How do I (31F) approach my partner (36M) “rethinking marriage” after he doubled his income?

Sorry for the throwaway, my friends have my Reddit and I don’t want them to know about this yet lol. My partner (36M) and I (31F) have been together for 4.5 years, friends for 8 years altogether. He was already making more than me (I work in education and he works in tech) but 2 months ago he got a new position that more-than-doubled his salary.. so now he’s making almost 3x my income. We’ve said we’d get married from pretty early on having already known each other a while, but have been seriously talking about it for a year or so. No wedding, no engagement ring, just signing the papers, 2 (fun) gold bands, and a honeymoon vacation. Today, I sent him a link to a stylized wedding band I liked and he said we needed to talk later. That talk ended up being him letting me know that he wanted to hold off on making marriage plans, and when I asked why, he said that it was because our financial situation was “more complicated now” and he needed to “do research on how other people handle it.” I asked if that meant he didn’t want to marry me anymore, and he said “it means I don’t want to talk about it until I figure some stuff out,” to which I just said “okay.” I’m currently panicking a little, and I feel really hurt. The first 2 years we dated, I was making triple what he was making at the time (minimum wage) and not once did I ever think “yeah I can’t marry this guy, he makes less than I do,” so it’s difficult for me not to think “wow now that he has more to lose he isn’t quite sure he wants to risk it with me specifically,”or something. I don’t know whether that’s actually what he means, though, or whether I’m attaching a meaning to it that he doesn’t intend. Anyway, how do I approach this conversation with him in a way that gets at why his increased income changed how he’s approaching marriage, rather than turning it into an argument about whether he’s allowed to care about money? I’m particularly trying to understand what questions I should be asking him to distinguish between “I need to reconsider how we would structure our finances if we marry” and “I am genuinely less sure that I want to marry you now that I make more money.” Please help me lol tl;dr My partner more than doubled his income and now says he wants to pause our marriage plans because our finances are “more complicated.” I’m hurt because when I used to make much more than him, I never reconsidered marrying him. How do I figure out whether he just wants to rethink the financial side of marriage or is actually less sure he wants to marry me? Edit: I forgot to mention I’ve doubled my own salary since we started dating too! It not like I’m stagnant in my career or anything, he just jumped from 1 F500 company to another :/ Edit 2: So many people suggested it might be prenups, that I went ahead and just asked him directly if he was thinking about a prenup. To get to the point, it wasn’t really. He feels I’m not as ambitious as he is income-wise (he’s gone from minimum wage to 200k in 4.5 years, whereas I’ve only gone from 43k to 78k) and he has concerns that I don’t share the same drive as him, that “I’m too comfortable where I am,”that it’s making him doubt our relationship, and he would like me to work on getting a higher paying job, and until then marriage talk is on hold. Still processing what that means. I appreciate everyone’s feedback. submitted by /u/throwRA_questioningg to r/relationship_advice [link] [comments]