Harry and Meghan: Relationship Musings


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They are dating already nearly one and a half year; his relationship with Cressida lasted 23 months and ended in April 2014 - Cressida just turned 25 then and maybe she didn't feel mature enough to start a family? Meghan is much older and feels as such and Harry too: he is three years older now and maturer, and probably - when he observes happy in his fatherhood William - he wants more and more to become a father himself.
 
Hmmm funny seems like some people and the media were hoping when Harry was dating Cressida they would engage and marry as well. I believe Meghan is not the one. Sorry.

The press always thinks he's going to marry the lady he's dating. However, this relationship has seen obvious signs from him that this is it.

They are dating already nearly one and a half year; his relationship with Cressida lasted 23 months and ended in April 2014 - Cressida just turned 25 then and maybe she didn't feel mature enough to start a family? Meghan is much older and feels as such and Harry too: he is three years older now and maturer, and probably - when he observes happy in his fatherhood William - he wants more and more to become a father himself.

I think Harry is also in a better place as a person. I believe he begin therapy after the Cressida relationship ornearing the end of it. Not sure on the exact timeline though.
 
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I never got the impression Harry and Cressida were ever that serious. But the whole relationship with Meghan has been different. I think they are already engaged and are only waiting until Meghan is free from work obligations to move onto the next step of their lives.
 
I never got the impression Harry and Cressida were ever that serious. But the whole relationship with Meghan has been different. I think they are already engaged and are only waiting until Meghan is free from work obligations to move onto the next step of their lives.

Yup totally agree. I think Harry and Meghan found each other when they least expected to meet that special someone. And we see the happiness that follows.
 
I never got the impression Harry and Cressida were ever that serious. But the whole relationship with Meghan has been different. I think they are already engaged and are only waiting until Meghan is free from work obligations to move onto the next step of their lives.

Nope neither did I ..that relationship had a 'end date' on it from the git go.


LaRae
 
Hmmm funny seems like some people and the media were hoping when Harry was dating Cressida they would engage and marry as well. I believe Meghan is not the one. Sorry.

Just curious as to what makes you think Meghan is not the one for Harry? I have never seen him this happy or content before.
 
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I never got the impression Harry and Cressida were ever that serious. But the whole relationship with Meghan has been different. I think they are already engaged and are only waiting until Meghan is free from work obligations to move onto the next step of their lives.

I agree exactly :flowers: That's exactly why I don't agree they are engaged.

The next step of their life together is engagement. There is little reason, other then people's obsession with an African proposal, that they would hide an engagement for how many months.

Engagement is indeed the next step. A step they will take when she is done her commitments and moves to London to be with him. I have no doubt they have a promise to be engaged already, an understanding on a time frame. But I also don't get the whole, she is been hiding a ring for months, thing.

I think people just seem so anxious for a wedding. And seem worried if he proposes in December, that they will keep it private for a few months which will delay a wedding. There is no need to believe that or think that. And no chance of a wedding realistically before at least end of May either way.


I think Harry is also in a better place as a person. I believe he begin therapy after the Cressida relationship ornearing the end of it. Not sure on the exact timeline though.

According to an interview he gave, Harry actually entered therapy before or during his relationship with Cress. He said in an interview that at 28 he had been having such trouble dealing with his issues, he was finally convinced to seek therapy. That was in 2012, around the time Cress entered the picture.

I do think Cress was just a relationship of convenience. And for both of them. I honestly don't think either of them entered it thinking it would be serious. I think they were both using each other, with full knowledge of each other. Harry was looking for a fun date when he was not away with the army. Not a serious relationship as he didn't have the time. And perhaps during therapy, he realized he wasn't in the mental place to have a real relationship. She was fresh from college, and wanting some fun, and who better then a prince. And if it helped get her some PR for her acting, all the better. Not in any way at all saying that Cress was a gold digger, actually the exact opposite. Or that she lied to him at all. As I don't. I think they both knew full well what the other wanted from the relationship. It ran its course and ended.

