In most states, the law still marks a strict difference between a legal spouse and an unmarried partner. Generally speaking if you are cohabitating without marriage, you do not get the rights and benefits of marriage.
And this makes sense to me. If you want the rights and benefits of marriage, then get married. If you don’t, then don’t. There’s no need for a grey area.
A few states recognize common-law marriage (see here) but it’s not nearly as uncontestable as a real marriage contract.
Aside from that, no, I am not aware of any cohabitating laws in the US that give the same legal benefits as marriage. You’ve heard of the gay marriage debates currently going on in the US? A lot of it is because gay people want these same rights, and there’s no way to ensure them sans marriage.
You might be better off swimming.
It’s possible that all his negative comments about marriage are made because he thinks you’re terrified of marriage and doesn’t want to scare you away. If you do get to the frank talk stage, make sure the emphasis is on the ‘frank’ - it’s important that you both tell each other what you think and feel, not what each of you thinks the other would most like to hear.
Thank you everybody, for your informative and thoughtful replies. Although it’s not what I wanted to hear, it looks like the honest to god truth and I’m going to have to deal with that.
John Carter of Mars, you are outstanding. Whenever I start a thread, I know I can always count on you to post something that will make me grin from ear to ear. You’re the best.
Pretty much everyone has asked why I want to be married. For me, it’s not the legal formalities. Rather, it’s what marriage stands for, to me. It’s loving someone so much that you’re willing to be legally bound to that person, publicly. To me, (and this is just for me, I’m not applying it to anyone else) being with someone for a very long time and never getting married (if you’re legally able to do so) just feels like you love the person, but not quite enough to take that final step. I’ve spent my entire life expecting to get married and have children someday and I don’t quite think I’m ready to give up on that dream, even if it means eventually walking away from the love of my life.
This:
Is exactly what I’m afraid of. I don’t want to sit here and hold my breath for the next ten years, only to realize that it’s never going to happen. That’s why I want to know now if he truly intends to marry me someday (which he has said) or if he’s just stringing me along so I don’t walk away (which all the little comments lead me to believe.)
Also, I want to have children and call me old fashioned, but I’d like to be married before I do so and I’d rather not be having children at 40.
We’ve discussed all of this before and he has reassured me that it’ll happen, reluctantly. He also gets very defensive, reminding me that we “haven’t been together that long.” I don’t want to walk away prematurely, but I don’t want to wake up in ten years, unmarried and childless, and kick myself for being so gullible.
I’ve got to get to work but thank you again everyone, and please, keep the comments coming.
Not male, but I’m giving you the takes of two males on marriage and why to marry.
My brother’s take on why he and the SIL got married: “after I’d known her for half an hour, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.”
A friend of ours never intended to marry. He’s got a law degree and is an atheist. The way he figured it, marriage just meant that splitting up would mean complicated paperwork that you can save by not marrying in the first place.
Then he met a woman who didn’t want to marry for the same reasons. They moved together after a year. They’ve been married for 3 years, have a terribly smart 1-year old girl. Heck, they’d found someone they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with, so the splitting-up paperwork kind of became a non-issue. (And yes, I know divorce exists).
If he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life with you, then my guess is he isn’t what you’re looking for - even if he looks a lot like it.
I’m going to, in irritating fashion, answer a different question than you asked.
Don’t make any decisions or judgments about marriage while you’re in law school. Law school’s so stressful that you can’t think about anything clearly, and neither can he.
My now wife starting insisting on talking about marriage while she was in grad school, and we ended up breaking up for a few years. While I was somewhat frightened of marriage, she was hardly rational during her years obtaining her Ph.D. (she and I now both acknowledge both of these things).
The whole world will seem a little calmer next May.
Now. Making a guess on what very little we know of your SO, it sounds like he has the spine to only propose if he wants to.
I have known a lot of guys who wanted to get married before their girlfriends were ready to think about it. IME, when they know what they want and make up their minds, they are raring to go. Obviously that can’t apply to all men, but it has certainly been my experience with many guys I’ve known. My own husband made up his mind after three weeks (!) and was smart enough not to tell me that, knowing that I would run for the hills.
