Are you being held to ransom with an engagement ring?

JANE has been with her boyfriend Mark for four years. They are both in their early 30s and last December they bought a house together. The logical next step, thinks Jane, would be to get engaged. But things aren’t going to plan. Mark is spending more time out on the town and even when he is at home Jane feels sidelined and unappreciated.

Meanwhile, she is aware that her biological clock is ticking and worries that if she confronts Mark, he will pack his bags and leave rather than take her down the aisle and give her the babies she dreams of.

For his part, Mark has dropped the odd encouraging hint – crumbs Jane has seized on as hope. He’s been sweet with friends’ children and referred, albeit vaguely, to ‘if we were married’ –only to quickly backpedal, refuse to commit to a time frame and even claim that he never said it.

Jane is one of a growing number of young women being ‘held to ransom’ by the prospect of engagement and, as a result, allowing their partners to enjoy a relationship on their own terms. Stories are rife of men – usually involved with women in their 30s or even 40s – getting away with everything from ignoring birthdays to cheating and throwing their weight around over decisions such as where and with whom to holiday and have supper. One woman, Alison, tells of her boyfriend coercing her into paying for a trip he had promised to take her on as a birthday present and insisting that they spend Christmas with his family, not hers. When she finally plucked up the courage to confront the inequality creeping into their relationship, he snapped back: ‘I wish you wouldn’t make such a fuss. I had been planning to propose to you.’ Looking back, she can see she was being manipulated.

Only too often women like Jane and Alison put up with imbalance in a relationship because they don’t want to rock the boat at what they see as a critical juncture. ‘I let Mark get away with far more because I know otherwise I might scare him off, and then what?’ says Jane. ‘I’d be in my mid-30s and starting from scratch, trying to find someone to have a family with.’

Jane’s instincts are understandable but if women want to find a husband, what they should be doing is just the opposite, according to author Sherry Argov, whose dating books have been translated into 30 languages. In her bestseller Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman’s Guide to Winning Her Man’s Heart she argues that it is divas, not doormats, who inspire men to commit. Women need to be more demanding, not less, to make men see the value in being with them long term. The good news is that women have more control than they think and by resisting the manipulations of a man dangling a ring, they are actually more likely to get it.

Marital therapist Andrew G Marshall, author of The Single Trap: The Two-Step Guide to Escaping It and Finding Lasting Love, believes women should not become so fixated on engagement that they lose sight of what made them attractive in the first place. ‘Men rarely set out to be manipulative, but sometimes that is what ends up happening because the topic of engagement is so loaded. Men often see it as their responsibility to resolve a situation and so may say almost anything – even things they don’t mean – to make it all right.’

But Marshall points out that the question of whether or not to marry and have children – is so momentous that the pressure on men to ‘step up’ is somewhat unfair. ‘Tying yourself to someone for the rest of your life is probably the most important decision you will make.

The number-one reason why men don’t commit is that they have genuine doubts about the relationship, so it is imperative that couples find a way to talk about this. .’ Marshall concedes some men will use the promise of engagement as a bribe to get what they want, ‘in which case, the woman needs to ask herself, “Do I want to be with this kind of person?” and probably walk away’. Other men may fall into the habit of being the dominant one in the relationship because time is on their side in terms of fertility. Argov says: ‘The biggest attraction-killer is neediness and insecurity.’ Instead of ‘auditioning’, and wondering, ‘Where’s my ring?’ women should be asking themselves, ‘What’s in this for me?’ She uses the example of a woman whose boyfriend laid into her over how she dressed. Rather than changing her looks, she said: ‘If you like, I can warn you in advance when I’m going to be wearing this. That way, if you don’t want to see me in it, you don’t have to come over.’ Needless to say, the boyfriend in question later became a fiancé.

So there you have it: any woman can be held to ransom, whether by a man’s manipulations or just the manipulations of her own mind – but the ultimate power play is to refuse to be.