Marrying because I’m running out of time

I’m engaged to be married to someone who makes me miserable. Sounds crazy but he’s the best of a rotten bunch. I’ve online dated for years, been messed about so I said yes to the family friend who proposed. I just want to get married so I can have kids. We do have some good times but he has chronic mood swings. I believe he’s on the spectrum but he refuses to get tested. He has a problem with everything I do and gives me silent treatment all the time. It’s awful but the clock is ticking. On the plus side I know he will be faithful, be a great father (I’ve seen him around other kids) and I love his family. P.S. just here to relieve stress as I can’t confide in anyone I know. I have no intention of calling off the wedding.

Hi, OffPuttingGirl (haha, I doubt that, but allow me to be the judge) - and welcome! Apologies for the delay in response, however, please be aware that you're 100% welcome, as with any forum, to help yourself in chatting to other Original Posters (OPs/thread-owners) on their threads - or, better yet, giving your opinion whereever you can relate to their own problem (or even imagine being in their boat). Meanwhile, I'm duplicating this message to all whom likewise are still waiting, that they are perfectly free to do so on yours. Saying that - as you're against the clock, under severe pressure, I shall make this/you my first port of call tonight (maybe sooner). :) Soulmate Moderator-Advisor

FYI, I'll be posting late tonight and most of tomorrow. Please can you give me a little reply so I know you haven't 'abandoned queue'?

