Hi everyone! I just found this board and thought I would take the opportunity to introduce myself and get to know you all.
My name is Emily, and my boyfriend Joe and I have been together nearly a year. Just a few things about me, I'm a grad student starting a doctoral program in English literature this fall. I LOVE to travel and have moved around a lot over the past 6 years (I've lived in 4 different cities on 2 continents, and studied for a summer on a third continent), which meant it wasn't too big of an adjustment when I started dating an army officer lol. I'm really nerdy and love Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, the Big Bang Theory, and various historical figures. I'm also slightly obsessed with penguins and anything Chicago or New Orleans. Let me know if you'd like to know anything more about me. Sorry if I overloaded you!
Anyway, on to my actual question. My boyfriend and I have decided that we are going to get married someday. However, we are not engaged yet and will not be for a while yet. Neither one of us feels comfortable with an engagement before we've been together for at least a year and honestly, it'll probably be a while after that. That's not to say that people who get engaged that quickly are doing anything wrong by any means! We know tons of people who have gotten engaged quickly and have very happy marriages. My parents were married within a year of their 1st date and are still happily married 26 years later. It's just that we are both very cautious people, and we feel that for us, getting engaged in less than a year would be too soon.
Our families, however, think that we're crazy. My mom kept hinting that maybe he would propose on this last vacation, or that he'll propose on our one-year anniversary weekend. I tried to tell her that he and I would be sitting down and having a very serious discussion about our plans for the future, and our timeline for all of these steps, before that happens (this would also be when I would give him my preferences on rings, since he absolutely does not want to surprise me on that count). She wants to know what we have left to discuss, since we've already told each other we would like to be married someday. And his family has been asking him about our plans since about 3 months in!
I am really happy with where we are in our relationship, and I feel very comfortable with the plan we have for an eventual engagement. As much as I am romantic and love weddings and such, I am at heart a very practical and cautious person, and so our process makes sense to me. Joe feels the same way about the whole thing. But maybe we are crazy and are over-thinking and over-planning this whole thing. Or maybe we should just continue to do our own thing. Thoughts?
Thanks for any advice! I really appreciate it
Edited to fix spacing. Sorry, getting the hang of this!