Marriage or not?

Just curious ... how many of you ladies are married or would like to be married at some point in your future? And how many of you single girls want to stay that way?

Also, if you are married or want to be, would you want a mutually exclusive marriage, or an open one (they exist, of course)?

I personally want to stay single, but think I could easily cohabitate indefinitely with the right person ... maybe even in a mutually-exclusive situation.

So share your thoughts!

Peace! - K

 

i found the man im going to marry a few years ago, and we've been talking over 2 years. before we started talking i just got out of a relationship where i was dumped for the first and only time, and i had fallen in love the first time. at that moment i wanted to stay single as long as i could...possibly the rest of my life, because i found myself dating multiple guys simultaneously, but letting each of them know we were not going to get involved in a relationship, at least not any time soon.
the man im with now was one of those men. and we claimed to never date but keep an 'open relationship' as we call it now, but bak then we didnt even call it that cuz we didnt want to get involved, since we were interracial and my family is racist. we told each other we were not going to have the word 'love' be a part of our 'relationship'. however, did that last long? no, not quite. maybe 2 months. and then from there we fell in love...hard. and then we made a new agreement, which said that we would never leave each other unless death or marriage with another person broke us apart...quite different from our first agreement.
after 10 months of just 'talking' in that 'open relationship'...we realized how rediculous it was getting and decided that my family was no longer an excuse to keep us apart. we then became involved in an exclusive relationship. a few months i told my parents. a few months after that we had a 'committment ceremony' out on the rocks of the river and exchanged some promise rings and short vows. we basically decided to get married after i graduate on the date that we started dating exclusively: october 12.haha it was silly but it meant a lot.
things continued to progress, i told my grandmother and my dad and his parents. there is only one more vital person left which is my mother's father. he is the one we are scared of. completely stubborn old man. anywho, we were really wanting to get married. last semester we decided on st patty's day, which was then changed to the end of april, and then to my spring break, which was the beginning of april. i felt it was important to tell my parents........and basically we ended up not doing it, because i was reminded of the importance it is to tell my grandfather about my boyfriend because it would be a great shock for him finding out about his race...and that im married...at the same time. so, out of respect to him...we decided to wait, yet again...
so now we're bak to the orginal date of after i graduate, unless something changes from here and then...which probably will be the case.
sorry....i just get excited telling our story

 

ive been with my boyfriend for a little over 10 months. but i dont think i could ever get married. too religious for me. ye, i like long lasting relationships, i just think marriage can ruin a good relationship.

 

I want to get married someday.

 

I would rather stay with a guy for a couple of years then have some kids and if everything still good between us 10 or 15 years later then get married.

 

Sometimes yes...mostly no.

 

not a big believer in marriage

it's moreso for the families of hte two than the two themselves, imho. Not a permanent thing (my family has a ridiculous history of divorce)

 

I am married, but it was never something I said I wanted to do. I married a man who is from the US... I am from Canada. Basically the only way we could be together was to get married. If he had been Canadian, we probably wouldn't have gotten married.

It's not a love thing... as I love my husband to pieces and can't imagine being with anyone else. I just don't see the point in marriage.. didn't grow up around any "happy marriages" and really, the whole point of legal marriage was the property aspect, which is now null and void, right?

My husband understands this, and has said he would have been fine living common-law for 60 years if that if what I wanted.

p.s. I didn't take his last name either... I am my own person, I don't need his last name to give me value in this society.

 

this is my second marriage. After the first one, I was sure I'd never do that again. DH and I dated for six years before we got married, and then it was more a legality than anything else... he was buying my mom's house, and I wanted us to be married first (TN is a community property state and does not recognize common-law marriages anymore, so what's his is mine, as long as he acquired it *after* the wedding). Plus, I wouldn't live with him until after we were married.

mutually exclusive, period. if you're going to screw around, why bother getting married? kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it? I've never known any open relationships (married or not) to last very long, but I'm sure there are exceptions.

 

"Open Marraiges" have a notorious failure rate. They just don't work. Most human are either monogamous, or live a serial monogamy lifestyle. Fucking several different people at once is just too complicated, and jealousy, no matter what people say, IS going to happen. (Not to mention disease, and what about kids?)

