But if everyone is supposed to know exactly what their “culture” thinks, why do you need to ask regarding your own culture?
To verify/disprove the book I read.
I’m an American married to a non-American.
So I’m an alien. 
I’ve always considered love the weakest link in why two people should get married. For me, it comes down to a category of issues I call the “Dealbreakers”. Dealbreakers are the issues an individual is absolutely inflexible on whether it’s religious issues; political positions; cultural issues; or sex, pet, or food preferences etc… Everyone has different ones, but everyone should figure out what their absolute dealbreakers are before they even think about marriage and never consider partners that violate them.
Desire is the most important factor. Two people can love each other more than any two married people, live together, do everything together, and be together for 30 years with little likelihood of ever splitting apart. If neither of them wants to get formally married then the issue of marriage is moot, nothing to do with love, respect, money, or anything else.
And what exactly is the question?
In Spain, where “old-style marriage” has made a huge comeback (what y’all call “common-law”), some factors in order to get a civil marriage include:
- loving each other,
- wanting to have children in common already or to be able to adopt the children one partner already had more easily, (many couples live together for years and only bother get papers once they are trying for a kid, or in order to make the new partner a co-custodian more easily after the previous divorce is final),
- the marriage in question being allowable by law (this is a big factor against marriage for quite a few Americans),
- economic advantages.
As for getting a religious marriage without a civil aspect, this is done mostly by old people who want to be officially partnered in the eyes of their community without losing pension benefits.
Nobody marries for love alone, here: it’s not required in order to have sex or live together, but it does make some other bureaucratic tasks easier. And when it would have government un-benefits… you specifically avoid getting a civil marriage.
I, too, am non-American who doesn’t understand the question. Do you want to know what the deciding factor is in marrying somebody at all, or in deciding whether to marry vs. an “non-paper” dedicated relationship? Because in previous discussions, it has come up that in the US culture, it’s still considered proper and adult to formally marry, whereas in my culture (Germany) the decision to marry vs. living together is often decided by monetary reasons (tax breaks, inheritance etc.)
The decision who your life partner is, the first step so to speak, is made for love mostly (or at least people believe it’s love, but might be mistaken). The decision to turn this into a marriage is different in other countries than in the US.
If the question is going from “in a relationship” to “let’s get married”, then love isn’t the most important factor. Important, definitely, but things like good communication, long term stability, similar life goals, etc. would be more important to me. For instance, no matter how much I love a person, if we are consistently fighting or having major mis-communications, that would be a serious issue to consider before getting married. As would unreliability, consistent unemployment, drug problems, or anything else I consider unstable. Also, I wouldn’t want to marry someone knowing that in 10 years we see ourselves in completely different places (i.e. I want kids, they don’t).
There are so many factors that go into deciding whether or not to get married, and to me, love isn’t really a factor, it’s something you already know. The other issues aren’t things you know, but more things that could go wrong that you need to be aware of before jumping into that sort of commitment.
Love is mandatory, but if there’s nothing else, don’t bother.
Then you would pick “my culture is different.”
You would answer “my culture is different.”
Yeah, well, you started by not writing the actual question until post 11. People usually answer polls without reading everything else… please be more clear next time.
And my culture is not as different as you think.
Are you Canadian?
OK, I need to think this “out loud”, as it were, now that I’m beginning to glimmer the actual question. You want to know what the single most important factor in deciding whether or not to marry someone we’re already dating is, right?
Then I think love is pretty far down on that list, and we’re much like **costanze **and Nava’s cultures (German and Spanish, IIRC) in that.
The love is the factor in deciding whether or not to keep dating someone, but deciding whether or not to marry this person you already know you love is usually based on things like:
[ul]tradition[/ul]
[ul]a sense that “it’s time” to move the relationship to “the next level” [/ul]
[ul]religion [/ul]
[ul]family expectation or outright pressure[/ul]
[ul]wanting to establish a single legal household (more of an influence for the affluent, not my poor as churchmice social group)[/ul]
[ul]sharing health insurance benefits [/ul]
[ul]wanting to be married before having children (which I guess falls under “tradition” or “health insurance benefits”, depending)[/ul]
[ul]demonstrating commitment and getting the other person “off the market”, in an attempt to ensure monogamy[/ul]
At least in my generation (I’m 36), you can love someone, live with them, raise a family with them, etc. without being married. You love them while you’re dating, and something else - other than love - pushes the two of you to actually decide to marry.
