I know several couples who are not married, but are very committed. As I understand them, they do it out of principle: they feel that marriage may force people stay together because divorce is so complicated, on many levels. It’s important to them stay together out of love and personal commitment and responsibility, not out of legal commitment.
Not agreeing with them, just sayin’. I’m happily married.
I’m not married because a wedding would cost thousands of dollars I don’t have.
A trip to the local courthouse and a nice lunch afterward shouldn’t cost more than a hundred bucks. A wedding only costs as much as you want it to cost.
Since I’ve been married forever and a day (this time—so far) I may not be qualified to comment. But maybe some people feel like getting married would change the relationship…taking each other for granted, mainly. It’s a lot easier to be sloppy or growl at somebody when you know they ain’t going nowhere. OTOH not being married keeps you on your toes when you know they could just walk. :dubious:
True, but I feel that would detract somewhat from the real wedding we do plan on having “eventually.”
i wont get married because I never want to believe that my SO is with me out of legal obligation rather than love. Call me a romantic…
My partner and I have been together almost 24 years. We are not allowed to marry in this state, but we’re working on it.
I’m not married - we’ve been together 7 years, have a kid and one on the way, own a house together. Sounds like the legal situation differs here in Australia from the US though, as our de facto relationship generally provide a fair amount of cover.
For example there are no additional tax benefits in being married (or none my accountant has mentioned given our incomes), we can jointly own property without issue, and we can choose to share or not share bank accounts etc as we like. Each of us can nominate the other as beneficiaries for life insurance, super etc.
We have gone and gotten POA and wills done (after the birth of our daughter), but more to make sure there would be no issues with probate etc.
For us, the only 2 reasons to get married would have been to assist with adoption (most international adoption requires a legally married couple), but our IVF worked out fine. If we want to go and live in Europe, it would make getting a passport and work visa easier, although Italy does recognise de facto relationships to some extent. But neither of those situations are things we need to worry about at the moment.
And as for why not? I’m not that fussed - I don’t really see the point, I’m not religious, and I don’t see what difference it would make to us (see above). I wouldn’t change my name so that wouldn’t even be a reason to do it. Boy From Mars kind of likes the idea of the party, but when we’ve costed it out (friends and family in 3 different countries) we can think of better things to spend that kind of money on. And simply to do it in a registry office as suggested - well, it wouldn’t make a difference so why bother?
(For a data point, both of us have happily married parents who have been together nearly 40 years each. My brother married, my sister like me owns property and has a child with her partner but is not married.)
? First wedding cost $250 - and $50 for the Justice of the Peace/license fee. We had a BBQ and housewarming with a 5 minute ceremony in the middle of the party. Second wedding cost is $75, Justice of the Peace and license fee [different state] and we went home and made lunch.
Weddings do not have to be huge elaborate annoying affairs. When somebody blathers on about “Well, you have to invite blablabla, and if they come, then you have to invite otherblablaba” my opinion is fuck no. There are no obligate invitees to anything if you do not want them to attend. There is no law requiring any specific ceremony. The only things required are the license, and the officiant. [Well, and the bride and groom…] There is no requirement for a huge [or small] party at all. :rolleyes: Grab the license, find a JoP and tie the knot, or not.
My first date with my husband was Christmas of 1984. We didn’t marry until 1998.
We went through periods of me wanting marriage, but not him, them him and not me.
We fought. A lot. But then we’d makeup and, well, there just isn’t much of anything that’s better than makeup sex. Convinced us we were in love, it did.
In the end, I wanted marriage because I felt like an Idiot calling him my boyfriend.
I just could not say husband without adding, “well, not legally, but you know…”
Oh? So it’s OK now to make statements of fact on the SDMB that aren’t true? I’ll remember that next time I see a post of yours.
Anyway, let me help dispel your misunderstanding. It’s the first link on a Google search for credit score marriage: marriage myths. Check out #2.
Since when?
Get your marriage license then go in front of the country cleark or justice of the peace or whomever does the secular blessing in your jurisdiction. Easy-peasy, not even new clothes required.
Just to clarify - the only thing in that list an unmarried couple in the US would lack is the tax benefits of marriage. Otherwise, as mentioned, you can open a join account with anyone, own property with anyone, nominate anyone you want as an insurance beneficiary, etc.
The cost of the wedding is the reason one long-term married-in-every-way-but-legally couple I know haven’t had the ceremony. Sure, you can do marriages very cheaply, but both families would be really upset; any wedding they have will have to be big.
Or they could choose to upset their families because it is ‘their wedding’ as everyone on here would say, but they’d rather not.
Mr. Athena and I lived together for 7 or 8 years before getting married. We bought two houses together, and moved across the country together. He moved with me to my home town! So yeah, we were very committed, but not actually married, for a long time.
Why? Mostly because we were procrastinators. We’d both been married before, so the starry-eyed “OMG I’m getting MARRIED!” thing just wasn’t there. Second, we were fully committed to each other, so there was no need of proof, we both felt it, deep-down. Third, getting married is a lot of work. We knew we wanted custom rings made by an artist, but had to find the artists, design the rings, etc. etc. That took a year or so. Then the actual wedding had to be planned, catering had to be arranged, etc. etc. We didn’t do anything special (we had it in our living room) but it still was work. Then we had to plan the honeymoon, because no way in hell was I getting married without a kick-ass honeymoon. That’s about the only part of the whole thing we were really excited about! (not to say the rings weren’t nice, the wedding wasn’t nice, and all that but in our eyes, 3 weeks in France was much bigger of a deal than the wedding/reception itself).
So there you have it. We’re lazy, that’s why it took us so long.
I’ve never been married nor in a long term relationship but here’s my WAG. I think for some people it might be an issue of stability. They get into a long term unmarried relationship and they’re both happy. It might appear to be an ideal situation to move on to marriage. But the couple might also figure that marriage would be a significant change and they’re happy with the status quo. What if getting married put stress on the relationship and led to a break-up? They might decide they’re better off continuing the relationship that’s working rather than taking the risk of entering a new relationship.
I’ve been with my SO for fifteen years and we’re not married. We have most of the benefits in the OP anyway; NY has great domestic partnership laws.
We don’t have kids. If we had kids, I’d feel obligated to get married, to ensure they’d be safe if anything happened to us. But we have no intention of ever having kids.
As to why? We just don’t feel like it. And we’ll get around to it. Sometime.
Not necessarily, depending on income level and relative incomes between the two. Taxes can even get worse.
The one long-term cohabiting couple that I know breaks down like this:
Man: Willing to marry; happy to be cohabitating.
Woman: Has (deranged) ideas that getting married would make her the man’s property or otherwise subordinate to him. She has real issues with her parents and their divorce, and it pretty much colors everything in her life.
Plus, I suspect since she makes 3-4x what he does, that comes into play as well.
IIRC, you don’t live together, either, but next door? If you were to marry, would you move in together, or continue to live adjacent? I have married (male/female) friends who did this and it works out fine for them. They kept both houses and live as they please.
CitizenPained says “I’m not married because I don’t want to live with anyone. That right there is pretty much a dealbreaker. If I thought I could have a long-term mate without cohabitating, I’d be OK with that, provided he wasn’t a total goonie.”
If you find the right one, you can.