It is my opinion that the couple creates the marriage, the ceremony or the piece of paper is just a way of telling everyone else about the already-existing relationship.
And having kids with someone is a heck of a lot more of a commitment than marrying them.
If you’re living with someone, having sex with them, having kids with them, buying property together, and making major life decisions together, then you’re already married in every way that counts. The legal document doesn’t marry you, sharing your life together is what marries you.
I can’t tell if this is about regret or happiness, but I think it is about happiness.
I got married because I believe it is the right thing for a man and woman who are in love to do before starting a family. Besides, I met my best friend who is the woman of my dreams and she shares so many things with me. We grow together and never have any desire to be apart.
We also 100% committed to never divorcing no matter what. No matter what. Even if she or I went to prison for life, we would never divorce each other. Not that this is likely to occur of course…but anyway.
We love each other and should my wife die before me, I would marry again if I could find someone as amazing(who could put up with me).
Because past performance is not an indicator of future results.
I was married to my best friend for 10 years. And while our relationship had some serious issues that ended fairly tragically from my perspective, there was a lot of good in my marriage, too.
Now, I find myself dating someone where our relationship has even more of the good than I had in my last relationship, and is thus far absent of the serious downsides. While that is not to say that this new relationship is perfect and completely devoid of any problems, I believe that I can at least take the lessons from my marriage and avoid certain pitfalls this time around. I’m not going to throw away the entire concept of marriage because my relationship with one person went sour.
If my relationship continues on its current course, I’d be happy to get married again. There was a point where I didn’t think I’d ever say that (and, in fact, posted as much on this very board some 10 months ago, I believe). And yet, here I am.
I did it because I wanted to. Why else does anyone ever do anything? I wanted to because we loved each other and planned to spend our lives together and wanted the legal rights and protections as well as the social implications of being married.
Of course people who just went through an unpleasant experience remember mostly the bad and don’t ever want to go through it ever again. But with a little time and perspective, the bad starts to fade and seem less real and less important. Ask a hundred women fresh out of the delivery room how many of them ever want to do that again, and I bet you won’t have many takers, but a whopping percentage of them will be back in there within 5 years.
I got married because at 25 I thought if I didn’t get married, I never would. It was the wrong guy for the wrong reasons.
My boyfriend and I have both been married before. And in many ways we are content to live our own separate lives during the weekdays. I’m not opposed to us someday getting married - but I would want it to be something we both want.
Because I was in love with her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Still am, still do.
Would I do it again? Marry her? Yes. Marry somebody else if she dies first? Yes, if I can find someone who I think will be equally compatible/complementary. I don;t think either me or my wife is all that extraordinary - but we are both committed, and continue to work at keeping our promise to each other before God.
The first time I got married, it was because it seemed like the thing to do. We were both Baptists and at a Baptist college. As our senior year drew to a close, we had to decide what we were going to do next. So he proposed and I said yes. I would not do that over again. I was too young (22–not saying that’s too young for everyone, but it was for me because I was naive) and he wasn’t the right person. As our wedding grew closer, I had more and more doubts. As my father walked me down the aisle, I wanted to cut and run. But I didn’t, and we got married, and we barely knew each other. We were friends, but not really lovers, and pretty soon we weren’t friends and lived separate lives and he left me for a “friend” of mine. I wouldn’t do that again, but I definitely learned from it. I wish we’d lived together instead of getting married, but our parents would have had fits–all of them. If we’d lived together, I’m sure after a few months we would have realized that we weren’t a good fit, shrugged, and walked away.
The second time was more exciting; he was brilliant and foreign and fun, and for some reason I wanted to get married again. I had been single about four years and figured that was it for me, but then I met this guy and after about six months of dating we had a quick wedding. We lasted 13 years; it didn’t end all that well. So now I’ve been single again for six years and don’t even really date. It’s not that I don’t want to date; I just don’t meet anyone datable. Once you hit middle-age, the pool of available men is very, very small, and we’re all set in our ways and in many ways, happy to be alone.
But would I do it again? If I met the right person. But I would doubt my judgment because of the failure of the first two marriages, so he would have to be very, very special, and we would have to be very, very compatible.
Why did I get married…well the obvious answer is because we were in love, best friends, literally soul mates. “Literally” isn’t used lightly here. I can feel when she’s close. The house feels different when she’s not in it. There is a deep tie that is bigger than “just love”. We both feel connected to each other and one. Would that have changed if we had just lived together? Maybe not, but maybe so.
The reason for the ceremony is that it was a sign of our commitment together and, yes, it was what was expected. I’m glad we did it though. We are Catholic and one of the things the Church teaches is that God is the third person in our marriage (please, no three-way jokes). We really feel God is part of this journey we are on together. 21 years isn’t a long time for marriages (though some would think it was). I know the cliche’ here would be, “We’ve had our rough times,” but honestly we haven’t. Sure we’ve been poor, we had trouble selling a house, we’ve been in debt, but we’ve never had marriage problems. We love being together. Rough times brought us closer. We love to live and laugh together. We are truly blessed.
