The trouble with being "Seventeen Again"

Dear TTB

My boyfriend of 2 years recently started working. I have been so excited for him to enter the working world as I was hoping that we would be able to settle down and get married. But I was so wrong. He has started spending more and more time partying, hanging out with “the guys” and just wanting to have fun. He gets very annoyed if I suggest that we do anything other than hang around in studenty spots – places we haven’t been to in the last 3 years - and devotes much of his weekend and sometimes even week nights to the pastimes he had when we were first year UCT students! What do you think, I should do? Give him an ultimatum to cease this silly behaviour and propose?

From
I-want-to-get-married-girl

Dear I-want-to-get-married-girl

Oh dear, TTB can only imagine what your weekends have turned into hanging out in classless clubs and pubs! She does sympathize with you for that. It seems your significant other has a very virulent case of “Seventeen Again”. Yes, it’s Matthew Perry wanting to be Zac Efron…

The long and the short of it is: briefcases are presented with the real world and have a sudden crisis when they realize that their chilled out student life with 3 months holiday has been replaced with bills, medical aid, retirement annuities, long work hours and 15 days of annual leave! It is kind of a bummer, don’t you think? They dream of their former glory days where they used to play touch on the Kopano fields, go pub golfing, stay out late and sleep all day. So they try to recreate this happy time of freedom and fun. It doesn’t last too long. For the Average Joe – just a few months while they transition and find their feet at work or accept that the partying and a 9 – 5 job leads to exhaustion and grumpiness. They soon realize that while this new phase might be more restrictive on their time, it does afford them financial independence and purpose to get up in the morning!

The WORST thing you can do is give your briefcase an ultimatum to stop being “Seventeen Again” and buy you a flashy diamond ring. That will just bring out more of the Zac and less of the Matt. And you don’t want to be dating Zac for any longer than you need to (even if he’s a hottie). It seems you are ready to settle down but he clearly isn’t. Giving him an ultimatum isn’t going to change that. Besides, do you really want to ultimatum someone into proposing to you? This has got to be a "he goes 90 you go 10" scenario. Setting ultimatums is just doing too much work!

If he was one of those unemployed hedonists hanging out with different 18 year old girls every week and jolling until all hours of the morning, TTB would issue a “Dump him before he can say Zac Efron” decree. That’s the worst case of “Seventeen Again” and TTB has little hope that those types she likes to call “Peter Pan’s lost boys” will ever grow up! But it seems your briefcase just needs a bit of time and space. Be supportive and allow him this time to adjust. If in 3 months things haven’t changed, it might be time to accept that either he is just not that into you or he is just lacking the maturity to settle down with you. At that point TTB would suggest that you love and leave his ass!

In conclusion, transitioning into the pressures of the working world is not for the faint hearted. Adding more pressure to the boiler room by telling him to settle down with you will only make things worse and doesn’t show much understanding of where he is at. Who knows? Maybe he is hanging out in cheap studenty places because he’s saving up for that diamond ring? Ok, unlikely. But think positively – at least you’re not in Bermuda!

Yours sincerely
TTB