I'll give you the short reply for now, since I'm unsure as yet whether you're still reading: Wanting to have kids as a reason to get married DOESN'T tend to end well. It just ends up traumatically for the kid(s) when the parental unit inevitably splits up. It's also putting the cart before the horse. The way a genuine, til-death, marriage lasts is because both partners started off healthy and with all ducks pretty-much in a row, and so compatible, especially in far-flung life goals, that they're unlikely to divorce out of the pair of them wildly diverging in direction as they grow and develop. You're supposed to start to want babies, TOGETHER. As a result of at the point of committing, having only wanted each other for each other. Your way is against Nature's script, you see, which is why it can too easily end in tears. The reason you've kept getting one creep after another is because of the one thing you don't mention having done, which is - taken a PROPER Time-Out after each break-up, in order to have re-set yourself to neutral. And if any of those relationships happened to have been narcissistic Fauxlationships - that healthy dictak becomes doubly important as well as means a longer period of getting over it/him than normal (precisely - those aren't normal...albeit, to be fair, you wouldn't have had the means until more recently with the explosion of web-based information). Marriage is not a solution for this/that other need. And kids are supposed to be WHAT NATURALLY HAPPENS/WHEN, ONCE YOURS AND YOUR HUSBAND'S BONDING PATH HAS HIT THAT CRITICAL POINT. Which is why you get couples whom started out not wanting children, changing their minds (or having their minds changed for them). Your babies should be ready to be conceived. As a product of where the woman and her partner are at/have hit. Now to your choice: As one, NEVER given the chance to get completely over the last relationship AND learn how to be happy as a singleton again - loving it!....not WANTING a man, let alone needing one (where the woman would be prepared to effectively prostitute herself as a Girlfriend figure for what he can handily supply...further - preferably NOT wanting....and thereby leaving him the floor to show you what he's really made of. Your way, you're giving them a free head-start...making it too easy. And Narcs (the most lazy-minded type on the planet) love getting perks without the work or whole work. HEALTHY men like mates they have to work for, 'fight' for, all of that.....basically, "Win" the woman's heart, to an extent that she feels confident will last the rest of her life and staying pretty much never dwinding. Think of their hard-saved-for cars (doing overtime or a second job to save up for it, for example) and how they'll spend hours every Sunday washing 'their baby' as well as drive them like the precious items they are (thanks to their long, hard investment). Now picture how blokes generally treat cars they've just hired for the week by handing over their credit-card and have no blood-sweat-tears investment in and - nuff said. YOUR way is highly likely to gain you nothing but divorce and single parenthood (possibly without any Maintenance), with one or two YEARS-long (possibly lifelong) traumatised kids to deal with on top of how hard motherhood is to begin with. Or worse. Because all you've seen, has been in front of witnesses. Here - does he have these mood swings towards in in front of these witnesses as well....or only when the two of you are safely behind closed doors or in whatever way alone? This is the period when he's supposed to be putting his best foot forward. If this is his best.......what's it going to look like once he feels he's got you (that ring on your finger) and relaxes? Or once you sprog and really depend on him (including NOT to throw 'Narctrums' and Silent Treatments because you're already knackered from rearing and looking after extremely boistrous and energetic kids - or not to throw them and provide such shite role-modelling as could result in an adult daughter who takes abuse or an adult son who deals it?...or not...It's 50/50...but a heck of a risk with yours and your future kids' happiness and mental health, wouldn't you say? HOW do you know he'll be faithful - you didn't say? I could understand if he were being on his best behaviour and had just NORMAL-HEALTHY-bloke faults, rather than showing you he's a kid in a grown-up suit. Trust me: human beings are supposed to leave tantrum-ing (- even coldly) and SULKING behind once they turn 4 or 5. Or maybe he's not showing you (to test out how much crap you'll take without self-defensive confronting as well how badly you want this marriage...Why do Narcissists Test Your Boundaries - go Google). Maybe it's that, unbeknownst to you, he's your third and worse NPD partner who's just better at hiding it and yet, because there's so much more to come inside him, can't possibly keep it ALL under wraps, even during Best Foot Forward (like someone wearing a secret support vest to hide a huge pot-belly). The Malignant types comes in Threes. Like buses. Including the toxic exhaust fumes. Never mind if you love him or love his family. You're not part of the problem, other than (as per with kids hiding in grown-up suits) electing to be his secret, never telling, MUMMY behind closed doors but a simpering Lois outside of doors (or woe betide you). At the very best - he's BEEPING immature! You WOULDN'T want a kid. You wouldn't have the energy, thanks to him constantly causing arguments and then rendering them useless anyway by simply grabbing for the Thumb Screws to use on you....nor the need for one, given how your inner female Naked Ape would feel quite convinced you'd already had one (or adopted one). Everything you're determined (only consciously) to go ahead with, in your actually *illusional*, propogandist thinking on this score, is only going to PROLONG your chance to get back to FULL post-Narc Recovery, adapting to Singledom, then meet a NORMAL...HEALTHY....NICE....SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLY-BEHAVING GROWN-UP...a REAL man!....and then expressing your love and lasting compatibility - not forgetting MUTUAL life-enhancement - by wanting to have (drumroll)....HIS baby and only his. THAT is the recipe for success. You're asking us not to dissuade you from getting married for the wrong reasons. Why do you have to marry him anyway? If he wants kids too then why can't you just be co-parents as friends (all it takes is a turkey-baster)? Or is the real problem that, not having before passed the post-Narc Recovery chequered flag, neither have you had a chance to recover all that lost confidence in yourself?...and therefore feel you can't survive or afford to have kids without a man? Fairenough, but at least consider it? Has he got a career or just a job? Have you? What do you both do? Ultimately, I'd say this were your win/win situation for now. Extend the Engagement. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy. Want to know how, whereby he takes it as flattering to his ego? PS: I know I've tried to advise you out of it, anyway. But here's the thing: I only give sensible, life-furthering and -affirming advise (as does this entire forum). And also, I'd rather you 'hate' me for X months and be forevermore grateful to me than the other way around. And anyway. Your subconscious/inner ape DOES want me to. Otherwise, you would not have decided this - a venue of truth, whole truth and nothing BUT, was The Perfect Place to find yourself anyone to help you keep blinkering yourself. See how that works? ;) However... extending it is my compromise with you, which is the best I can do. I do wonder why it didn't occur to you, though. (Panicking, much?) (or - thinking about it and being deadly serious: are you being pressured???)

Also... With a husband who makes you even MORE miserable than he is today - you'll be a truly CRAP mum and the problem will just have come out of a different hole in what's determined to be a very hole-ridden damn. You realise that a fully-healed woman - at first sight of a Narc Rage and Silent Treatment - would have ended it there and then? Again: Sulking. Programmed to stop aged 4-5. How come it hasn't on him, then? Does't that show you the deep-deep damage done to their brain as a toddler, that they never moved on from this into how ADULTS deal with disagreement and conflict (i.e. nothing remotely like that!)? You really think that damage is suddenly going to disappear and leave a truly adult man who behaves accordingly in its place? Just by getting married? If he's not a Narc how come he's displaying two of their major-major hallmarks? Are you that used to nasty kids in grown-up suits by now, that the first time he let toddler-rip DIDN'T feel like a bucket of freezing cold Wake-Up water, freaking you out as had you immediately thinking to yourself - Run!...Nutter! ?

PS: Extending the engagement is your Win/Win/Can't Lose magic wand. Ask me how and I'll explain, okay?

Embarrassed apologies, NorthSands, I called you by another poster's name by-mistake. Are you still there?