I married my college sweetheart 18 years ago and still going.
The topic of marriage came up because my sister was shacking up w/ someone (Major family disapproval) and another cousin knocked up his girl and married her (more family disapproval).
It seemed like the only way to win in my family would be to make an honest woman of her before I knocked her up. Again that’s not the reason, but that’s how the topic was brought up.
The reason was, after all the discussion I couldn’t think of a reason not to. I was lucky to find a woman who knew all about me and still accepted me anyway. What are the odds that was going to happen again? I feel I jumped at a once in a lifetime opportunity. Didn’t do a lot of smart things in my early 20’s, but this decision made up for all of the others.
I couldn’t imagine marrying again, just because I don’t think I’d find another girl like my girl. I couldn’t imagine wanting to try.
I know at least one person above said they got married to have kids. I hate that attitude. What are you going to do when the kids are grown or like us, you can’t have them? You need to start off in a good place, not just “she’d be fun to raise a family with”.
My grandmother’s answer: “in 21 years I hadn’t met any man I wanted to have sex with, then I met him. I’ve never wanted to have sex with anybody else. Sex is just so gross! Well, until he touches me…” He died last week: he (although unfaithful) still had the hots for her, she still had them for him, 74 years after their wedding.
Divorced, and of course I would do it again, safe in the knowledge that I think I’d make a much better job of it. Starting with marrying the right gender…
I’m engaged to be married next April. I don’t believe that marriage is necessarily a life-long commitment, so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about why I’m getting married because I need to figure out how to write wedding vows that don’t include words like “forever” or “until death.” I really hope that our marriage lasts that long, but I won’t count it a failure if it doesn’t.
So I’m getting married because
I want to publicly celebrate our relationship.
This is the best chance we’ll ever get to throw an awesome party for our friends and family.
I want to give us a reason to fight for this relationship if things ever get really tough.
I want to know that, when I need some help, care or support, he will be there for me, and I want him to know that I’ll be there for him.
I want to create a firm base to build our family on.
I want the legal benefits and societal support that come with marriage. If I’m in the hospital, I want him making my medical decisions, and vice versa.
Because I loved him, we’d already been living together for four years, and I didn’t want to have to spend a second defending why I put him first when we could just get married and make it obvious. It seems to be working out so far!
If something happened to my husband, I think I’d eventually get married again if I found someone else who was half as great as he is.
… to make it more difficult and painful to escape. It’s essentially a contract that makes it expensive (financially, logistically, emotionally, legally) to leave. A simple handshake, status-quo agreement doesn’t carry the same level of responsibility.
For her, this provides some assurance that I’m not going to plant my seed and run without some level of support. For me, it provides some assurance that I get to continue to have sex with someone much more attractive than I am.
Lest you think I’m getting a bad deal, the important part for me is that I live forever through my children. I have improved their lives through my efforts (some of which are possible because of the contracted partnership), and through genetics (by mixing with some traits that are preferred).
But how does not being married make it easier to split up?
The part that makes it hard to split up is the intertwined finances, owning a house together, owning property together, putting your CDs and her CDs on the same shelf and mixing them together, having kids together, paying bills together, sharing experiences together.
It doesn’t get any easier to split up just because you didn’t sign your name on the dotted line. It might be easier if you avoid all the things that intertwine your lives.
So if you want to make it easier to break up with someone, don’t live with them, don’t buy property together, don’t have mutual friends, don’t invite them to meet your family, don’t share a bank account, don’t have kids with them, don’t have sex with them, and so on. If you don’t do those things a little thing like a marriage license won’t make it any harder to split with them. If you share nothing with a person, then splitting up with them be as easy as choosing a new bank.
My wife and I lived together for 22 years and we’ve been married for like 14 now. Mostly we got married because hospitals tend to treat spouses like crap unless they are legal spouses. But all in all its been good. We did a semi-normal wedding and all the usual stuff but after 22 years all the pressure was off and it could just be a fun party.
I was married for the first time at age 19. We lasted 9 years and just simply grew apart. We married much too young.
Second marriage was the worst mistake of my life. Rebound, lasted less than two years. She was screwing my best friend within 3 months of our getting married and never stopped screwing her ex-boyfriends (well, not so ex-, I guess).
I thought the third marriage was gonna work. That is, until she developed a drug habit and started shacking up with her supplier. Minor problem, there.
My current relationship; we are not married and have been together for 17 years. Go figure…
I got married because I love him. Because he loves me. And we do so, flaws and all. It’s not always easy being married, especially to me (OCD and Bipolar… it’s a treat!), but he loves me so much we’re working together on it. We love to be with each other and can’t imagine life without each other. That and we both want kids (more specifically, we want kids with each other), and we don’t want to be like the rest of my cousins, who get knocked up (or knock up their girlfriends) and decide, “maybe we should get married.” I guess we’re old fashioned like that.
To this day, when I hear that song, I hear “Anal Sunshine when she’s gone…” like it’s about some dude on the down-low.