After his childhood love with Chelsy, and his fun love with Cress, Harry is now ready to find a steady love to make a life with.
 
My reason for believing they are not announcing an engagement already is Meghan's commitment to finish her Suits contract. Once that has been fulfilled Meghan can do what she likes.
I do think they have an understanding and have thoroughly discussed marriage-perhaps it is more they both wanted this and there is no need for a traditional proposal.
 
What I took from the Cress thing dying is that Cressida was and probably still is 110% devoted to the arts, in particular, singing, dancing, music, jazz, Caribbean music.

It's been said that Harry collects art and does enjoy the theatre but I wouldn't say that they had a huge amount in common otherwise. Attending music festivals and polo, perhaps. (Cressida did follow the game as the Wentworth-Stanley's were a polo mad family.)

Also, at the time Harry had just returned from Afghanistan, and was probably unsettled, Cress undecided about her future direction which she wanted to be in dance or the theatre I think. Neither were on the same page, as with the latter stages of the on-off romance between Chelsy and Harry.

I never got the impression that Cressida enjoyed clubbing or London nightlife over much, but I can't imagine a bonding which included evenings in just cooking, talking and enjoying each other's company.
 
Sometimes things just happen. My first proposal actually was driving along in a car down a country road and the guy stating "That's the kind of house I'd like when we get married". Not romantic at all but more of an understanding. :D
 
My reason for believing they are not announcing an engagement already is Meghan's commitment to finish her Suits contract. Once that has been fulfilled Meghan can do what she likes.
I do think they have an understanding and have thoroughly discussed marriage-perhaps it is more they both wanted this and there is no need for a traditional proposal.

You can both be on the same page, but there is always a need for a traditional proposal. :D
 
I have a feeling we'll see an engagement announcement at some point in the three or so weeks after the Queen and Prince Philip's anniversary on November 20. This allows them not to overshadow that anniversary but still allows Meghan to be present for the holiday celebrations at Sandringham, the family Christmas luncheon at the palace, etc.

Given that the new Baby Cambridge is due in April, I don't think it would be surprising to see a wedding in mid-late May. This would still allow for a honeymoon while allowing the couple to be back in time for the June activities.

Just my two cents but here's hoping.
 
Does anyone know what date the Queen left for Balmoral this year?
 
Does anyone know what date the Queen left for Balmoral this year?


Officially? She arrived on August 7th. And by that I mean, she has an official arrival which includes her inspecting her guards who are on duty when she is there. This was done on August 7th.

But she was in Scotland earlier. She attended a highlands games on August 5.

She will often come early, before her official arrival. The grounds though are open to the public so she stays at Craigowan lodge until the castle is closed for the season.


As for Christmas......even if engaged she wont be able to attend Sandringham. She would be able to attend the Christmas lunch in London.
 
You can both be on the same page, but there is always a need for a traditional proposal. :D

I come from a culture that doesn’t do proposals, so I’m really curious. Do people actually do this in the UK/US?
You are in a serious relationship, say ‘’I love you’’, move in together, plan when you’re announcing your engagement, plan when you’ll get married, pick a church and wedding venue and THEN the guy proposes? Sorry, but this seems totally ludicrous to me:confused:. What’s the point of a proposal by this point? Is it to have bragging rights with your friends or something? I mean, there’s no romance to it, so I can’t see what a woman would get out of it.
 
Not everyone moves in together at the 'I love you' stage though, and some people do have an agreement with each other that they will be together for a lifetime (hopefully) but then enjoy the choosing of a ring, congratulations of family/friends, a party, and then start arranging a wedding over several months. Sometimes finances come into it.

As far as Harry/Meghan are concerned they may be secretly engaged without all the media fuss, while at the same time telling family and friends, alerting them to coordinate their diaries. Royal weddings take an awful lot of planning over a long period of time.
 
Yes, but some people make it sound like Harry and Meghan have planed the wedding and their future lives to the tiniest detail and they still expect him to ‘’officially propose’’ at some future date.

