Using a throwaway because I have irl mutuals on my main.

I’m a 24M and my Partner is 24F. She’s from a different background and we’ve been together coming up on 7 years in September.

We’ve grown together both as people and she’s been there for me through everything. I’ve done really well for my age, she basically financed my personal life through the time I was getting my start up off the ground, which I ended up selling for a more than believable amount of money. There would be months where she would give me almost everything just to make sure I get through it okay. This is pretty important context to those of you thinking about our age, we have literally been through hell and back together and we found our happiest moments in the worst places together.

I’m from a South Asian family and her family is a mix of British & American. My parents are pretty typically south Asian, they don’t want us really parading around without being married. It hasn’t been a major issue until this year really, my partners met my sisters and brothers and their kids & she’s pretty much part of the family. Samething with her family, I’ve watched her youngest brother grow up and helped her other younger brother through college. I see her family as an extension of my own.

Now I’m getting pressure from my own parents and grand mother to tie it all up and get married. I know my grandma doesn’t have many years left and I’m her only grandchild left that she hasn’t seen get married which is also kinda messing with me. Religious factors also are included in this and I genuinely do understand that point of view whole heartedly. I know from a religious stance what I’m doing is completely wrong at the moment, but there’s justification in providing a lot more of a stable life for both her and our future kids by just waiting another couple of years. I don’t want to work for a while once my kids come along, and I don’t want her to feel like she ever has to ever again if she doesn’t want to.

We have our wedding planned in our minds and even looked around at places and landed on a destination, but we both agreed that it’s a wiser take to just wait it out a bit.

I’m currently building our dream home & we always envisioned moving into it right after our wedding. To me there’s so much that we pictured that’s yet to play out before we do end up tying the knot. Bottom line is I don’t feel ready yet, she’s still in school & im also running another business I’ve managed to get off the ground. She also feels the same, she wants to get school done with at the bare minimum before any sort of booking for the wedding goes ahead.

But the constant pressure from my family is really starting to affect me. They seem to think that because of the structure of life we have that anything can be done on any day without too much repercussion and I just feel really guilty as if I’m dangling this idea of a soon-wedding in front of them even though they know I want to wait. My mom is constantly trying to convince us both to get married at every chance she can, so my grandma can be there and she can finally see her last grand child married. So much so, that we’ve stopped going around as often. It’s just so draining to have the same conversation again and again with no compromise and I always end up feeling really guilty and like an asshole at the end of it all.