I [17F] got pregnant with a guy I dated briefly [20M] who is the son of my Dad's boss and now our families are pushing for us to get married because of our religious beliefs and to avoid embarrassment for them.

Yes I know being pregnant at 17 is not the greatest decision I ever made but it wasn't planned this way, that's just how it turned out. I met my dad's boss and his family a while back, he owns the company where my dad is upper management and they are good friends. I didn't really have a huge thing for the guy, it was more a passion thing than love but we had a short fling that started last summer and went for a few months. I was going through a rebellious phase and saw him as a bit of a rebel too so we started hanging out. Anyway I found out I was pregnant after we'd kinda cooled down on each other. He knows and our parents know.

My family is part of a fairly conservative, not radically so but enough Evangelical congregation in Texas. They have pretty strong opinions on children outside of marriage as do most of our community and everyone at the church. This means that what we did is a big no-no and our parents talked it other together and with their son and encouraged him to marry me which he's apparently agreed to though no formal proposal has happened yet.

We can't actually marry straight away as the law now requires me to be 18 but that's not very far away and getting engaged would likely stop any badmouthing that would happen as a result of a baby outside marriage and damage to our families reputation which is generally very good. His parents owning a company makes things worse as they said it could have an affect on the business and my dad's job would also be at risk. I'm feeling a lot of pressure right now.

I'm keeping the baby regardless of everything, abortion is very against our beliefs and I'm not about to murder my baby but I feel like marriage is a lot of responsibility and that I should really like somebody before I marry them. I never intended to be with him long term but I'm scared to go against my parents. No formal proposal has happened yet but I spoke to my mom yesterday and while she did say it's ultimately my decision on if I accept her wording seemed to be strongly encouraging me to accept marriage. Lots of "If your refuse these things could happen, we could be shunned by people we know, your dad might lose his job".

I've not spoken to him yet on how he feels about all this, I was told he was sat down by both our parents and agreed to propose but I feel like he was probably pushed into it. I feel scared to talk to him because I feel like he might propose and make me decide there and then. I don't know how he feels about me, if he wants to get married or how he expects our relationship to be.

I wish I could slow down time or vanish from all this pressure on me. Maybe at least figure out what my rights are and maybe find people who went through similar experiences. I've got nobody around me I can trust for an unbiased view on how to handle things so I'm turning to a bunch of strangers on the internet to confess my sins and ask for wisdom. So what do you think I should do, internet strangers?

TL;DR: Met my dad's bosses son through a company event, found we were both going through a rebellious phase and started a short but passionate relationship. Accidentally got pregnant through carelessness and our religious parents who are against children outside of marriage are heavily encouraging us to get engaged to avoid embarrassment from their peers and the church congregation spreading rumors and badmouthing them. Our families have good standing in the community so I feel trapped by this into accepting things I'm not sure I ever wanted with this person.

Submitted January 01, 2019 at 05:39PM by marriagethrowawayn http://bit.ly/2Srt6bK