What to do..?

I get it. People start a relationship because of a shared connection. They fall in love. They never address the huge elephants, the big, insurmountable barriers. It’s easier to just focus on what is working and hope somehow the deal breakers disappear.

In a worse case scenario pregnancy is used to force a commitment. In this case, it is just a reasonable point of leverage, the time induced ultimatum. It’s time to address the elephants that should have been handled the first month.

There is a 3rd option to consider. Do the tough, but right thing and do not waste anymore of her time or your time.

But first, stop kidding yourself that you are going to move away from your family and find happiness. You do not want to. After the first honeymoon month, you are going to be miserable to live with. Just take that option off the table. She wants it more than you. You are just mentally simulating some green grass on the other side of the fence that in your heart know isn’t there. You can love her all you want. It isn’t going to make you into something you’re not.

Second, tell her you are not going to ever live in the city. Tell her if she wants family, you come as is, a country man on a chicken farm. Don’t manipulate, don’t pressure. Just accept reality. Tell her if she can be happy living in the country, great! If she can’t, apologize for not addressing the elephants earlier and move on with life.

Whatever you do, don’t manipulate or be manipulated. I’m not just saying intentionally, I’m saying pay careful attention to subtle promises, unintentional manipulations where you agree to “make it work”.

A 4th option, if you have the freedom, is to just pack two bags and live in the city for 3-6 months. Prove me wrong. Prove to yourself that the city isn’t nearly as bad as you thought and that you can live away from your family without issue. No visiting family on weekends, no being an isolated city hermit. No fishing, no hunting, no country living while you adjust to city life.

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:I get it. People start a relationship because of a shared connection. They fall in love. They never address the huge elephants, the big, insurmountable barriers. It’s easier to just focus on what is working and hope somehow the deal breakers disappear.

In a worse case scenario pregnancy is used to force a commitment. In this case, it is just a reasonable point of leverage, the time induced ultimatum. It’s time to address the elephants that should have been handled the first month.

There is a 3rd option to consider. Do the tough, but right thing and do not waste anymore of her time or your time.

But first, stop kidding yourself that you are going to move away from your family and find happiness. You do not want to. After the first honeymoon month, you are going to be miserable to live with. Just take that option off the table. She wants it more than you. You are just mentally simulating some green grass on the other side of the fence that in your heart know isn’t there. You can love her all you want. It isn’t going to make you into something you’re not.

Second, tell her you are not going to ever live in the city. Tell her if she wants family, you come as is, a country man on a chicken farm. Don’t manipulate, don’t pressure. Just accept reality. Tell her if she can be happy living in the country, great! If she can’t, apologize for not addressing the elephants earlier and move on with life.

Whatever you do, don’t manipulate or be manipulated. I’m not just saying intentionally, I’m saying pay careful attention to subtle promises, unintentional manipulations where you agree to “make it work”.

A 4th option, if you have the freedom, is to just pack two bags and live in the city for 3-6 months. Prove me wrong. Prove to yourself that the city isn’t nearly as bad as you thought and that you can live away from your family without issue. No visiting family on weekends, no being an isolated city hermit. No fishing, no hunting, no country living while you adjust to city life.

I do think I could do it, it'd just suck for a while, while I got used to it.

I'm already an isolated hermit here though so I'd probably be one there as well lol

Chicken farming isn't my passion either lol, it's not like I'd be leaving my dream job to go live with her, it just took a long time to find it after my previous job, I worry how long I'd be out of work again.
If I got fired or layed off I'd probably go stay with her and look for work up there no problem. It's just when it's my choice to be unemployed I'm not so keen.

She's said she'd help me out and support me while I look but I dunno to what extent, what if it takes another 8 months to find something? I don't wanna be a burden.
And if worse comes to worse she's said I could work where her dad and uncle work they can get me a job, but I don't want some factory job.

The pregnancy thing isn't a worry, she got the rod for me and isn't taking it out till I'm ready/want to have kids,
She's defo a keeper, one in a million, I won't find another one like her.

I could rent my place out but I worry about that too, I worry they'd **** my place up or stop paying the rent and it'd turn into some giant hassle.
The best option there would be to rent it to my bro but I'm not sure he'll be still living with out parents in like 12 - 18 months

There's just a lot of sh** to think about.
I know it probably seems like I'm making excuses to go there now but I'm just giving the reasons for. I gave all the reasons against in my OP.

Also I've been unhappy I'd say most of my years in this life and she really makes me happy I see the points you made about manipulating/being manipulated but I don't think it's like that.

It's more just something I have to be ready for, I'm not yet.

theforsaken wrote:It's more just something I have to be ready for, I'm not yet.

The ultimatum game.