Personally, I think there are two equally probable options:
1. He’s proposed and now they’re just planning the timeline of how and when things will be made public.
2. There is no engagement yet, but they have agreed that they’re serious and that Meghan will move to the UK after she finishes filming and then they’ll discuss and plan what happens next.
 
Samantha will change her tune again once it's clear that she isn't getting an invite to the wedding. :lol:

I agree exactly :flowers: That's exactly why I don't agree they are engaged.

The next step of their life together is engagement. There is little reason, other then people's obsession with an African proposal, that they would hide an engagement for how many months.

Engagement is indeed the next step. A step they will take when she is done her commitments and moves to London to be with him. I have no doubt they have a promise to be engaged already, an understanding on a time frame. But I also don't get the whole, she is been hiding a ring for months, thing.

I think people just seem so anxious for a wedding. And seem worried if he proposes in December, that they will keep it private for a few months which will delay a wedding. There is no need to believe that or think that. And no chance of a wedding realistically before at least end of May either way.

Well I'm one who wouldn't be surprised if they are already engaged but I've never favored the idea of an African proposal nor do I think a December proposal would mean a delayed engagement announcement or wedding. Whether Harry has already proposed or is waiting another month or two, I believe an announcement will come no later than January 2018. And to be clear, I don't really have a preference one way or another, I just don't think he'd necessarily wait to propose, particularly if they've already discussed and decided on marriage, when Meghan would move, when they'd announce an engagement etc. (and I do believe this to be the case).
 
All we have as far as information on this couple is what they've allowed us to know and see and that is very little. We *know* the couple are in love and that this is their time. Meghan has told us so. That's it in a nutshell. Everything else is supposition and musings and putting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together to form a big picture and we don't even have all the pieces of that puzzle yet.

He may have proposed over coffee one morning months ago and put a ring in her danish and they're just keeping it to themselves and close friends and family. They may be keeping it close to the vest until they absolutely cannot get away with hiding it from the public. We know Will proposed in Africa to Kate but they've never given any details on the proposal and I don't expect it to be any different with Harry. However they decide that its to be that they marry and go through life together is between the two of them.

We just have to be patient and wait and see what comes next. They definitely know what is going on but they're not telling us. They don't feel the need to.
 
The meeting with the Queen, if it happened as speculated, is a mere formality. The Queen is not going to say no to Harry's request without some serious issue involved. Porn star, criminal etc So Harry could of already proposed back in Africa ..or he might wait until later, like another trip after Christmas.


LaRae

I believe they were already engaged at the time they attended the Invictus Games. They just seemed very comfortable with each other and her mother was there. I think in a way it was Harry presenting his future mother-in-law as well as him and Meghan as a couple.

I never got that vibe from Cressida that the relationship was anything more than friends with benefits kind of thing. It just never came across as being a mature love match from either one of them. It was what it was and Harry had someone to go around with when he was home in the UK. Harry was also actively serving in the Army at that point so I doubt he was really serious about anyone at that time.

I agree. I never thought the relationship with Cressida was serious. She always seemed uncomfortable to me. Harry never had the glow about him that he has now.

They are dating already nearly one and a half year; his relationship with Cressida lasted 23 months and ended in April 2014 - Cressida just turned 25 then and maybe she didn't feel mature enough to start a family? Meghan is much older and feels as such and Harry too: he is three years older now and maturer, and probably - when he observes happy in his fatherhood William - he wants more and more to become a father himself.

I agree. He has also gotten help with his grief and anger over his mother's death, which I am sure has gone a long way in his outlook and happiness.
 
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Yes, but some people make it sound like Harry and Meghan have planed the wedding and their future lives to the tiniest detail and they still expect him to ‘’officially propose’’ at some future date.

Personally, I think there are two equally probable options:
1. He’s proposed and now they’re just planning the timeline of how and when things will be made public.
2. There is no engagement yet, but they have agreed that they’re serious and that Meghan will move to the UK after she finishes filming and then they’ll discuss and plan what happens next.

