by Gladys Diaz

Recently, I was working with a client who was frustrated about the fact that her long-term boyfriend had not proposed.  Who can blame her?  When you invest a lot of time – months, years, sometimes decades – to a relationship and it doesn’t seem to be moving forward or to be working out, it’s not unusual to begin to feel angry and resentful toward the other person.  And it’s tempting to begin to blame him for the choice you made to stay in the relationship.

While it’s possible that promises were made that had you continue to stay in the relationship – such as him promising that he would propose, and it never happened – the choice to stay inside of a dead-end relationship is completely yours.  You get to decide just how long you are willing to wait.  And you also are the one who decides how long you are willing to put your dreams, your happiness, and your life on hold, waiting for him to pop the question.

I’m not saying that it’s “easy” to walk away from a relationship, especially if you really love the person.  It’s going to take courage to stand for yourself and your dreams.  But if you won’t stand for your dreams, who will?

One mistake women make is to begin to dish out ultimatums, such as:
“If you want to be with me, then you need to propose and give me a ring.”

“If you want us to be together, then we have to go to counseling.”

“If you want us to get back together, then _____.”

 The problem with issuing ultimatums is that they suck the love, romance, and joy right out of the proposal.  Think about it this way: Do you want him to propose because he feels he has to, or because he can’t imagine living his life without you in it?

Issuing ultimatums backs the other person into a corner, and, even if you do get the proposal you want, you will never truly know for sure whether he is marrying you because he really wants to.

And, by the way, this holds true for situations other than proposals.  If you’re trying to get your husband to help you around the house, take you on a vacation, or start a family, and you’re doing that by threatening to leave him, giving him the silent treatment, or withholding sex, you may get what you want, but I promise it won’t be as fulfilling as if you knew that he was doing these things because he wants nothing more than to see you happy.

So, what are the alternatives to issuing ultimatums?

• Be clear about what you want.  Once you know what it is you want, it’s easy to communicate that to you partner.  Let your partner know that you love him and that, for you to be truly happy, you need to be married.  Let him know that while you would love to spend your life with him, you know that may not be what he wants, but that it is what you want.  Then stop talking. If you don’t, it highly likely that you will slip “convincing mode,” and there will be a temptation to start getting emotional and angry, and issue an ultimatum.

• Realize that he may not want what you want.  Just because you want to be married doesn’t mean that he wants that, too.  If you’re with a man who loves and wants to take care of you, there’s a high probability that he’ll want to do what he can to please you and that he wants to spend his life with you.  But there’s also a chance that he may want something different, and that doesn’t mean that either one of you is right or wrong.  You simply want something different.

• Know when it’s time for you to let go.  Before you have this conversation, know how much longer you’re willing to stay in the relationship before moving on. However, don’t share this time frame with him, because then you’ve created a deadline, which means you just issued an ultimatum.  This is your timeline for yourself.

 Once you’ve expressed that you would like to be married without issuing an ultimatum, if there’s still no movement toward marriage after the amount of time that feels right for you, you’re going to have to be courageous enough to let go.  This means it’s time stop putting your life and your happiness on hold, time to move on, and make space for the man who is going to want to commit to spending the rest of his life with you. This does not diminish or lessen any of the love that the two of you shared.  You are simply choosing to stand for your happiness and create space for what you want to come into your life.

In case you’re wondering whether or not this really works.  Remember the client I mentioned at the beginning of the post?

After a few coaching sessions, she had the conversation I described above with her boyfriend.  She waited the amount of time she’d decided she was willing to wait making sure not to keep bringing it up, hinting, or reminding him. What happened? Right before her time frame was up, she got the proposal she had been waiting on for years!

They were married last week and she gets to live the rest of her life knowing that he asked her to marry him because he wanted to, and not because she forced him to!

Here’s to you living the life and love your heart desires!

Questions? Comments?  Let us know below.  We love hearing from you!