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Hi all, OK so I'm 25 and my gf is 22, my girlfriend has been asking me why I have not asked her hand in marriage yet after 3 1/2 years of being together. I've told her it frustrates me when she asks me that question or even talks about engagement and that it's something I'll ask when I feel the time is right. Now this is where she gets confused because we do talk about kids a lot and how we would like to raise them and we have established that marriage will come before kids so she becomes frustrated sometimes when I bring up kids. I've said that makes a lot of sense to me and I can understand how that would make you think I'm putting the "cart before the horse" so to speak and then get confused about my intentions. Ill just give a little back story on our relationship in case that helps anyone solve my conundrum.. My gf and I met before I started my "awakening" with Ron Paul then Peter Schiff then Stefan. After 3.5 years of being together there have been no fights or yelling of any kind.In the beginning I had a lot of trust issues around other guys and we both didn't know much about win win conflict resolution, when I would say something hurtful she went more to the silent treatment style which I didn't know how to deal with which frustrated me alot and we would eventually either sleep on it and make up in the morning or spend an hour or 2 of me trying to talk to her and eventually we would be talking again. These days thanks to reading Stefan's book real time relationships and watching a lot of his videos our relationship is much more stable though we do get frustrated at each other over certain things. Were constantly working on being more open, vulnerable and honest with each other which is going really well and I've since talked to my parents about my childhood (some yelling, maybe 5 - 8 spankings but alot of counting to 1,2,3 and my dad was pretty authoritarian might makes right etc) and she is just starting to talk to her mum about the way she was treated (alot of yelling, smackings, authoritarian where her dad was more passive and didn't do any of the punishing etc). We agree on things like parenting, are almost identical on money issues, what we want out of life, we go on alot of holidays together and we both still get very excited when the other is coming over (we live a 10 minute bike ride apart) We are looking at moving out together in an apartment in the next 1-3 months. So when she asks me about why I have not asked her to get engaged yet I say "I just don't feel like I'm ready yet and I don't know the underlying reason for that" So when I say that she feels its something wrong with her and I can't give a real reason she she feels she needs to change something about herself but doesn't know what etc but I explain that I can't change her nor want to which then frustrates her even more.. And to me it seems strange to ask your boyfriend that questions since it's usually a surprise kind of thing. Anyway, were both getting frustrated over this which is why I promised her to post it on the forums here to see If i can get some help with determining why I haven't asked her yet or how we could figure out why were both getting frustrated Any help would be greatly appreciated and I'm happy to answer any questions Thanks!