Announcing an engagement and propsing afterwards is illogical (although I know of people who did so, guess the meaning of an engagement wasn't clear to them). However, I do think there are options in between 1 and 2. They seem to have the understanding that they hope to get married some time next year (I suppose) and that Meghan will move to the UK some time after Suits ends filming (it might already be set in stone or the date might depend on the engagement (announcement)). I don't think the wedding itself has been planned yet, that will start after the proposal = engagement. It is mainly her international move that might require going a little ahead of what they would normally start planning before the proposal.
 
I come from a culture that doesn’t do proposals, so I’m really curious. Do people actually do this in the UK/US?
You are in a serious relationship, say ‘’I love you’’, move in together, plan when you’re announcing your engagement, plan when you’ll get married, pick a church and wedding venue and THEN the guy proposes? Sorry, but this seems totally ludicrous to me:confused:. What’s the point of a proposal by this point? Is it to have bragging rights with your friends or something? I mean, there’s no romance to it, so I can’t see what a woman would get out of it.

Speaking from my own experience, my now-husband and I had rather organically agreed over the course of many conversations that marriage was inevitable and we talked about the real practicalities of a wedding for months before he formally proposed. The proposal was more important to him than to me, to be honest. He wanted a specific moment to point to and say "that's when we became official." He wanted to craft a special, romantic experience for us. But in practical terms, that also marked the moment when our eventual marriage went from something that we talked a lot about when we were alone but largely kept to ourselves and instead became a public thing that was announced to our family, etc. It also marked the beginning of formally planning in very concrete ways (setting a date, shopping for dresses, etc. as opposed to our earlier phase of talking frankly about our likes and dislikes but not yet making definite plans).

I would imagine a royal engagement, especially in this day and age, essentially consists of several phases. The couple has to decide in the usual way that they really are interested in a personal life partnership, of course. For most of us that would be enough to call a normal couple "engaged." But then they have to consider in a very real and specific way what that means in terms of the role the potential spouse might play and whether that is a job that he or she is truly willing to take on. They've got to float trial balloons within the family to see if the relationship will really be accepted. If they're smart, they probably look into what will and won't be their own prerogative regarding a wedding and living quarters and go ahead and figure out what they want so they can be ready to hit the ground running once official conversations with court employees begin to create the concrete plans. And then, only after all of those things are sorted out, they are ready for an official, public engagement.

Harry and Meghan certainly act as though they are well past the first phase. The questions are (1) how far along they are in the middle stages that could lead to an official engagement--or could lead them to decide that personal attraction isn't enough to make a marriage truly practical--and (2) whether their preference is to have a formal proposal mark the beginning of that public phase or if it came at the start of the process so they could let it be their own, private thing for a while. Time will tell about the first. We may never know the answer to the second, and that's ok (if potentially disappointing).

There is living precedent for a quiet engagement of some length. Prince Philip proposed and Elizabeth accepted before they talked to her parents about it, then the engagement was kept secret for almost a year. The time between the announcement and the wedding was just a few months, but that was only the last, public phase of the process.
 
I think the decision to marry was made before Meghan shut down her blog and her Reitman's contract. No self supporting woman would cut her income without being sure.
 
It wouldn't surprise me at all that they were talking about marriage within 3 to 6 months of meeting/dating.


LaRae
 
I have to agree with you. By the time Meghan started closing things and withdrawing from lucrative projects, Harry and Meghan most likely will have reached the point where whatever they'd do, it would be in their best interest heading towards a life together.

Even though we've been told (and shown by essays and reports) that Meghan has been quite outspoken on issues in the past, since this relationship became serious, although she's kept up with her UN work, she has significantly steered clear of anything that might be considered controversial or political. This all fits in with her needing to adapt to what is expected of those close to the British royal family.

