The slippery slope to Dumpsville
starts at roughly the point where you patiently explain to your girlfriend, with whom you have just bought a house (!), that on a recent holiday in Ecuador you had considered asking her to marry you but had decided that on balance you really didn't want to be wed to her so had shelved that foolish notion and filed it under 'unlikely to change anytime soon'. Seems obvious what was going to happen looking back at it now!

Took six awkward months to sell that place.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 3 Jan 2013, 14:53, 6 replies)

why would you tell her that?

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Thu 3 Jan 2013, 15:16, closed)

I think I had reached a point where
I wanted it to end but couldn't bring myself to do it so was engineering a point of no return, but then that's analysing it now, could be I was just a massive twat.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 3 Jan 2013, 15:38, closed)

Did she need to know?
I mean, if you were otherwise happy in your relationship but didn't want a wedding, it would have been easier to talk a marriage thing through slowly instead of just going 'Yeah but nah...'
( Bats, Thu 3 Jan 2013, 15:37, closed)

She had occasionally suggested she would like to get
married and have kids at some point. As mentioned in a reply just above I felt compelled to raise it, probably knowing full well what would result.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 3 Jan 2013, 15:39, closed)

I completely understand the
'engineering a point of no return' thing, to be fair. Sometimes it's an easier route (albeit a no less painful one) than attempting to put a dent in something the other person assumes is perfect - whether it is or isn't.

... I'm not sure that sentence made any sense.
( Bats, Thu 3 Jan 2013, 15:52, closed)

Yep, and the best decision I could have made too
Met my wife to be a couple of month later and I knew instantly that we would be married. That was ten yers and several children ago!
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 3 Jan 2013, 17:19, closed)