No one can tell you if he’ll ever be ready to marry you except your boyfriend and your instincts, but here is a practical idea for you to consider. You’ll need to get 100% clear on the time you are actually willing to wait. In order to do this, ask him to “take a meeting” with you. This meeting will give you a shortcut to your nagging question of if and when he’ll ever be ready to marry you.

Why wait around another three years to see if he’s ready yet? If you want a different answer, you must ask a different question and be willing and ready to accept the answer, whether you like it or not.

Once you have set up a meeting, pick a neutral spot that both of you feel relaxed in. Make sure you tell him the purpose of this soiree beforehand. Inform him that it’s not about putting pressure on him, but to enable both of you to have a clearer understanding of each others needs, wants and desires so you can both have a better roadmap of the future. Men work well with facts. So stick to them.

Before you go to the meeting, you must become certain about what your goals, needs and desires are. Write them on a sheet of paper as a guide and make sure to rehearse them if you are nervous so you won’t come across as needy, desperate or uninterested in his needs. But as much as you want to express all of your needs, you must also come willing to listen and accept his.

Don’t go on the defensive, trying to win your case—you’ll only push him farther away. A marriage proposal is not a means of leverage. Be prepared to accept his answers and really grasp them. Then be prepared to make a decision for a change in your life, whether it’s the outcome you wanted or not.

If on the other hand he doesn’t want to talk about your future and isn’t interested in the meeting, run fast, you already have your answer. It’s not you, it’s him. There is nothing you can do to “encourage” him to marry you (that boils down to “making”). Because would you really want to be with someone who felt he had been pressured into walking down the aisle? The facts are that he would eventually resent you for it and it would be rocky waters ahead.