While I’m not going to say you should leave this guy from the information on a message board, I think you’re right to be concerned. If he’s not prepared to talk about it seriously right now what with law school and all, maybe you should set yourself a goal to have a serious discussion in a few months. I don’t think this is something you can just let go and hope things turn out well at all, but it might be as well to wait a little while until things are calmer. And then tell him what you told us; that you would rather be single than pressure him into marriage, but if he’s not prepared to get hitched of his own free will, you will have to go. It sound to me like he’s got everything he wants, and doesn’t want more, and he will be happy to stall and prevaricate to keep you from making a final decision.
Not male, not married, never been involved in any long term relationship that looked like marriage only without the little piece of paper
But the quote from him is sounding a warning bell to me. I think you need to ask him pointblank “How long do we need to be together before you decide whether you will marry me someday and I can start getting antsy about setting a date/planning the wedding?”
My guess is that he will want to set a timeframe which will encourage you to stick around for a while. But I really suspect that you need to choose between marriage and children (without him) and him (no marriage, questionable children).
If he doesn’t want to get married, and I’m guessing he doesn’t, he’s going to hold out the carrot of “one of these days we’ll get married” as long as he can, as long as you keep feeling like “as long as I’ve invested this much time, I might as well invest a little more”.
Plenty of men exist who didn’t have to be badgered into getting married–my dad startled my mother when he proposed–she totally wasn’t expecting it. 6 months later, they were married. My dad may have been atypical, and might be even more so now, but there are advantages to not setting up housekeeping with someone before the wedding.
My theory is that most men know almost immediately whether they want to marry a particular person.
My parents divorced when I was 9, then they each got married again, and divorced again, and are now married yet again, my mom for the 4th time, my dad for the 3rd. I’m sure that a therapist would tell me that I don’t want to ever get married because I’ve never really seen what a sucessful marriage is and how great it can be.
The real reason I don’t want to get married is because I just plain don’t see the point. If I love someone, we can be together. If things go south, then let’s just call it over and be done with it without the lawyers and trial separation and all that crap. Call my cynical, but that’s just how I see it.
I was never anti-marriage. And marriage is a lot more than a piece of paper. It’s an indicator that you’re serious about staying together. It’s an indicator to others that you are really a couple, not just buddies. It gives you the right to make decisions for each other when needed.
We never lived closer than 600 miles from each other when we got married. Over four years we found that we couldn’t not care about each other, no matter how hard we tried. When I was moving from Illinois to Louisiana, and she agreed to come and help, I decided both that I wanted us to live together and that not asking her to marry me would be really stupid. No pressure. It will be 28 years this Saturday, and neither of us has ever regretted it.
As for bup’s comment, I was in grad school when we got married, and the summer when I was finishing my PhD was not the smoothest few months we’ve ever spent, but the fact of being married helped us get over the rough spots… Sometimes life just sucks, and sometimes the barrier to breaking up helps you get over them and into the happy times again. It night have helped that both our parents stayed married as long as they lived, so we don’t even know how to do divorce.
Might want to qualify that.
This topic of this thread is a very touchy subject and it seems like I’m in the minority. I’m sure I’m going to get flamed for the following comments.
Male. Married once before and was very hesitant about doing it again. Then #2 came along:
1998: I met the woman of my dreams. From our first date together we spent pretty much every waking minute together. We Were In Love.
1999: She moved in with me after six months. I knew that I wanted to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. She felt the same.
2001: We had a wonderful marriage and I was the proverbial Good Husband to her. I was proud to be her husband and wear her ring.
2005: We divorced last year after seven years together. She cheated on me online. It cost me $34,000 not including lawyer expenses and definitely not including the pain and suffering of being betrayed like that.
So, who benefits from marriage? Certainly not me(n). So if your SO is a little skittish about marriage, then maybe you owe him the benefit of the doubt and just be happy to be in love with someone who loves you back. That is a rare gift and should not be casually thrown away. If you are so willing to walk out on him because he won’t marry you, what’s to prevent you from walking out on him for some other reason when you’re married? Only then, it’s going to be a world 'o hurt for both parties, with the lawyers slapping themselves on the back on the way to the bank.
I can’t believe that you would simply walk away from someone you love and care about just because they don’t want to get married. What does love and commitment have to do with marriage? Can’t the two exist indepentently?
Also, in today’s society having children out of wedlock is no big deal. If he were committed to raising that child as a father should, is being married that big of a deal?
I personally know more than 4 committed couples (two with children) who, in my eyes, are every much husband and wife (they even have rings) – but aren’t married and refuse to do so. One couple has been together since 1986. Before last year, I thought they were oddballs. I thought to myself, “why don’t they just get married?”
