Put A Ring On It

When you’ve been living with a guy for two to three years, sometimes he can get stuck in his ways and used to the fact that you’re around all of the time. You’re ready and waiting for him to pop the question, but it seems like he hasn’t even thought of it — so why not drop a few hints to your man so that he knows that you’re truly ready to become engaged?

Together with Angelic Diamonds, retailers of bespoke engagement rings, we can advise on how to point your husband-to-be in the direction of a big proposal.

Keep your friends close, but your married friends closer

If you know that your boyfriend is slightly worried or anxious about getting engaged, make sure he hangs around with your married friends and family members who have children. This will make him realise that you’re comfortable with him being around others in more serious relationships.

Married friends will help show your other half that marriage has its ups and downs, but this commitment shown through other people will help him envision this with you. Although men who have parents that are divorced sometimes struggle to trust this commitment, replacing negative feelings with positive ones in this type of environment may help to bring him around to your way of thinking.

Remember you are his friend, as well as his partner

Sometimes when you’re in a relationship, you can fall into assigned roles and forget that you are not just partners, but friends as well.  If you’re constantly being left behind for the guys to do all the things he considers fun, then this is going to put a strain on his ability to propose and take you seriously.

Get him involved in your hobbies and take more interest in his.  Acknowledge that you both need time for your friends, but that you both started out as friends too.  Do things together.  Have fun and remember what interests you have in common.  If you can be part of his whole life, rather than just someone he spends time with, then he’ll feel like you’re indispensable. Once you get to this point in your relationship, then he’ll feel like proposing, as he can’t spend his time without you!

Don't let things go stale

It is easy to get complacent in a relationship and start taking each other for granted.  Although many don’t like to do this, sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind. If you don’t see your relationship heading in the right direction, and things are flatlining, try and find his pulse again by telling him you may move out.

Or, if you don’t want to be as dramatic, why not try changing careers without letting him know, or spending more time with the girls unannounced? Although he knows that you’re always there for him, this will make him feel that he isn’t being as included as he should be, and he’ll start to wonder why. Keeping him on his toes in this way will make him realise that he needs to put the effort in (by proposing!) so that he can get your undivided effort and attention in the future.

Honesty is the best policy

Although there are many hints and tricks you could use to get your other half to propose, sometimes communication really is key to the success of a relationship. If you want to get engaged, then why not talk to him about why it’s important to you.

If you can tell him why you want to marry him, then the likelihood is he’ll know how much he means to you. Sometimes people have the same fears and doubts within a relationship, but they are just too afraid to address them with each other. By talking about your future together, he’ll know that you want to be a part of it. By giving him that gentle nudge in the right direction, you may just be engaged before you know it. 

Not Good Enough

The title is a little depressing isn't it?  Sorry about that.  But I have a million thoughts in my head right now and my blog is the vehicle is take them out and do something with them.  That is what it was created for, so here I am.

Be warned, this is a very honest post and a probably a trigger warning for anyone reading who is feeling and does feel the same as I; not good enough.

I watched a film tonight that I had recorded the other day.  Not my usual genre at all. The Vow.  This is the one with Channing Tatum (ok maybe why I chose to watch it) and Rachel McAdam.  The one where they have a crash and she loses all her memories, including those of him, her husband.

The main focus of the film is him trying to get her to fall back in love with him.  Whilst watching the film a thought entered my head that, I will be honest, has broken me a little ever since.  I thought that in reverse, a man would never fall in love with me twice.

I have struggled with feeling not good enough all of my life.  At first, for many years, I thought that I felt like this because of my body shape, but that isn't it.  I am confident in my body as it is, and wear clothes that do not make me invisible.

Which makes it worse really, because what I do not feel good enough about is myself.  I feel a lot like the picture below.  Stranded on an island with nothing surrounding me, nothing that can reach me.

An island is probably the most accurate description of how I have always felt.  I have been single for the majority of the time since I was 18.  I don't know why.  That is just how it is.  At 38, I think a lot now that maybe this is the way that I will always be.  I have amazing friends, a lovely but small family; maybe this is how it is going to be.

I have tried online dating.  I got a lot of responses, mainly from people who wanted to make me a fetish, others that copy and pasted their messages en masse to any woman they saw and of course, the most recent encounter with a potentially dangerous man.

I have been in love (really totally in love) once in my life.  With someone who was 95% right for me but someone who I knew deep down would never love me.  But damn, I loved him.  I used to say that he broke my heart but in reality, I broke my own on someone who I knew loved me as a friend, but nothing else.  Drunken kisses and "other things" didn't help matters.  He loved me, but not my body and that was my fault.  I couldn't accept that.

Every time I meet someone I seem to strive to change myself into what I think that they want me to be.  I change who am I, and then lose myself.  I cannot get over the overriding thought that I am not good enough as I am.

Jesus this is honest isn't it?  I don't like being this honest but if I am not, my mind will shove those feelings back into the box in my brain and not think about it again for a while; which is not healthy.  Publishing this means my words, and thoughts are real and not taken back and denied in the "I am fine, honestly!" kind of way.

So where do I go from here?  I don't know.  All I know right now is that I never feel good enough and that I unconsciously run from anyone who I think may like me, for fear of rejection.  I don't want to feel like this anymore because I AM good enough.

My head knows that. I just need my heart to remember that.

Signing off now.  Thanks for listening.

Rainy Days & Mondays

I have always had a love/hate relationship with rain.  99% of the time rain is an irritating and frustrating thing if you are caught out in it.  It comes down when you want sunshine, it gets you soaked on your way to work, it makes you have to change your complete outfit at the last minute; too much of it causes floods…  The list is infinite.

But then, there is the 1% that I love.

Last night the air was warm and my senses were tingling in that way when you know that it is about to absolutely pour down with rain. The kind that you could almost take a shower in.  I watched out of my window, waiting for it to happen.  Everything seemed to be on a pause, the wind was still and everything was waiting for the first drop to fall.  Then suddenly, it starts and it’s raining so heavily it’s like someone is pouring a bucket of water over the world.

I felt that inexplicable pull to go outside and stand there in the rain.  The thought in my head sounded ridiculous.  Why would I want to go outside and get soaked?  But I did.  I wanted to.  So before I knew it, I was opening the front door and stepping out into the pouring rain.   

I wandered out onto the path, moving away from the cover of trees right out into the open.  The neighbours probably thought I had gone insane.  In my head I knew I was being stupid, standing out there, purposely getting wet.  But somehow I was loving it and dancing around it in.  I felt so unbelievably alive, happy and completely at peace.     

I’m not an at one with nature person or especially into the environment.  I’m not someone who has raptures over scenery and I don’t see the point in walking up hills and dales for a view.  You only have to walk back down again.  

Why I suddenly had the urge to go outside in the rain last night I don’t know.  But it made me inexplicably happy and that is really all that counts.

Does the rain ever lure you in?