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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:35
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What's the difference between living with someone for the rest of your life but not getting married and living with someone for the rest of your life and getting married?
Big party, lots of toasters and other gifts, and abetter protected legal status. If/When I know I have found "the one" I'll probably propose at some point, say something like 3 years in.
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debeest
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Married over 17 years, still love her. Still not sure whether or not marriage itself is a good or bad thing. It simplifies certain things, such as parenting rights and responsibilities, and it clarifies certain things, such as whether or not you're hoping and expecting to stay together for the rest of your life.
Honestly, I think the real decisions mostly are not affected by marriage one way or another. You'll still fight sometimes, you'll still have to work hard on your relationship if you want it to last, you'll still agonize sometimes about whether you do want it to last, you'll still have to decide what behavioral restraints to impose on one another. Either way, breaking up can be horrible -- but marriages creates a legal bond that probably makes it harder in some ways and easier in others.
Other people are often more comfortable with your relationship if you give it the marital imprimatur.
Marriage tends to be closely associated with having kids, and whether to have kids is a decision that's orders of magnitude more important than whether to marry.
Just do what seems right for your bebe and yourself -- there's no way to know ahead of time how it will work out, and no way to look back and know how it would have worked out the other way. As John Lennon wrote, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
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Drogue
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Omnipresent conscience
Oct 2002
time: 05:35
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I still have no idea how I feel about marriage. Part of me thinks signing a contract on an emotion is at best unromantic, and at worst fallacious. Emotions are, by their nature, not something that you can control, at least not completely. So signing something to say you will feel that way forever seems unnatural, since by no intent of your own, you could break that contract.
The other part of me sees a wedding as a celebration of love, and the begining of a life together with someone. Even if the act of signing a contract on that emotion is a little strange, the fact that someone would want to love me forever would be a beautiful feeling. The idea of having hundreds of people gathered together to celebrate the love of two people seems like a nice idea, and something I would usually be all for, in the way that I think Valentine's Day is a worthwhile celebration (in story, at least moreso than Christmas), and the idea of spending my life with someone special is a nice thought. It's just the idea of it being a business contract that strikes me as against the point of it.
In terms of bringing up children, it might provide a more stable family, in that both partners might feel safer in their relationship. It brings tax and next of kin benefits. If you are in a long term relationship, there are practical reasons to get married, however marriage isn't, at least to me, a practical thing. While I may like the ideal of spending my life with someone, I hate the idea that we'd be spending our life together through some form of contractual obligation, and not because we wanted to be together. If someone stopped loving me, I'd want them to leave me, no matter how much it hurt. Therefore, I can only think that any stability it brings is either because of contractual obligation, not because of will, or for psychological reasons, in that feeling safer, less jealous, may lead to a happier relationship.
From a state point of view, there needs to be a way to distinguish between a casual relationship and a relationship serious enough to warrant next of kin status. However that could simply involve signing a form to say that this person is considered to be your next of kin, and does not need to involve a promise to love this person forever.
Looking back at what I've written, I would disagree with marriage, because it seems unnatural, not in it's practicality, but in it's ideals, in the actual contract part. However I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think that the idea of proposing, of celebrating being in love, and of spending the rest of my life with someone, is wonderful. I would love to have that, but I don't see why I need to sign a contract that I'll feel that forever to have that. The security of marriage may be a nice feeling, but it can lead to complacancy, to not treating your partner as well as you used to, because they have no way out, they are obliged to stay with you.
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debeest
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Perhaps I should add that my wife and I initially had a wedding to which we did not invite any representatives of church or state -- that non-contractual marriage is the one that we honor. Later, when we chose to have our first child, we got married by one of those fake-church people in order to ensure paternity rights and get my insurance to cover the birth. I guess that's what I think of marriage.
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MRT144
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Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:35
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I really find it hard to imagine myself married. I think to me it symbolizes a loss in freedom. Whether thats freedom to be with friends out late, or working on music for 12 hours straight i dont think i would be ready to scrafice my life for that.
Another thing. Women can not be reasoned with. They werent born with the tenet of comprimise in their genes. Even in my relationship i never get to do what i want if i try to comprimise with her about it. I just go and do it and be a "bad boyfriend" because i have things i want to do.
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21-04-2004 02:00
. When I marry her, I feel as though I should be putting a key instead of ring around her finger
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