Your assumption is correct. I've lived on my own since I was 18, be it for college, in an apartment, had my own house for awhile before I used it to pay off student loans, etc. She's living with her parents currently, and has been all her life. She doesn't WANT to live with her parents, but she does because it's convenient. One thing I knew about her going in is partially what's to blame for this entire situation- when something isn't baringly obvious or easy, she's lazy about it. She doesn't want to put in the work it takes to make things happen, she day dreams fantasies, and then gets upset when they don't happen. This wasn't an issue before because I could always walk her through things and get her to the destination and let her thing it was her own thought process and doings that were the reason. However, that gets tiring as time goes on and it's part of what I've been trying to expose to her so that we can work on fixing it.
I don't disagree with your second sentiment, in fact I've regretted the decision of eloping on a few different occasions because it's over bearing. (I'm going to write a paragraph about this at the bottom that I'll mark with an * in case you want context.) The issue with planning on things and moving forward without her is that I have no credit history due to always paying for things in cash, and she has great credit due to always having a charge card attached to her parents names as collateral. That mixed with always living at home, she was able to use and pay off a credit card every month for the last lets say, 7-8 years. Needless to say she has great credit, and my lack of makes it impossible for me to get a loan in my own name or anything at the moment (I'm currently taking steps to create credit like a secured visa card with my credit union).
I honestly don't know what would happen if I scheduled some kind of marriage counseling and then told her afterwards. A part of me says that she would be upset but still go because it's already set up, and a part of me agrees that she may blow it off. It's a really hard situation, and I'm trying to make the best of it as I can but I'm either too blunt about things and make her upset, or I beat around the bush too much and she doesn't pick up on the point of what I'm trying to say.
*When we eloped it was because we were already planning on getting married anyway, and I started working a job (I now have a different job) that required me to travel to different states doing computer installations for the Navy/Department of Defense/HP. The job itself was great, I got to travel, the pay was great, the benefits were great, and all my expenses were covered so my income was 100% untouched and saving was incredibly easy. We decided to just get married and we'd tell everyone in a few months when she thought her family would be happy with it. I was uncomfortable with keeping the secret, but went along with it because I knew she really wanted to do it, and I wanted to get married too at some point. When we talked about all this stuff, we were planning on waiting a couple months, not having a wedding, maybe a get together or something to celebrate, whatever. Not make a big deal about it. Now she wants to have a wedding, change the date that we got married to whatever day the wedding is so that nobody knows we eloped, and blablabla. Essentially I know that I made a bad impulse decision because I knew ahead of time that she looks at things in the short term and doesn't think about what she will REALLY want in the long term, but I wanted her to be happy and I knew that I was going to marry her either way.
So while I don't regret marrying her, I regret the way I did it because 1) I dont like lying, pretending, etc I'm very blunt and honest and it kills me to not tell people that we're married and 2) It's incredibly frustrating that she's so bent on the idea that everyone will hate her for getting married without a huge get together etc that she won't look at any other alternative or the fact that literally nobody is going to care.
Once again, sorry if I'm saying too much/not enough, but I'm terrible at laying down my frustrations for a third party. It's not something that I normally do.