No saying, “I don’t know”. When will you be ready?

I know a guy that dated a woman for three years. She even relocated to his city, but they didn’t live together. He kept dragging it out, asking for more time. It was reason after reason not to get married yet. She loved him so she kept giving him more time.

It wasn’t fair to her. They are both good people. It’s just that he would have allowed it to go on indefinitely. There was always a reason to wait a little longer. And the reasons didn’t change, it was more an emotional readiness to accept the change.

She has already told you the plan. She has jobs lined up for you. You have reasons/concerns A thru Z. You are never going to be ready. You are never going to get to a comfort level that removes the discomfort. The concerns you have are not going to be somehow cleared up in six months or a year from now.

She should not have to sell you or convince you or comfort you anymore than it sounds like she already has. Right? She has done her job, she has held up her end of the relationship, right?

You know the future staying where you are. If you do not move and give the relationship a chance you will regret your inaction. You will spend a lifetime wondering “what if” and mentally guessing what might have been.

You might also regret moving, but it will be the regret of action. You will learn first hand the pain and suffering of living in the city. You will experience it. There will not be the pain of “what if”. If it doesn’t work out, you learn and move forward in life.

You face regret either way, but the regret of inaction is something you believe you can fix. You just need more time you think. You’re not ready...yet. Maintain the current path until you figure things out you say. But, this is not fair to either of you. You know this, hence you posting in here.

The ultimatum game. I feel for you, but you need to make a decision. If you truly care about this woman, she deserves a definite yes/no.

I tend to agree with Richard here. I think she's what you see as the answer to your aimless life and desire for a better life. She can't fill those holes for you, so you need to be honest and realistic about your decisions.
I would suggest NO marriage at this point, NO children even if she's on contraception "I've no idea why it didn't work honey, but I guess it was meant to be". If you feel you can adapt then move there, live together and see each other warts and all, good days, bad days, tired etc. You can look for work so she doesn't keep you.. A relationship killer for sure. There's no rush to move through the gears, so take time and if you're not happy in 6 months, you won't be so end it and move back.
Best wishes

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:A 4th option, if you have the freedom, is to just pack two bags and live in the city for 3-6 months. Prove me wrong. Prove to yourself that the city isn’t nearly as bad as you thought and that you can live away from your family without issue. No visiting family on weekends, no being an isolated city hermit. No fishing, no hunting, no country living while you adjust to city life.

Definitely a plan, if only to establish once and for all that you don't want to be the one who migrates.

I do remember you, theforsaken. Every so often you pop back with the same issue, either should you move to an Asian country or how can you get an Asian girlfriend into Australia. This is at least the third time (but who's counting) that a woman who isn't Australian has looked like the answer to all your prayers. I raise that because it would be far less stressful for both parties if your future wife's background was similar to your own.

Speaking to the current issue: take a few months off as Richard suggests, give it your best shot over there as if it were permanent, so you two will have some idea what it would be like to live together. On her turf, it will be up to her to make that option seem viable to you.

Having ruled that out, it's a matter of whether she's prepared to leave her family and city lifestyle. A woman with nursing experience who speaks English is probably more employable in rural Australia than a chicken farmer would be in a foreign city.

Candid, it's not exactly the same thing this time. This is alot bigger and a lot more serious, and this girl is 1000 times better. I really believe she's the one.

And I believe the post about the overseas Asian girlfriend was only once, there defo wasn't 3 Asian girlfriends lol. I might have made 3 posts about the same thing? I dunno.

Anyway, the plot thickens:

This afternoon she wanted to talk about it, she says she'll move here, leaving her life behind there to start a new one with me here, on the condition that I "meet her half way".
She said that my end of the bargain is that I'll have to agree to demolish and rebuild my house to be bigger and more suited for children/a family (she doesn't have any but wants them in the future)

I have concerns about this too, but it's more of an attractive deal than me going to live in the concrete jungle where I'd probably only find shitty factory work.
I told her maybe but no definite yes yet, and to just leave it with me because it's a lot to process.
I just worry she'd end up unhappy and want to go back, and it'd end up all being for nothing.
Also if that happens, because we'd have to split it because we would be sharing the new place, I'd have nowhere to live. Those are my biggest concerns with this option.
I told her these concerns and she says she'll be happy as long as our life together is moving forward, and she said we can get prenups and postnups and sh** if I'm worried about losing my land/house in the future. (I'm not sure how effective those things are but anyway)

I know it's because we're both over 30 (I'm 31 she's 32) and she wants a family with me, and I believe she genuinely loves me not like the last one I wrote about here. but she tends to try to plan and rush things a lot. I told her this feels like something we should be doing in 10 years rather than in the near future, and her rebuttal to that was it'll be harder to do it when we have a kid or two.

