Is there a manual or something? I just got married and have NO idea how to act either bourgouisie or bourgeois, I don’t even speak FRENCH!
“You want fries with that?” is lucrative?
As for what I’ve given up, I don’t sleep with other people anymore. Hmmm, that’s about it. And I get to drive her truck every so often, but that’s cool. But that’s just us. But we love each other.
Might I also add here that the commitment of marriage is light years less binding than the commitment of parenthood. If the marriage doesn’t work out, divorce is an option. There’s no exit clause for parenting.
I pity you.
[sub]Had to be said.[/sub]
“Marriage is an endless string of one night stands.” - Dennis Miller
May I second this, from personal experience?
I think this stement is what she’s worried about. That she has to be relieved of drugery that has suddenly become hers. Before there were his dishes and her dishes each in their respective apartments. I don’t see why she can’t follow the example of her own european friends and get married but live separately.
I agree with most people though, that if you love him and can’t see yourself balled and chained to him then you should set him free.
The OP sounds like a scared little girl who is afraid of getting dumped (or hurt) so she does the dumping first. Classic inferiority complex. You don’t have to give up a Bohemian existence when you get married. Christ! Lots of beatniks and hippies and fringe personalities were married. You just have to be in love. I never heard you say you love him, but hey, people have gotten married for a lot less than love, and it’s worked for them! Maybe you’re avoiding marriage for all the wrong reasons!
I thought the same thing - and remember, it took her a long time to decide what she wanted.
Hey - it’s okay to not want to get married. It’s okay. Not everything is for everyone, and I respect your willingness to swim upstream. In fact, did you see the NYT named “marriage” number 2 on the overrated for 2002 list? All of that aside.
I think the attacking in this post is personal sounding, but not personal. It’s okay to know marriage is not for you. The part that makes some of us want to fight is to blame that on a: marriage as an institution, or b: him. It’s okay for you not to want to marry him, it’s also okay for him to want to marry and settle down. It’s not an attack on you for him to need something different. Marriage can be a good thing, and so maybe the better way to phrase “Marriage isn’t good” would be “Marriage isn’t good for me.”
Lots of us are happily married and there’s nothing wrong with us. Please remember that.
Wow. So many comments. I appreciate all of them, even the ones who attempt to rip me to shreds.
There are too many to respond to each one individually, so I shall summarize. First of all, those who make an honest attempt to be non-judgmental and/or humorous, what a breath of fresh air! I have discussed this topic in general (not this specific situation, of course, since it just came up last week), and those who defend marriage and/or tell of their own happy experiences with it while slamming me are a little tired and predictable, but I appreciate them anyway. Variety is the spice of life, and all that.
That said, the general tone that this thread seems to be taking (even from most of the supportive posts), is to accept unquestiongly the total turnaround that my newly conformist BF has undergone (presumably because the thing that he wants – marriage – represents the more “acceptable” choice in many people’s view), while slamming me for being what I’ve always been, which is interested in independence and autonomy.
This is very interesting, and, I might add, in no way representative of the general population. I don’t know if this forum is more conservative than the population in general, or perhaps there are sock puppets at work, or old friends backing each other up. But I’m keeping an open mind and will assume that every post is legit.
In this day and age, the general population has become increasing tolerant toward people who want independence. I know lots of people who freely admit that marriage is not for them, no longer afraid in this day and age of being lynched for voicing such an outrageous view. So all the hammering I’m catching here is a little bit skewed and biased, to say the least.
We seem to be getting away from the original core issue here. The original problem, as I attempted to lay it out in the OP, is my BF’s sudden change in attitude about such a fundamental issue. Someone asked why he would propose to “someone like me” in the first place. That would be because he is someone like me, or at least was until recently. Meaning our basic outlook on life is (was?) extremely compatible. Meaning that we think alike about all those things that really matter. I read the word “love” a lot of times here. I am very fond of the guy and he is very fond of me, and we agree about a lot of things, we laugh together, we fight and make up, the sex is good; so maybe that’s love. Life is not a Harlequin romance, and we are not 17 years old, so I see love for the complicated concept that it is, and I don’t throw the word around casually. I think too many people talk about love too lightly, without even realizing what it means. I’m not sure I know what it means. I think at least one of the posters here seems to think that wanting to clean up after somebody is a sign of love. I don’t know what world you live in, but on my planet things don’t work that way.
The real issue is that my BF basically thinks the same as me, and I think therefore the relationship my still be salveagable. He may be suffering from a midlife crisis, having been stricken by a sudden attack of compulsive self-examiniation possibly brought on by the holiday season or whatever.
I am also a little disturbed that several people on this board seem to think in a total black-and-white picture. The refrain seems to be: Either change your mind about marriage, or turn him lose. See, that’s exactly the problem. Why can’t there be a compromise? Why can’t we be together without all the “official” commitment and stuff, just the way we’ve been all along? We know plenty of couples like that, and also, we are both almost middle-aged adults, each of us already having built our own life. We are not kids just starting out.
Of course, he and I have had this discussion (the one time after we semi broke up and then met one more time to discuss this whole thing in great length). Problem is, he really can’t come up with a good argument why things can’t remain the same as they are now. He just keeps saying he wants something more settled, perhaps buy a co-op or something (he’s not to the point where he wants to move to the suburbs yet, but the way things are going, this could be next). See, I can’t buy a co-op. It would be all him. Everything would be his, and I would be a Kept Woman with no autonomy and nothing of my own. I don’t think I can do it.