Now I understand.
Flame on, but this is MHO due to experience.
Almost precisely the words that sent me screaming, even though I was crazy about her.
(Female here.) Maybe a year and a half is not “that long,” but once you get over the 2-year mark, it’s been plenty of time. If you’re above the age of 25, 2 years is plenty of time for you to know if your partner is “the one.”
You only live once, and each year of your life, especially in your 20s, is very valuable time. Don’t waste it. I would say, finish law school, get jobs and work for a while then see what happens. But make a “deadline” for yourself. No need to tell him. Just set a time limit for yourself, say, one year, and if things haven’t changed, LEAVE, and move on. Please don’t waste the rest of your precious 20s on someone who will never be willing to commit.
I wasted 9 years on a guy, and I will never make that mistake again.
I could go with this. In fact, I second the motion. Are we ready to vote on lezler’s action?
Not jerking your chain, but I suspect the OP has gotten lots of advice from GFs (hence the title of the OP).
This has always surprised me – women in particular, despite their claims to be the “relationship” and “love” experts, are shockingly ready to discount everything about a relationship that previously had them over the moon when it becomes clear it isn’t going to work out, permanently. The word “wasted,” in particular, comes up a lot in female conversations about exes, less so in male descriptions, IME.
Neil Strauss’s “The Game” recounts the “player gurus” who claim that women act on pure emotion – when they feel “Attraction,” then “the relationship” and the guy are perfect and time well spent (so the theory goes). When the “Attraction” wears off or blows out, or the guy isn’t serving their needs – nothing. The guy, retrospectively, becomes a “waste.” Is it because women feel embarrassed that their supposedly-good emotional instincts weren’t infallible? I don’t know.
Now, in your case – I don’t know, maybe this guy was bad news, mean, abusive, not caring, such that the nine years really was a “waste.” But assuming (again, I have no way of knowing) that part of the reason you stuck around for nine years was not just because you wanted his DNA and legally-binding support, but because he was being kind, funny, thoughtful, and you had great fun together. Isn’t it a bit cold to summarize that (if it was true for you, as it has been for some women I’ve heard make a similar complaint) as a “waste?” And while some guys may out and out lie (e.g., saying they will definitely marry you while having no intention of doing so, ever), I suspect the much greater majority are thinking “I’m not ready now, but I think I could be, someday . . . .”
Again, nyctea, I don’t mean this as a bash, it just struck a chord because I’ve heard other women say similar things.
And by the way, on thinking about it, your actual bottom-line suggestion for what the OP should do is probably a pretty good compromise solution.
(with all due respect to you and your wife, and meaning no ill-will whatsoever to the future of your relationship)
And this is a bad thing, why?
I’ll admit, I’m not sure how one can answer the question without either setting an arbitrary date or feeling like one is playing games or trying to postpone the inevitable. But the other side of it is that if he does run screaming, lezlers gets valuable information about his willingness to talk about marriage someday.
OTOH, the motion proposed (by nyctea scandia) makes sense to me as a practical suggestion.
Take this with a grain of salt, but in my opinion marriage is an out-dated institution. Whom does it serve, really? In your case, it would serve you–because you want to test your guy’s devotion: “It’s loving someone so much that you’re willing to be legally bound to that person, publicly…to take that final step.” You want him to document his commitment to you in a legally binding fashion. To allow you to slip a collar and leash fashioned from social mores, traditions, guilt and obedience around his neck–for what? When he may already have made clear his intent to stay with you anyway? Don’t you trust him to keep his word? Then why the collar? Why bind him legally to his word if you trust him? I don’t think marriage is, at it’s core, the highest expression of love as much as it is the highest expression of doubt. Doubt about someone’s–maybe evenone’s own–ability to remain faithful and loyal and trustwothy after the fires of passion cool, as they will, and the beauty of youth fades and is tarnished with familiarity.
Marriage is simply a legal, business agreement. It has NOTHING to do with love, and even less to do with trust. Otherwise a private handshake would seal the deal. Any lifelong bond that is destined to exist between the two of you will predate any wedding ceremony anyway. Celebrate the day you two officially dedicated yourselves to each other, because that was the true beginning. These days as many marriages turn out to be bogus as not. A 50% failure rate is not indicative of success in anything…apart from one’s application of a baseball bat.