Hi

I've been with my bloke for just a year but he's in the process of moving in and we really want kids. I left a relationship of 12+ years to be with him and now I have got over my initial fear of how fast things were going I realise that i do want to have children with him, that I am more and more in love with him each day and that if he did ask me to marry him I would say yes, despite never wanting to be married before. On the other hand, I am not sitting here desparately waiting for him to ask. I am 37, I am fairly independent and I don't have dreams of a big ceremony etc.

So...

imagine my surprise (And a bit of horror to be honest) when he forwarded the following email to me

" I hope it all goes well for you both. Also that you get married before starting a family. I think it is still important."

Now ... his mum lives abroad, I have met her once and she seems like a lovely lovely woman but now I feel like she disaproves.

What do you think - seeing as I am going to hopefully have a family with my boyfriend, do you think I should be more keen to get married to him? I don't want to do it because she wants me to, but because he wants me to.

NOOO WAY!!!!! Being married makes no difference to how either of you feel about eachother and will not make you better parents........you only get married if it is what you both want, it is nothing to do with other people, and no way should either of you feel pressured into it by anyone, that is a recipe for disaster! You live your life as you see fit, it is about you two and no other bugger, no matter how lovely they might be! Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but they are not entitled to inflict their views on you and to pressure you in any way!

Good luck babe, but for god sake do what "you" want, not what is expected of you by others! x

u should do want u want its not like that in life most of my friends have had babies b4 marriage it makes no difference does it in the perfect world ppl get married b4 children but were not a perfect world r we?

Blimey why would she even send an email like that I know how I would feel ...

Do it for you although now I'd feel like I was doing it for someone else. Why can't families butt out sometimes.

if you WANT to marry hm, fair enough............but don't be pressured into it

I disagree, I think it sounds as if she loves her son and is giving you both her best wishes, but probably has slightly old fashioned views and just wants her grandchild to be born into a secure family unit.

You do what you want to do though, he is in a relationship with you and old enough to make his own choices in life im sure!

We talkaed about it last night. He says she would be over the moon to be a grandmother whatever situation we find ourselves in.

aww she sounds like she is getting really excited at the idea of being a nan.

Wehn I found out I was pregnant we got a lot of pressure from older relatives etc asking us when we were going to get married. My OH was quite anti marriage, but even if he hadn't been we would have not got married because I was pregnant. As far as we were concerned we would only want to get married as it was something we both wanted and believed in, not because it felt like we should.

Ironically, over a year after my little girl was born he came downstairs after putting her to bed and said that he had been thinking about marriage. I asked what he had been thinking, and he said that he wanted to get married, and wanted me to be his wife. So we are in the process of planning a wedding, it was going to be next year but I am pregnant again so we have decided to wait for a bit.