If everything is cool right now, why does he want that piece of paper? I’m beginning to think that he wants out of the relationship, that maybe he has someone else, and this is his sly way of getting us to break up without actually having to do it himself and take responsibility. “Allowing” me to keep my “pride” by letting me be the one to break if of, or some such bullshit. Of course, such sly maneuvering is completely out of character for him. My bullshit radar is very functional, thank you very much, and people who are prone to this type of cowardly and manipulative behavior usually get scratched off my list prontissimo. In other words, if he were this type of person, we wouldn’t be together in the first place.
A mutual friend thinks he’s going through a phase of wanting to experiment new things, and eventually he will be himself again. Yet, it’s all very screwy right now. I’d be interested in some feedback about someone who has had a sudden change of heart about something this fundamental, or someone who is close to someone who did. I want to understand what’s going on in my BF’s head. Right now, I’m beginning to worry this could be a sign of a personality or mental disorder on his part.
I am not one for sig lines, but if I were, I would be fighting for the rights for those two.
As for the OP - Ummm… ok, whatever floats your boat. You obviously rock in your own mind, so rock on.
Simply, it is a person’s perogative to change his/her mind.
If that change cannot be incorporated into your (generally speaking, not specifically directed to anyone) set of beliefs and values, then you have reached a stand-still and no, things cannot be as they were.
I wonder if you would be this generous if the mind-changer had been for marriage all along, and now, quite suddenly, would be against it? This would be a different story, yes? We’d have to dig around in the poor sap’s brain in an attempt to figure out what could possibly have happened to make him so irrational all of a sudden. Sorry, folks, but I detect more than the fair share of pro-marriage bias here.
The only thing I am “pro” is free thought, opinion, and decision.
Why would it suddenly have become hers? The dishes and clothes have to be washed, whether you’re married or living together or not. Why does it matter that they’d be in the same space? You could still wash your own dishes or not.
For the record, I don’t consider “the dishes” to be my wife’s job, or some such nonsense. Mrs. p has a masters degree compared to my lowly BA, but we chose together to have me work for the income and for her to not work outside of the home to the degree possible. As a result she simply is home more of the time, and does more of the housework.
That doesn’t seem like it’d be the case here, and they could do the chores equally. Drudgery does not enter our lives simply because we are married–I think Suspenderzzz still has some growing up to do.
Funny, I thought the general tone this thread was taking was one of people reacting to your derisive and insulting attitude toward certain aspects of their lives by reminding you that living in the city, renting and being single doesn’t make you better than they are, nor does it give you the right to mock them to their faces, which is what you did with this thread. I’ve seen people on these boards express that they are not interested in marriage and that they wish people would stop bugging them about it. They didn’t get flamed because they managed to do it without coming off like an ice-cold glass of bitch-juice.
You see, becasue that’s what he wants is a perfectly sound arguement. Claiming that there’s no “good” reason for it is like saying that someone dosen’t have a sound reason for wanting mushrooms on pizza. He’s allowed to change. It’s not his job to stay the same person he always was. We are not defending him because his choice is more conventional–watch someone make a snide comment about our resident parenting “triad” here, and you’ll see these same people defend them. We are defending your man’s choice because he has the right to change, as do you. It sucks, and it hurts, but people do change. When what they want is no longer compatable, they move on. There’s no way to stop him from changing, and if you try, I promise you will come across as looking petty and desperate and clingy–all things that I know you loathe. If he wants to be in a comitted relationship more than he wants to be with you, that’s his choice. If you want to be uncommitted more than you want to be with him, that’s your choice, too. Dignified adults make their choice and move on. They don’t spend time worrying about whose the asshole and if it’s fair.
I wouldn’t call a desire for a committed relationship a “sign of mental illness”. Why can’t you accept that he’s changed? People do it all the time. In fact, I would think that inflexibility would be a trait that someone like you wouldn’t stand for.
And why can’t you co-own a co-op with him? People do it all the time. You have a job, I presume, but even if you didn’t, he can put your name on the deed just like millions of people do with their partners every day.
If he just wants to own something with you, there’s no need to get married. People do that all the time, too. In fact, it would be a way for you to build up a credit rating of your own.
What I want to know is what (if any) role the benefits of your relationship with this man have been for your child. It seems to me that if there is a kid involved, you don’t exactly have the right to just hem and haw and do what you please when it comes to your love life. Regardless of what your feelings on single parenthood are, you’ve got to admit that from your post you don’t sound incredibly concerned over your child (barely even mentioning it, actually). It seems to me that you have more important relatioships to focus on than some flaky on again off again beau.
Oh, and autonomous people don’t have boyfriends.
Excuse me, what makes you think I don’t have a “credit rating of my own”? How did you leap to that conclusion? All I said is I can’t buy a co-op (what I didn’t say is that I wouldn’t want to because, like marriage, the burdens of homeownership don’t appeal to me, but that’s beside the point). I didn’t say why I can’t buy a co-op. And I’m not going to because I have already put out more of my personal business here than was my original attention. There are factors involved here that you couldn’t even begin to guess because you don’t know me. And they are not necessarily something “bad”, either. Just no one’s fucking beeswax. How the fuck do you assume I lived to be well into my forties and on my own without a fucking CREDIT RATING??? You are not talking to kid here. So take your condescending attitude and shove it where the sun don’t shine. 