I am not sure that I want to get married just yet

However we have had a very stormy relationship whereby she only wanted to see me every five to eight days. For once and for all I called it off, saying I couldn't cope with never seeing her.

Suddenly after two weeks she phoned me saying that she missed me badly and said she felt strongly about me. Anyway to get to the point, I said that she was ideal and that in principle she is the sort of girl I would want to marry.

However, she interpreted this as getting engaged. Whilst I do want to marry her, I certainly want some track record of it going steady for a good year. However she is talking about an engagement party, a wedding date, etc and things have gone mad.

I am meeting her Dad this weekend and fear I am sliding down a slope that I'm not going to be able to get out of. However, I don't want to lose her as my feelings are extremely strong for her (and vice versa).

I told her exactly what I've written here, but it seems to go in one ear and out the other. It may be cultural as she is Jamaican.

Incidentally she confessed the reason she didn't want to see me frequently to begin with was because my mate had been bad-mouthing her behind her back and she felt hurt.

Answer
David writes:

Well, you must do something urgent before the weekend.

Under the circumstances, it would be crazy to meet her dad at this moment - since that would merely take you further along the conveyor belt to a wedding day.

It's clear that you two need a lot of time to stand back and think things over. So you must tell her now that you haven't actually agreed to get married! Over to Christine ...

Christine adds:

It sounds as if this is a really loving and passionate relationship - but a very volatile one too. It's only recently that your girlfriend would only see you every five to eight days. Something that you interpreted as 'Never seeing her.'!

Now, suddenly, you're rushing headlong into matrimony. I can see that you don't want to upset her, but I do think that the two of you need to calm things down.

Why not take her away this weekend instead of going to her dad's - and have a romantic time and calmly discuss your future.

It sounds like you wouldn't mind having an understanding that you hope to wed if everything goes well - so you could buy her something nice to celebrate that.

You could also make some arrangements either to live together or to do some pretty special things this year - so that she knows that you want to romance her and woo her properly.

But, I agree with David, that if you allow yourself to be swept into matrimonial arrangements that you're not ready for, you are likely to get more and more fed up and the relationship is unlikely to weather your feelings of being put upon, and her feelings of disappointment when you inevitably call the whole thing off.

So, please, take courage and cool it. After all, when you stopped seeing her earlier in the year, she came running.

So, I sincerely hope that if you tell her that you want to get to know her more, go steady, have a wonderfully romantic time and gradually prepare for a long-term future together, she will see this as reasonable, decent and honourable. If she doesn't, well, that is her loss. And maybe that would mean that your relationship is always going to be too stormy to settle into the kind of loving romance that you could both enjoy - and live with - long term.

Good luck!

Yours sincerely

Dr David Delvin, GP, and Christine Webber, sex and relationships expert

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