Pretty self-explanatory.
And no, I don’t mean you people who simply don’t plan on getting married period.
I’m referring to relationships that are in full swing, where you’re no longer in that “feeling each other out” phase. Have you ever been in a long-term relationship where you knew that marriage would never be an option on the table with your SO?
Yep, doing it now! It’s great. We’ve both been married before, and don’t see a need to do it again. While we don’t live together (yet), it’ll happen some day.
Wait, it sounds like you’re asking about people that are just waiting/too lazy to break up with each other. Is that right?
When I was 28 I met and dated a woman who was 36, freshly divorced with two kids.
I had no plans to become a dad and told her that at the beginning of the relationship.
We dated for almost a year. (I’m not sure that counts as LTR)
I dated a guy for a while. We were having a good time. We didn’t talk about getting married. We didn’t talk about breaking up either. We were just cruising along, enjoying each other’s company. Then I got pregnant (subsequently miscarried) but that changed the whole dynamic of the relationship. Things totally fell apart. Then we broke up. But we were together for over a year before that happened.
I don’t understand why someone would stay in a relationship with someone if they’ve figured this person isn’t someone they want to spend their lives with.
But then, I don’t understand what an agreement to a ‘short term relationship’ is either, beyond a promise to spend a bit of time hanging out, and having sex.
Yes. It lasted for three years.
Then . . . ummm . . . I married her.
Easily the smartest thing I’ve ever done in my foolish life. It’s been almost 17 years if you count the LTR, and I still love her as much as I did back then.
I did, for four and a half years. Then I couldn’t remember why I didn’t want to get married. We have now been married for 30 years. 
11 years. Two kids.
By the time I figured out I’d never marry him, we already had children. Seemed like a bad time to break up.
Yes. I had a twenty-year relationship with a woman, and marriage was never an issue for us. We split up for reasons that had nothing to do with marriage. There weren’t any ultimatums or anything like that. In fact, if she had indicated a desire to be married, I would have married her. But that never came up.
I’m married now, quite happily, to a woman I knew for less than a year before getting married. Funny how things work out.
I was in a relationship for 8 years. Very casual. Mostly sex. Through two of his girlfriends and his marriage. Just didn’t feel serious, liked the casual stuff…
I dated a guy for 4 years who I never seriously considered marrying. It never came up, mutually I would guess. I thought maybe things would change so that someday, I might feel like I would want to marry him, but it just never happened. My family didn’t like him, his didn’t like me, and it was just not a good fit. We stayed together out of inertia, mostly, at the end. I would say it was wasted time, but at the time, not a whole lot else was going on.
I will say that after that, I swore I would never date anyone for 4 years like that again. It’s a lot of time to put in to have something just fizzle out lamely, which it did.
I was with my ex for 7 years and was pretty clear that we weren’t married (although we were committed - we owned a house together), which I thought was a good thing. My current spouse I married within a few months of meeting and our 5th anniversary will be in October.
Because you’re in high school or college and have no intention of even thinking about getting married until after you graduate, so it doesn’t matter if the person is not a potential lifetime match.
Or any of the other reasons stated above.
I guess this question surprises me, because I have a hard time comprehending why anyone would even wonder about it. Even if someone does want to marry eventually, they may not be in any hurry to do so, and if a person is a good “Mr. Right Now,” why wouldn’t she date him?
This. I had a casual relationship that lasted about 2 years (until I moved after graduation). I told him from the get-go I WOULD be moving out of the state in 2008. During that time, marriage talk was occasionally mentioned… but he wasn’t interested in moving, and I had my reasons to decline.
But… IF I had stay, it probably would’ve become a more formal boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. His family knew of me, and rarely saw a glimpse of me, he had tried to make me go with him to visit his extended family, and the last months, he was less wary of being too obvious of his feelings in front of other strangers (mostly my friends). After I moved, he invited me to his sister wedding (I couldn’t go), and he did invite me and had me over a break… And I did get to formally meet his family.
Three years. She wanted to get married. I did not, and told her so early. She decided to try to wait me out.
It did not end well at all.
I dated this guy for two years; I’d known I was extremely unlikely to marry him from the first date - I wasn’t that interested in marriage to start with, and it was like… pick any issue or subject: either we’d be in complete agreement, or as far from each other as possible; there was never something in which we “more or less agreed”. He actually did propose at the end, not because he’d suddenly gotten interested in marriage (he’d never been much interested in it) but to “save me” from having to leave the country.
23 years and 2 kids worth of it. (ended with his death 15 mths ago)
FTR, we considered ourselves “married” and lived as if so and it wasn’t that it was “off the table” in any way, other than that we simply didn’t feel any need for it.
ONLY LTR (or short-term, ftm) I’ve ever had to date, but for what it’s worth.
And I have no intention of ever getting “married”…I figure if I made it this long w/o it…and if I never married HIM, why would I ever marry ANYONE?
Yes. Next question?
Yes absolutely!
Could never inflict myself on any single girl full time and neither would I expect ( or want) one single female to supply all my needs, wants and desires from the opposite sex.
I would never give up any of my relationships to marry one of them and would hope that they feel the same way.
Yes, several times. The longest was 7.5 years. She started out not wanting marriage, and when she changed her mind, I bolted.
The most recent one, she always had marriage on her mind but I didn’t. When we broke up I realized that I did, in fact, want that kind of commitment. On the day I told her, she decided it wasn’t such a good idea after all. She knows that the offer is on the table and will be until… well, let’s see how my date with someone else goes tomorrow.