Ugh. She needs to learn how to negotiate from a position of strength rather than weakness. She is basically giving you everything you want as she feels time pressure. She is even willing to offer up things you didn’t even ask for, e.g. prenup. She wants this to happen and she wants it to happen NOW!

NEVER negotiate, never sign a contract under time pressure.

You are correct to hesitate. You need to ask yourself, “Why is she so willing and in such a hurry to negotiate away all the things you said she loved? What’s the catch?”

Think of it this way. A major life decision is buying a house. If a real estate agent was throwing in extras and pressuring you to sign, would you think that it was just because you are such a great customer? Or would you wonder what might be wrong with the foundation? Why is the agent so anxious to get you to sign the contract?

My guess is she is focused on family and having a baby. Don’t get me wrong. You are the one she has chosen. Hurray for you. That’s great. But, you are also a means to an end that has the clock ticking. She is so focused on this biologically driven goal that she is willingly giving up all other goals.

My question, how long before the biologically driven goal is met and then she refocuses to the other goals? She has the renovated house, she has the baby, she has you and you have served her biologically driven purpose...now what?

One possibility...the one you hope for...is that her new goals align with her new life. You hope she is a person that adopts goals aligned with a rural lifestyle. The other possibility is that she begins to regret old goals she gave up to achieve the biologically driven goal.

You say 10 years. You might have a great, wonderful connection, but it sounds like you two are on a much different time line. You are in no hurry. You have no reason to be in a hurry. You can easily wait 10 years. She can’t.

I’m rambling, but I hope something I have written gives you something to consider. You are correct to hesitate. She is negotiating under pressure. Is that a good foundation for the relationship?

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:Ugh. She needs to learn how to negotiate from a position of strength rather than weakness. She is basically giving you everything you want as she feels time pressure. She is even willing to offer up things you didn’t even ask for, e.g. prenup. She wants this to happen and she wants it to happen NOW!

NEVER negotiate, never sign a contract under time pressure.

You are correct to hesitate. You need to ask yourself, “Why is she so willing and in such a hurry to negotiate away all the things you said she loved? What’s the catch?”

Think of it this way. A major life decision is buying a house. If a real estate agent was throwing in extras and pressuring you to sign, would you think that it was just because you are such a great customer? Or would you wonder what might be wrong with the foundation? Why is the agent so anxious to get you to sign the contract?

My guess is she is focused on family and having a baby. Don’t get me wrong. You are the one she has chosen. Hurray for you. That’s great. But, you are also a means to an end that has the clock ticking. She is so focused on this biologically driven goal that she is willingly giving up all other goals.

My question, how long before the biologically driven goal is met and then she refocuses to the other goals? She has the renovated house, she has the baby, she has you and you have served her biologically driven purpose...now what?

One possibility...the one you hope for...is that her new goals align with her new life. You hope she is a person that adopts goals aligned with a rural lifestyle. The other possibility is that she begins to regret old goals she gave up to achieve the biologically driven goal.

You say 10 years. You might have a great, wonderful connection, but it sounds like you two are on a much different time line. You are in no hurry. You have no reason to be in a hurry. You can easily wait 10 years. She can’t.

I’m rambling, but I hope something I have written gives you something to consider. You are correct to hesitate. She is negotiating under pressure. Is that a good foundation for the relationship?

I'm thinking I'll tell her to wait until we're at least engaged before starting to think about and plan this, the wedding was the first thing she was trying to rush into and plan everything right this second, now it's this.
I am planning on proposing but it's not gonna be tomorrow lol, probably early next year at the earliest. I want at least a year together first, I dont think I'm asking too much with that.

theforsaken wrote: I'm thinking I'll tell her to wait until we're at least engaged before starting to think about and plan this, the wedding was the first thing she was trying to rush into and plan everything right this second, now it's this.

So having dated, two people care deeply for one another. One way to describe the feeling is to say these two people are very much in love. To be together, one person will have to agree to move.

Do you:

(A) Get engaged first. Then negotiate an agreement and develop a plan about who will move where and how?

(B) Negotiate an agreement and develop a plan, then get engaged?

We have lost sight of the purpose of marriage. It was never intended and has never been about an emotional feeling between two people. It is a legal contract. There was no engagement until the negotiations were complete.

Historically, marriage was negotiated between families. I’m not saying it is right or wrong. I’m saying think about it. We, in a digital world with less dependence on our immediate family, have lost understanding of the meaning and process of marriage as a negotiation and legal contract.

Today, instead of families, instead of elders in a village coming together to help young, inexperienced members to negotiate a marriage, it is all too common for naive individuals to wade through the process with little guidance.

