Relationships: Practical relationship advice and information...

First rule of thumb for women who want to get married: Never "demand" marriage. It is better for a woman to pass a man up than to demand to be married. There are married men - five, ten, twenty years later - who say, "I didn't really choose to marry her. She got pregnant and threatened me, and I married her under duress. I'm still angry about it, and I'm still not committed, and that's the reason that I don't treat her the way she wants to be treated."

You must let him make his own choice. Don't coerce him. Instead of nagging, take a walk. If he wants you enough, he will negotiate. Don't seduce him with money or sexual generosity, and don't try to intimidate him with angry edicts.

Sometimes when a woman is ready to negotiate a (marriage) commitment, she finds that her man isn't. So, how does a woman "manipulate" the situation to move it along - or leave it? It's not easy. Getting a man often requires a "saintly" amount of patience. A good man is hard to capture, and a woman can't do anything overt to capture him.

Suppose you have a great committed relationship but you have never heard the words from him that specifically say, "Will you marry me?" Many women go to marriage counselors and say, "Please, how do I get that proposal out of his mouth? I'm feeling so much anxiety."

I assume that if you have been in a relationship from six months to a year, you have had future talk at least in generic terms. For example, you might have said, "It's important for me to be married by the time I am thirty-five, and I'd like to have two children by the time I am forty."

If he has not been direct with asking you for marriage even though it seems to be where you are headed, take action. Wait until you are almost to the end of your patience. On a scale of 1 to 10, it would be an 8. This is the time you must speak, because if you wait longer, you will lose your cool and damage or destroy a beautiful relationship.

Pick a pivotal day no longer than eight weeks in the future. If by that day he has not spontaneously come through with a commitment, you must simply say, "I love you. I love being with you. However, I need real commitment in my life. I appreciate the time we have had together, but it is not enough for me to just be together unless we can talk about marriage." If at this time he cannot, does not, or will not meet your requirement of planning for marriage, you must be willing to let him go.

Think of deep-sea fishing. The only way you are going to get that fish is to get him on the boat. On the line is not enough, and the distance between on the line and the boat (marriage) is a long way. It is also in this space between water and boat that you are most likely to lose him. You have to be patient, and the only way you can do that is to be anchored in your own self-love.