My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over 2 years, and we live together. This summer, I brought up the idea of getting engaged soonish (sometime in 2026). He reacted very negatively, and expressed that he thinks people need to be in a relationship for 3-4 years before deciding if they want to marry someone. I don’t know where this comes from, as this is not something he has seen with his parents or close friends. He didn’t seem to know either. We had several long discussions, and the conclusion (I thought) was that we would get engaged towards the end of 2026 and be engaged for at least a year, if not longer, just to take our time.
However, a couple of nights ago, he came to me and expressed that he is having doubts about marrying me because of “the last name thing”. I do not want to change my name to his, and I would like our kids to have the same name as me. I had jokingly suggested a week ago that we combine our last names to make a new family name once we got married, and he hadn’t expressed being upset then. But he apparently had been stewing on it and was angry I would suggest something like that when he had already suggested hyphenating our names.
I immediately assured him that I am ok with hyphenating and that the changing our names thing had been mostly a joke. Then I asked him why this was something that would cause him to doubt us getting married, and he told me that he thinks we disagree too much.
For context, we have an argument I’d say about once a week, usually about something small – like where to go to eat or how to properly clean something. These arguments never involve raising our voices or name calling or anything like that, but we are both people with strong opinions and we usually end up just talking it through and compromising.
He told me that he is tired of having to compromise and isn’t sure he wants to have to do that for the rest of his life. I responded by asking if he thinks he’ll ever be able to find a relationship where he doesn’t have to compromise sometimes. He agreed that this is a part of being in a relationship, but when I asked him directly if he was still having doubts about marrying me, he said yes – that he doesn’t know if he wants to marry me, and that if he did he would have already proposed.
So now I am just feeling very unsure about myself and my relationship. I’m wondering if I am just a placeholder until he finds someone he actually does want to marry? I’m not really sure what to do next or how to navigate this situation and would love some advice on that, especially from people who are married.
Tl;dr: My boyfriend is unsure if he wants to marry me bc we have been together too short of a time and he thinks we disagree too often.