As far as restrictions for a royal girlfriend, there aren't any that I'm aware of. As far as restrictions for a royal girlfriend heading to marry and become a part of the British royal family, there are several and a lot of the things that Meghan has done and not done point to the latter.
 
Everyone has to remember too she is basically changing jobs. I've seen folks comment about her having to give things up...well yes by her own choice however this is common in relationships/marriages when one person lives in X city and the other lives in Y city (even within the same state).

Reality is she has few years left as an actress. She's talked about (links posted here previously) working in order to fund/support her charity work. Marrying Harry gives her the biggest platform for doing charitable works. She's talked in the past (links posted here previously) before Harry about realizing she would have to adjust/change her life to work for a family situation.

They've been talking about how all this could/would work for months now. It's pretty much figured out. Now we wait for the implementation of it.



LaRae
 
:previous:

I have to agree with all of this. Marrying into the BRF is a job. At least marrying someone as high profile as Harry is. And as has been seen Meghan is a very, smart, capable woman. She considers herself a feminist. She would not have taken the steps of closing down the very lucrative streams of income and public exposure for herself, without an understanding of what she would be replacing it with. To think of it in purely career terms, you never leave a job, without having another job to go to. I believe she and Harry have had discussions about what their life would look like and specifically what her role would look like. And once she was comfortable with that she was ready to move forward. And I don't blame her one bit. It's what most smart, self sufficient women would do. I don't think she probably sees it as her giving up here career, as opposed to changing careers.

Not to mention she has continued to fulfill her already established obligations, which I think speaks to her loyalty and work ethic.

I don't mean to make it sound like a business transaction (I'm a hopeless romantic!) But on some levels it is. I think for them the feelings were the easy part. They probably knew how they felt pretty early on. It's the logistics that have taken some time. They would for any long distance couple. Then add actresses/American and royal to that, and well, there is a lot to work through.

People keep trying to compare Meghan and this relationship to other BRF relationships, but there hasn't really been a royal girlfriend like her. Most of them did not necessarily have a career or other outside obligations that needed to be navigated. Well Sophie did, but she wasn't a public person at the time, so it was a little easier.( I was always said she wasn't able to continue her PR career, but I get why it didn't work. I still think she bring value to the BRF having had a career and run her own company.)
 
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I completely agree that Meghan and Harry had some kind of understanding before she ended her Reitman's contract and before she shut down The Tig. I also think they planned the VF article along with the BRF. There is no way any self respecting feminist would a) shut down her streams of income and b) put herself "out there" like she did in the VF article without having an understanding of what she'd be replacing those things with.

And I know others have pointed out that Meghan would have to stop being outspoken, etc.. and that she's an actress and she'd have to deny individualism for "The Firm"... but I think many don't quite understand the acting profession.

There are plenty of times when actresses have to put on a "persona" in real life - what we see of them is often carefully constructed. Entertainers are similar - Whitney Houston comes to mind. So does Beyonce. Anne Hathaway. And the list goes on. Actors often have to present two faces to the world and many times they have to swallow their real thoughts in service of the role they are currently playing. Meaning - you can't give away spoilers in interviews - as much as you'd like to. And often, studios want you to stay away from controversial topics to protect themselves and their profits.

Being in the BRF is another role - another job. It's just lifetime. And most of the duties include charity work that Meghan already does (she's had more experience doing that than either Diana or Catherine had before they married into the BRF). The other duties involve public speaking and being able to influence via public speaking. Meghan has had that nailed with her UN work for a long time. Even her bachelor's degree at Northwestern set her up perfectly for "Duchess" work.

And honestly, she's been putting on a clinic lately for how to stay under the radar and not be made a fuss over. The VF article was the only one she did in about a year - which is amazing for an actress.

To posit that she cannot continue to do such once this becomes her REAL job when she marries Harry - just seems like it's based on supposition rather than on the actual evidence in front of us showing that she is already doing this.

She's gonna be fine.

She'll probably start a trend of royal-life seeking girls going to Northwestern to major in her same major trying to become royal themselves, lol.
 
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