Which of course raises the other definition question: what is love? To me, love is the basis for good communication and stability. Without love, there is no trust for a good communication - of course, many people need to learn the tools and methods of good communication, and maybe unlearn the bad habits from before. Ditto for fighting - how can you be in love if you’re fighting?
Lifetime goals I would not consider a dealbreaker, because those can be discussed and arranged. As long as there is trust that neither partner is trying to bully or dominiate the other, but it’s a real, equal partnership, then a solution can be found, I would expect.
And yes, nobody is perfect, so I have to accept some faults, while expecting my partner to accept my faults. Some habits or faults go deep and make a long-term relationship impossible, but then they also disturb love, and you have a more superficial friendship with that person, I’d says.
What I would need to have in the relationship in order to make the decision to marry:
•Mutual trust. Preferably rock solid trust.
•Mutual respect.
•Strong, open, honest communication. That means being a good listener to each other as well as communicating wants, needs, desires, concerns, etc.
•Both parties must be committed to working on the three things above for as long as the relationship lasts.
•Love
• Shared values. In general, shared goals, e.g., we both don’t want children.
My dealbreakers. Even if all the above is in place, if any of the below is present, I’m out.
•Addiction. I’m fine with social drinking and weed smoking. I’m not fine with hard drugs and alcoholism.
•Adultery. By that I mean “cheating after both parties have agreed to be exclusive.” I do not consider it cheating if we’ve agreed on an open relationship or we’ve both agreed to polyamory. This goes back to trust, respect, and communication: if you agreed to be exclusive and then go back on your word, then I cannot trust any other agreements you’ve made with me. I’m out.
•Abuse. Emotional, mental, spiritual, physical. Anyone who is a manipulative controller whose only goal is to dominate, control and humiliate me will be subsequently kicked to the curb at the first hint of abusive behavior. Will. Not. Fly.
•Religiosity. I left a cult. I spent 20 years deprogramming myself. Since then, I have dated some religious men and when the topic of religion comes up (and religion permeates ALL aspects of our lives), I’ve found I cannot respect a man who believes in fairy tales or magical thinking.
Once the respect, or trust, or communication breaks down, the relationship is over.
Nope, but WhyNot spelled out what I was talking about. The decision whether to marry someone in the US is not about whether you love them, as you’re assuming and people who aren’t thinking are responding: it’s about societal pressure (that part does be different between much of the US and current-day mainstream Spain), it’s about whether the marriage is legal (quite a few people in these boards can’t get legally married where they live), it’s about marital benefits…
Love ain’t why you get the papers, it’s why you want a LTR but not why you want the papers.
For many (if not most) people, it’s still about love. There is very little societal pressure to marry in the US. Please don’t presume to tell other people why they got married.
I am unable to participate in this poll because I am a wombat.
I can’t narrow it down to a single thing. Love is a must, but I also needed:
- Someone with a sense of humor I appreciate (I almost said a similar one, but my husband and I have disparate but someone complimentary senses of humor).
- Someone I wouldn’t kill if I lived with them (compatibility, I guess).
- Someone who wasn’t religious (hell, we wouldn’t even have gotten past the “just-friends stage”).
- Someone with similar values or lack thereof.
I did feel some societal pressure to get married, if only because my family (my mom, rather) didn’t like me living alone with a man while single. My husband and I agreed that we also wanted to make it official - it was helpful for a lot of what I consider to be administrative reasons. He could get his greencard with me instead of through work; if one of us became unemployed, we wouldn’t have to worry about health insurance; we both wanted kids, and it’s typically easier from a paperwork standpoint when you’re married to your live-in SO who happens to be your kids’ father; and it was easier to file taxes that way. We’ve been married almost 7 years now.