Reply to Guys... What makes you put s ring on it?

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[quote=Anonymous]I share the views of several PPs who said that being able to walk away is important. Adding my grain of salt.. Given the number of proposals I've received, I would say I have always been marriage material (even though I am a perfectly average/normal woman), and the times when I wasn't, I knew why. As a very happily married person (because the points below also work to STAY married), I'll try to sum up (I am French, English is my second language so forgive the mistakes please):

- Healthy self esteem. Not too high not too low. First mistakes: being delusional and too demanding (ie wanting to date a perfect guy when you are not a catch yourself) or being too easy to get (whatever your worth, men want to feel that they won the lottery, or at least got a good deal ;) ).
- Being someone who projects EMOTIONAL self sufficiency. You don't need him to marry you to feel complete/fulfilled. Clinginess and dependency are a major turn off. Have a life, your friends, your work, your money...A lot of men are afraid to marry a potential "liability/weight" that they will have to carry around. Because men have a "provider" role, the rational decision is to marry someone who won't need them in a way that seems overwhelming to them. Not all men are scared by the same thing (health, money, family, children .. can have completely diff impacts depending on the guy), but I would say that someone who seems emotionally dependent, whose happiness depends on them too much, is generally scary.
- BUT you want to leave space to show you need him. That one is complicated because even though men have to feel needed, women IMHO often interpret it the wrong way. They want you to need them to open the jarr, help you discover good music, repair the car, play the guitar (whatever their strenght is), and they want you to show your appreciation, but they don't want you to need/require their emotional support. American women (apologies for the generalization..) sometimes want to project strength in a way that doesn't leave space for a man to demonstrate their competencies (i.e compete with their man on everything) and after emasculating them, they want their man to provide strong emotional support. I don't think it works (even if as a feminist I can totally see why it seems perfectly fair, but forget it, it just doesnt work). 
- Be confident in the fact that you can find someone else if you want to, and convey that feeling. Not with words (counterproductive), with your attitude. If you show fear of being alone, or too old to go back on the dating market, you are basically telling him "take pity on me, marry me because if not noone else will". As I said before, men want to win the lottery, they need to be afraid to lose you, they don't want to marry you out of pity. Now the difficulty is what is the best attitude to adopt .. As a a French person I may be a tiny bit more flirty then the typical american audience :), but not much, and I am not a cheater at all, I like my (american) husband to see that other men find me funny, attractive,and interesting to talk to. That's all. And it works extremely well (the post party sex is extremely telling...). 
- Convey the feeling that you are able to happily walk away. A consequence from the points above. You are strong, you don't need him, you want him, that's a huge difference. You are not blackmailing him into marrying you, you express clearly what you want and what makes you happy " I want to build a strong relationship with a partner who will marry me and commit to me, and if that's not you, it is fine, let me go so I can find someone who will be that kind of partner". No anger, no begging (certainly no begging), no pity party. And if he let's you walk, then no regrets, he is not the right one for you, it is good that you stop losing time, life is short!

OP: given what you say, you seem to fall in the laid back easy maintenance category so in your case the "problem" may be that he is not scared of losing you.. Either because he is completely out of your league (but i doubt that), or because you don't keep him enough on his toes and don't project the proper kind of independance. If you let him think he is the best you can get and you are afraid of losing him, then he has no rational reason to "secure the deal" and he can actually value your relationship less because he starts to see it through your own eyes. Confidence is sexy.

I am going to make a poor analogy: think about house hunt, in a seller market with low inventory everyone rushes to close in 3 days as long as the price is right. If the buyers think they have time to think, they'll keep on looking for a better house at a better deal, even if they end up closing for the same price on the same type of house a couple of years later. No pressure to close, they know they'll find the same deal whenever they want[/quote]

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