Age-Old Advice: Semi-Detached

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/09/2015 (4015 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In today’s column, we learn that “he’s just not that into you” was already a thing in 1934.

Dear Ms. Thompson:

I am a girl of 19 and my boyfriend is 24. We have been going around for nearly a year. Several months ago he proposed to me and I accepted, although we planned to wait until next year before we got married. He never spoke of an engagement, but I didn’t mind. But from the beginning he always said that if ever I were asked out by boy or girl, and he wasn’t included, and I felt that I wanted to go, I should, as he didn’t want to stand in the way of my happiness.

Now I have gone out without him quite often, but nearly always with my girl friend. Lately, I feel that I’d rather not go out at all if not with him. I have been out a few times lately with another boy and enjoyed myself, but somehow I feel as though I’m doing something I shouldn’t.

I didn’t see my boyfriend for two weeks, and he told me he had been out a lot and could not find time to come around. He said he’d been with some girls, too. Of course I felt hurt. He claims he still thinks as much of me as ever.

Do you think a man can really love one girl and yet run around with others?

-Worried.

Dear Worried: If a man was serious about wanting to marry one girl, he couldn’t go for two weeks without seeing her, and spend his time with others.

This boy is engaged to you, whether he admits it or not. Asking a girl to marry him and being accepted constitutes an engagement even if she doesn’t wear a ring and tell the world. And when you planned to be married next year, it wasn’t a bit too soon to let people know of your intention— provided the young man meant what he said.

It is all right to go around with girl friends when engaged, but not with other boys unless the fiancé approves, and there is some special reason. But giving you carte blanche permission to go with other people looks as though the young man was not in earnest, and wanted to assure for himself the same freedom that he urged on you.

You had better call for a showdown. Ask him if he still wants to marry you. If he says he does, tell him you’d like to make your engagement public. Once that is done, say that you don’t intend to go out with other boys yourself, and will expect him not to go out with other girls. If he hedges or seems reluctant, tell him the bargain is all off.

You are only 19, and may easily have made a mistake in judgment, and hanging on to an unwilling fiancé is a hopeless and heart-breaking business.

From Personal Problems by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, December 12, 1934.