I will discuss what I think is the best way to handle this now.

Try To Discover What’s Really Holding Him Back: It was a safe bet that the issue that caused the delay in an engagement was also causing the current delay in getting married. Sometimes, the people involved know what the issue is and sometimes they don’t. This woman wasn’t sure why he was reluctant. The truth was, her fiancé had only had a few serious relationships in his entire life. Because of a difficult childhood, trusting people seemed to be somewhat difficult for him. So although he loved his girlfriend, it was difficult him to trust her enough to share his life with her.

And although she had overcome some of his reservations, this old issue was coming up again. And I felt that it was potentially coming up again because there might have been some underlying resentment in being somewhat pressured into the engagement. So while her inclination was to let him know how impatient and disappointed she was, this probably was not going to be the best call. Instead, I suggested she back off just a little and focus on strengthening the relationship so that he was more comfortable.

Show Compassion Rather Than Impatience: Of course this wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted a wedding as soon as possible and no one could blame her for this. But if she could see past her impatience, she would realize that what she really wanted was to share her life with this man. She wanted to show him that having a happy and secure marriage was possible, even though this wasn’t a reality for his own parents.

To achieve this goal, it’s important that you show him compassion, patience, and love. You need to show him that what is the most important thing to you is him and your relationship. Sure, having the reassurance of a commitment would be nice. But really, what you want is to spend your life with him. Once he understands this, he should relax a bit and be receptive to any positive changes that you need to make in your relationship.

This situation definitely isn’t hopeless. But it’s important that you don’t continue to push when you meet resistance. Because when you do, you run the risk of losing the most important thing to you – which is him.