In a lot of areas, a womyn, as well as a man, are better protected in a long term relationship, if they are married. Some employers will ONLY give health care to spouses, not live ins. If you are a womyn, chances are you NEED health care, especially if you have children, or are over the age of 30 or so. I can't see being in a long term relationship and not protecting yourself and your children with the man, by not getting married. Unless you have more money than he does. But this isn't the case for most womyn.

I don't think it is a moral issue at all. Just a practical one. I also live in a community propety state, I'd be a fool not to be married, especially being a SAHM. My home business doesn't make enough to support myself and four kids, and Bear and I decided that marraige was the best plan for us, both finacially and logically.

With no kids in the relationship, or kids who are grown, it might be different for some people. As long as you (as a womyn) can make enough money to support yourself. I think kids make a big difference, especially since health care insurance is a neccesary. If you have a job with good health and retirement benefits, or are rich, and have no kids to worry about, then I can understand why people would not want to get married (although I still would. I am a lot more optimistic about men in general than someone like Oprah, who obviously doesn't trust any man as far as she could throw one, and has some really serious issues and misconceptions about marraige and men in general. Good thing she didn't kids, that's all I have to say about her)

Probably the reason some rich and famous don't get married is to protect their own assets, and the fact that they can both support themselves. I still don't know what you do about property, if you break up, and there was no legal contract. (which is what marraige is.)

 

Totally agree

Voted 'single' as I've no real inclination toward getting into a relationship with anyone, have been single my whole life (aside from a few days of 9th grade) thus far and perfectly content. Would probably make a terrible girlfriend anyway. Still if it happens it happens, whatever.

If I were to acquire a life partner then I would definetly marry them if we were going to have/raise children together. For the security of it. You're making that huge commitment by having children together (spouses divorce, but parents are forever) so you might as well go for it.
Would have to be exclusive, just don't trust the whole open marriage thing.

My parents have a very strong happy marriage, so I trust that it can work out.

 

Well, marriage, in itself, doesn't really mean anything to me. I'm in a relationship with the same man I've been with for almost five years, and there's no end in sight. We're happy. I tend to just leave it at that. My own family that I grew up in was very storybook. My parents met in college, got married, had babies... They've been together now for 37 years (married 35).

My boyfriend is strongly against marriage, if only for the fact that his own childhood view of it was messed up. His parents were divorced before he could walk, and between the two of them they've now been divorced a dozen times. So I can understand his problems with it.

In fact, we were talking about this subject just the other day, and he was saying that he thinks it means a lot more, in ways, when you AREN'T married - because when things get rough (like they do in ANY relationship) you stay together because you WANT to, not because someone's making you.

The only area where it becomes a problem for me is legality. I'm self-employed and uninsured. His employer will only ensure his spouse, not a domestic partner. I also get concerned about emergency situations - I don't want there to be any questioning his position as my next-of-kin. But legaly, he's not even close.

Like I said, the marriage itself has no cosequence on our life, our relationship, etc. We will stay together no matter what. I have no strong feelings o the matter, and he has strong feelings against it, so he wins. I just wish that I could go to the doctor....!

 

This is the argument that got me disowned by my family! My sister got together with her boyfriend two years before I got together with mine. He was in an "open marriage" and his wife had a boyfriend as well. I never really voiced my opinion, because it wasn't any of my business.

When I brought my own love home for show-and-tell, it was a big step for me. I was 18, and had always been EXTREMELY private about my romantic life (to the point of insane secrecy) even though I had good relationships with my whole family. So I bring him home from being on the road together, saying he's my "friend" and explaining privately to my sister how we aren't jumping into any commitments so soon, but the important thing is that this situation is making me happier than I'd ever been in my life. She treated him like shit (worse than that, like a child molester), treated our relationship like it was sick and twisted (because he's ten years older than me) and proceeded to tell me that I was just trying to copy her, because when she was 18 she dated an older guy for a while.

Anyway, years pass, and we barely talk. Last year she called me saying that she and her boyfriend (same one, still married) are going to be "having a wedding". I found out that he wasn't getting divorced, the marriage would not be "legal" in any way, and it was just going to be a ceremony/party. BUT, would I please not mention any of this because she's still inviting all the same family and everything so she can get all the good presents and their blessing to get knocked up.

