The non-proposal.

Himself and I have been talking about marriage for a while now. A long time ago, when we first knew each other as friends rather than partners, I used to hear how Himself felt about marriage as absolute. No. Never. Not happening. It didn't worry me - mostly because I didn't think of him as someone I wanted to marry, even when we had started dating. I've always felt like I wanted to get married, but never had that desperate desire, the perfect picture in your mind of a wedding day and perfect husband. Even once we started to become more involved, if the topic were raised I expressed my real feelings; marriage was an option for my life, kids were a deal breaker. No kids, a relationship wouldn't work, no marriage, I couldn't see that it would be the end of a relationship.

As things progressed it wasn't marriage that got discussed anyway, it was the 'deal breaker'... kids. At first, Himself was more anti-child than he was anti-marriage (if that's possible), but after Himself's brother had an adorable baby girl his feelings changed. I look at the way if changed him, his perspective on his own life, our relationship and his family and I thank lots of gods I don't believe in. Not just because it opened him up to the idea of having children, but because it made him more aware that how you feel about something within yourself is fluid. We don't make decisions about our life and stick to them, we discover what feels right as we go along. I saw that allow both him and I to alter ways we acted in lots of areas of our life and make choices about work, home, family and pretty much everything from a more creative place.

From a few months ago Himself and I had been talking about why we weren't in the right time and place to have kids. Mostly it was to remind me that we weren't ready. Our relationship was doing great, we both wanted to have kids (and conveniently, even with each other!), but there was that whole issue of having no financial security, living in a rented home, not being in the best mental and physical health, not having finished uni (for one of us) or wanting to make our own company work (for the other). Despite all that, I've been fighting a tide of hormones and my own desire. While we could come to terms with some of the issues, it was pretty simple to see that there was too much saying 'wait' and not enough saying 'now'.

So how did it move from 'now isn't the right time for kids' to 'let's get married'? It was a conversation where I pointed out that any kids we did have would have to have my name - I wasn't going to have a different name to my children. Himself didn't like that idea at all. I kept reiterating that if I had kids, the only person I could count on to be their family was me. While that sounds pretty offensive to someone that you are considering having children with, I didn't mean that I expected him to walk out, just that as a mother, you carry a child, put your career and life on hold to care for them and hold primary responsibility for them (even if only out of physical necessity) for the first few years of their life. If you do all that, why does a father get naming rights while you are treated like an incubator? They are your child and you are responsible for them - a father gets to chose how much they take on, you are given a whole set of duties and responsibilities you can't walk away from.

During the discussion it evolved that while we were talking about having children very soon, Himself didn't consider that he would be ready to marry anytime soon. I think that shocked me. How could you talk about having kids (which is far more of a commitment than a piece of paper), but not be ready to commit to the person you were talking about having them with? Himself seemed to think that there was no point. Perhaps if we were having a baby there would be a point, but why bother before that? It struck a pretty sore point for me. Our whole relationship has played out as just sort of... happening. We were friends who fell into being workmates, then fell into being housemates, then fell into being a couple. We've never really had to choose to be together, it's just evolved as time has gone on. In a way it's really natural, but sometimes I worry that Himself is just unwilling to change or choose anything in his life. That our relationship is something he has just let happen, rather than decided he wanted. It struck me that if we got married because we were having a baby it would be just one more thing that happened to us (or him). Himself would never, in our whole relationship, have chosen me.

After talking about it for a while, we both got pretty exhausted. Himself had agreed we should get married, I had insisted that he was just giving up, not making a choice, he had said he couldn't win, I had gotten frustrated. The conversation ended with us deciding to leave it for a while, drop the whole issue and try to just get on with living our lives. We had a really busy few months with work and bad health. I didn't forget about the conversation, but there really wasn't time to worry or wonder about it. When we returned from the event we had been working on I flew back home a day after Himself had come back. Finally at home and with no pressure, we both relaxed on the couch. We caught up, enjoyed nothing-ness and when I was at my most tired-yet-content, he turned and said "let's get married". I tried not to get over-excited. I questioned him: was he doing it because he felt like he should? That the issue wouldn't go away so he may as well do it? For two days we went backwards and forwards until last night, where Himself insisted I stop over-analysing what was going on and we agree to do what we both wanted. Get married.

The first people to be told were the guys at the University Hotel bottle shop. We went to buy a good bottle of champagne and a very expensive bottle of whisky to celebrate. The guy behind the counter wanted to know if it was a special occasion so we told him yeah, we decided to get married. That scored us a free gift-bag and a card of congratulations. We came home, lit our candle-filled balcony and enjoyed a drink or two in celebration out in the dark with the city sounds of Collingwood around us. It seems so much more natural to me that we would make the decision to get married together, rather than wait in gender-trapped silence for a man to 'ask'.

So there it is, the non-proposal.