Really, most sincerely: NO! (married twice, midst second divorce)
When I was a kid, I couldn’t imagine being married or having kids. Got pregnant at 17 (what do you call people using the rhythm method?) and married days after I turned 18. Eventually divorced by mutual agreement that we’d grown up in different directions, always put our kid’s interests first, and are still pals.
I was blissfully single for years when, after several years of long-distance relationship and lots of commentary about the triumph of optimism over experience, I actually believed #2’s “til death do us part” and moved across the country to marry him.
Nine years later – and out of the blue – he decided that he really didn’t want to be married. Nothing personal (he’s not in love with anyone else), but would I please make other plans for my life?
So now I’m on the east coast, trying to find a job on the west coast – and pretty firmly reminding myself that marriage isn’t for me.
Damn, honey-chile, were we separated at birth, or something?
Amen!
I mean, I am often, by nature, a nurturer (odd, perhaps, considering my people issues), but if I’m going to nurture you, I want it to be because I WANT to nurture you, not because you NEED me to nurture you. Unless you’re a kid, of course.
As for the OP: I’m EXTREMELY content in my solitude, but I would definitely consider marrying (if only for practical financial and legal reasons, considering how some families can be about teh gay), and, yeah, w/o a promise of monogamy from either person, the right guy (for me, a very, VERY rare find). Provided, of course, that gay marriage ever becomes uniformly legal in the U.S. I would’ve married my “ex-husband”* years ago, but that wasn’t an option in 1996. (Even though he was born-and-bred Swiss, the Swiss government, according to the official at the Swiss consulate in D.C. that I spoke with at the time, wouldn’t even recognize a same-sex marriage performed elsewhere in Europe.)
*Though we couldn’t get married, “husband” was the way we chose to characterize our relationship to each other. Kind of tongue-in-cheek, but, then again, kind of not. BTW, that was my first and, to date, only romantic relationship. Been single for 11 years now, and I won’t be surprised (or, hopefully, particularly unhappy) if that hasn’t changed 20 years from now when I’m pushing 60.
I am, at heart, a romantic (I’m a Pisces, FWIW), but I really dig being able to make decisions abou my life–both mundane and major–without having to be concerned about how my decisions will impact someone else’s life.
Yeah, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that, in some (harmless, I think) respects, I can be selfish.
Oh, and, Q.N. Jones? You’re not weird at all. Not to me, anyway.
I didn’t used to be the marrying kind, but after 18 years together, and when Canada made marriage legal for Gays and Lesbians, I became the marrying kind…
We’ve always celebrated our anniversary on the day we met - New Year’s Eve, and I can’t actually remember the date of our legal marriage… Feb 7th, I think… After 20 years together, maybe I’m not the marrying type after all if I can’t even remember when we did it!
