Not one of the burning issues of the day but I’m curious.
Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley have been a couple since 2010. They announced they were engaged in 2016.
It’s ten years later. They’re still a couple. And they’re still engaged. But they never got married.
Can somebody explain to me what the point of getting engaged is if you apparently have no intention of following through with a wedding?
If they get married, Rosie will be kidnapped in the near future and Jason will have to kill dozens of gang members in efficient yet creative ways to get her back. And no one (besides the movie-going public) wants that.
My best guess is Jason wants to protect his fortune. If he marries her she can lay claim to some of that fortune if they divorce. Not married, she has no legal claim to that money. Being engaged tells her she is important to him.
I can’t think of another reason.
Some people believe in monogamy but aren’t crazy about marriage. Being permanently engaged is a way of letting the world know you’re together.
I’m not saying that I agree with this, but there are a number of such long engagements among famous people. Furthermore, there are entire present-day societies (which are reasonably well off) in which the order of a romantic relationship is not what we think of as standard. Again, I’m not saying that I agree with this. In Iceland, it’s quite common that a couple will have sex after a short meeting (like a drink at a coffee shop). Then they will date for a while to get to know each other. Then they will move in together. Then they will have children. Then they will marry.
Sounds pretty good to me 
Maybe she’s not in a big hurry to become Rosie Huntington-Whiteley-Statham.
So have you had sex, then dated, then moved in together, than had children, and then gotten married? Do you always tell a prospective romantic partner that this is the only order in which you’ll do it? What do those prospective romantic partners say to you when you tell them that this is what you’ll do? If someone were to tell someone else that their romantic relationship must begin with sex before anything else, the person that this is told to would usually assume that the person who told it didn’t want a relationship, just wanted sex and never seeing that person that it’s being told to again.
Whereas the movie-going public can’t get enough of couples delaying marriage:
I kind stopped at that part
But sure, assuming I liked her and she liked me the rest is good too.
I had too goo gull them, was faintly aware she was a super model, never heard of ‘im
20 yr age difference
Two young kids
Full time residence in England
Net worth RHW 40 mil, JS- 100 mil.
My guess is money is not a worry, and marriage is overrated.
I have wondered this when I hear of couples who have been engaged for a long time i.e. more than two years. I figure they want to be committed to each other without marriage. I’m old enough to have stopped believing in the sanctity of marriage.
Hmm, the “I’m too sophisticated to be aware of pop culture” posts have been getting pretty rare lately, nice to spot one in the wild.
Seriously, Statham is an A-lister who is still in the top 5 movie action heroes.
I know who he is, I’ve enjoyed his movies (mostly) since The Transporter (no number).
Her? I have no idea. If people can have non traditional romantic arrangements (like 10 year engagements) then we should be allowed to have non-traditional celebrity relationships. I don’t care who is dating who. Since Entertainment Weekly quit publishing a paper magazine, I stopped reading any celebrity news. I don’t read fashion mags. She has a total of two movies, neither of which I have seen. If she’s not a Jeopardy! question, I don’t know how I would be expected to know her.
But I only posted this because you made an issue out of it.
Surely a pre-nup is standard among the wealthy? (Of course someone will point out people like David Geffen who marry without one.)
AFAICT it’s pretty common for a relationship to start as a low-stakes “fling” based on mutual attraction, and then deepen into dating and commitment as the participants discover that they also actually quite like each other.
Where you are getting the “this is the only order in which you’ll do it” interpretation from, I have no idea. I very much doubt that even among Icelanders the sex-then-dating-then-cohabiting-then-kids-then-marriage sequence is seen as any kind of hard-and-fast rule for relationships.
And as for long celebrity engagements, there’s also the wedding-arrangements issue to be factored in. If you’re committed to being a couple but you don’t particularly need or want governmental recognition of your relationship via the legal status of marriage, then marriage planning kind of boils down to when and how you want to throw the party to celebrate it. And celebrity weddings do tend to be rather large and complicated deals.
Had you posted you didn’t know who she is, I wouldn’t have made an issue about it. But posting in Cafe Society that you’ve never heard of Jason Statham is liking posting in Elections & Politics that you’ve never heard of Marco Rubio.
ETA: Nothing against her, but she’s never been near an A-list actress, and wasn’t at the Cindy Crawford/Heidi Klum level of supermodel either.
I didn’t say that they said it was the order they believed in; rather, I asked if it was.
Then we are slowly moving toward an order like the Icelanders.
Yes, even in Iceland it’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it’s probably the most common order.