YOU are using the idea of an engagement as a tool. It is a tool to delay decisions, to temporarily bury your head in the sand and say, “We will figure it out later”. Do not do that.

A woman doesn’t begin to plan a wedding if you have not given her some serious indication that a wedding will happen. A woman doesn’t negotiate a bigger house in exchange to relocate if the man has not made some promises.

You are digging yourself a deeper hole. Put down the shovel. Stop making promises that later on you may not be willing to fulfill. You are telling her things she wants to hear. You are floating ideas, potential plans, different options and she is taking those ideas as a “handshake deal”.

Why?

Why is she taking what you are telling her as all but a done deal? What promises are you making that now you are wanting to pull back from?

I’m with you as far as putting the brakes on things. As with my last response, you do not have the time pressure that she apparently has. You two are on different clocks.

BUT DON’T dangle an engagement and say you will figure things out after the engagement. That is total bs. That is not fair to her and it is not the process or purpose of a marriage contract.

If you need more time, then you need to spend that time actively at the negotiating table, writing things down on paper, making agreements. You don’t spend that time making verbal promises that sound good, but that you don’t know or you’re not sure, or maybe this or possibly that. IF you are not going to sit at the table with her and hammer out the contract, then cut her loose.

I would say What's Her Rush, but we know that women who want children get to that age where the clock is ticking, as Richard already pointed out.

It seems to me that she is using you, that she has been putting on the charm to win you over, to make you "believe" in her, in order to meet her agenda. Men are easy to win over, if they want to be won over.

I would see her pushiness in this relationship as a red flag.

quietvoice wrote:I would see her pushiness in this relationship as a red flag.

To be fair, the OP has plenty of red flags if we look at it from her perspective.

My rhetorical question is why is she “pushy”?

The answer is because love is conditional.

She has a primary goal (condition) that is time sensitive. She wants a baby. The OP is her current best shot at accomplishing that goal.

Tomorrow the OP tells her that he has decided he does not want a child for at least ten more years. What happens? She dumps him immediately and begins to look for a man that is willing to help her accomplish her goal.

What does the above paragraph tell us? What should the OP take from this reality? It should be a clear message that love is conditional.

Love is conditional. Her love is predicated on having a baby within a certain window of time. If the OP is not able to meet those conditions then she will find another man to love. End of story. Full stop.

The OP is thinking to dangle an engagement. The OP is using delaying tactics. The OP does not want to move to the city, but also doesn’t want to update his house. The OP is fine with her moving to him, changing nothing, and then figuring things out later. Those should be HUGE red flags for her. The OP gave her strong indications that he was going to meet her conditions, but now he is pulling his tentative agreement off the table.

If I was giving her advice I would tell her to run far and run fast from this relationship.

Sorry, theforsaken, but I agree with Richard and quietvoice. The biological clock is ticking here. She may not be consciously aware of it, but that's what's driving her: "I'm in my 30s. If I don't get established fast, I'll never have children." PANIC!

I think you too need to run far and fast from this relationship. Then I think we should get down to what's driving YOU.

Well guys, things have changed again, I still don't want to live in the city really, But I just got let go from my job and if I want to go and find work up there and be with her I can now, I think I'm gonna just take a few weeks to clean my place right up and see if I can't find something else here first. If not I'm gonna go.

I'll need a forklift licence for the job her uncle has so in my few weeks off I'll probably do that course as well.

Looking at it as an opportunity, to try something new and be with my woman. Although now my confidence is a bit shot, I don't think I was a bad worker, I just don't think the current manager I was with liked me. I did do something wrong and broke one of the rules but that was a little while ago now, they should have fired me then instead of now when I'm 1 month short of the 6 month probation but whatever I guess.

I'm gonna go get a dude's phone number who said he'd be a referee for me then I'm gonna go visit my gf for a few days.
I'm gonna start hitting the weights hard again as well when I come back, get real healthy, I just feel like I need something like that. Something I can be proud of that I did.

From an outside perspective it sounds like you are treating this woman like a consolation prize.

“Well, door A didn’t work out for me, but I’m going to try out what is behind door B for a few weeks. If that doesn’t work out, then I guess I’ll open door C and accept a job were my woman lives.”

I know...or at least I must believe that you don’t realize how your thought process sounds to someone outside looking in. It sounds broken as it relates to how you are treating this other human being that theoretically you care about, that theoretically is in your words the best or a one in a million. Really? She is so awesome, but not awesome enough to NOT treat her like Door C, like the last option available.

Let her go. You do not want to change. She is not your priority in life. And there is nothing wrong with that. You shouldn’t have to change if you don’t want to change. But don’t keep stringing her along.