I called her out on how messed up this sham of a wedding was (my parents think he divorced his other wife years ago, and the rest of the family doesn't even know she exists). I was the ONLY family member who didn't attend, and as a result the rest of the family thinks that I'm some kind of a bitch who believes living in sin is the only way to live.

Hooray, my family hates me!!!

 

I was with my guy for years. We have kids. We recently split but people were always asking us when we were getting married. We never planned on it. Maybe a little ceremony, but no legally binding bs. When people told me that we "needed" to get married because we were living in sin, I would ask them "Who exactly married Adam and Eve? What church did they go to?" hehe. Shut them right up.

 

hummblebee, why is your sister's freind STILL married to someone else? If they are going to the trouble of a wedding, what does he have to lose by divorcing the first wife? Jeez. Your sister puts up with this? What a mess. They are just getting married to get gifts? Oh, wow. Sad.

Does your sister even aknowlege she is probably being played? Where does this man live? Is he like a Mormon and split his time between the two womyn? It sounds like he's getting all he needs from this deal.

Wow.

 

Honestly, I don't know... He's "married" to them both, his first wife (who still has his last name) lives with her own boyfriend, and he lives with my sister. From what I've heard, they do a kind of Chinese-fire drill with their beds a couple times a week or something. Near as I can tell, this living situation works for them (after all, they've been doing this WITH my sis for 7 years, and before her he and his wife had a similar deal) and I think that it's just the perfect thing for her in ways - she can still screw around if she ever wants to (and knowing her, she will), but as far as most other people are concerned she still has every right to be sactimonious about relationships, etc.

I didn't even get to the really messed up part before - I just found out a few weeks ago that she's pregnant. Knowing this, I've even tried to put the past behind me and start openly communicating with her again (I don't care about the rest of the situation - if I have a little niece or nephew running around it would really be nice to get health updates and the like from my sis instead of through the grapevine) and she won't respond to phone calls, letters, or emails (and seeing how I'm in TN now and she's still in OR I can't really just show up on her doorstep). When I mentioned this to my folks, they responded as if I had killed her puppy or something and "it will just take time for her to heal". WTF? It's a messed up situation, and one that it seems will bug me eternally...

 

Actually, from what I heard, the wedding was ALSO a good excuse for a nice public drunkening. I'm going to shut up now.

 

I fully intend to get married (definitely mutually exclusive). Part of my reasoning is what Maggie said -- the legal spousal benefits. Part of it is also just the act of presenting this symbol to the rest of the world. If marriage changes anything between the two of you, I think you're probably in a dysfunctional relationship to begin with. It shouldn't change anything, fix anything, symbolize anything, etc. between the two partners. It should be a public display to let the rest of the world know the level of commitment that already exists between the two of you.

And, yes, I come from a dysfunctional extended family, as well. I don't think any of my aunts/uncles are still on their first marriage. But that doesn't mean I have to assume I'll just repeat their mistakes if I get married -- I'd rather learn from them. Part of that includes choosing a mate who feels as strongly about this relationship as I do and spending years dating him and living with him before getting married (as opposed to my dad, who only knew his second wife for a month & a half before marrying her!).

 

Been there, done that...Got the paperwork...Costed me tons of money..
I voted could commit. No paperwork.

Marriage or not? .. Definetly not.

 

Marriage or not? definitely yes, I don't like the idea that the media seems to propose which is that marriage is full of fights, full of problems, wife is too controlling and man is a couch potato. This does not mean that they are not true in some marriages but that does not mean that we just assume all marriages are like that.
To the man who wrote , "The world would be a sad place if I limited myself to only one woman...I'm a ferm believer in sharing... it just wouldn't be fair the rest of the ladies out there..." thank fully, human relationships are not just based only on sex, or could it be that thank GOD, that SOME relationships between human beings are not about physical attraction. If you see the shell on the outside, you do not know what you are missing. The happiness that is in sharing your life with a special person is a thousand times better than 'sharing' 10 women who mean nothing to you and you nothing to them. ha, if you don't agree, you wait and see - the youth that you seem to be so fond of, or supposedly the media is fond of, is not permanent, you will grow old, senile and with the "sharing" attitude, you will be completely be alone.