What is the big taboo about husband/wife?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There are so many people who will swear up and down they are NOT married, they have a girlfriend or a boyfriend not a wife or a husband!

Yet they live together, have children together, have commingled finances, have a romantic relationship and sex, and there are unspoken or even explicit rules to their relationship so that one could not just decide to run off to Cancun for a weekend alone.

How are these people not married? How are they not spouses? Forget legally, what about common law?

:smack:

It annoys me, NO no no we aren’t married she is my girlfriend.:rolleyes:

2

My partner and I just had our 25th anniversary . . . but we’re not allowed to marry in this state.

3

Well, we’re not married. If feels false to me to call him my husband, since we’ve never gone through the ceremony. Legally we’re de facto, in common parlance he’s my partner or the girls’ father as I think we’re a little far gone to call him simply a boyfriend. But what’s it to you? Why should what we call each other meet your approval? I don’t care what you call your SO.

4

It just seems annoying, like insisting coffee is not a beverage or something. Or raising a child from infancy but insisting you’re not the child’s parent, not REALLY.

5

Don’t think you’re what the OP means, panache.

Common law marriage is only recognized in 9/50 states, and Texas is the only “big” one, so it’s not usually likely an issue in these situations for the other 41 states. For some of these people, it’s a political issue (I don’t need a piece of paper; I won’t marry if everyone can’t; religious issues, etc), in one way or another. Others it’s financial, although I think those aren’t the “insisters.” For most of these people, it’s their thing, you’d have to ask.

6

Not all states even have common law marriages. Sorry, being married means something specific. If you made a choice not to get married you have every right to choose to say you are not married. It’s a legal scam to benefit lawyers which I no longer believe in.

7

If you’re talking coffee, I would describe it as the difference between normal and decaf - ostensibly it’s the same thing as it sates the thirst and mostly tastes the same, but it is missing something which many people would regard as the whole point - the caffeine (i.e. the wedding). It is different, but to complete the metaphor, everyone likes their coffee their way. I bet you meet far more people who are unmarried than you realise - sometimes it’s easier just to run with the assumption.

(And as for our reasons for not getting married - don’t see the point, makes no difference financially, the cost, remenants of paternialistic society, geographical challenges to a wedding, and after 2 kids and a house, who cares???)

8

I actually believe in the “just a piece of paper” thing, well I mean it is just a piece of paper and the relationship can’t be made better by it. On the other side I don’t think the lack of a piece of paper invalidates a marriage, I mean if you were happily married for 20 years and found out there was some technical snag with the ceremony so you weren’t technically legally married you’d still consider each other spouses right?

9

In a social sense, yes. In a legal sense, you could be screwed if calamity arises. Legal marriage brings rights of inheritance and the authority to make medical/legal/financial decisions for one another in the event of incapacitation. If you have eschewed legal marriage but taken the trouble to draft wills and power-of-attorney documents, then you’ve achieved the primary benefits of a legal marriage, but I suspect most unmarried long-term couples haven’t done so.

Aside from the legal aspects of a civil marriage, the binding commitment represented by a formal marriage ceremony also carries weight. There’s an interesting and relevant moment in the movie Shadowlands. Anthony Hopkin’s character (C.S. Lewis) marries a US citizen so she can remain in England. Later on in the movie he develops real and strong feelings for her, and he decides he wants a do-over. He says to her: “I want to marry you before God and the world.” It wasn’t enough for him that they were already legally married: he wanted a real wedding, witnessed by friends and family, at which he could proudly and loudly declare his affection and commitment to her.

Not everyone needs or wants all that, I suppose. My wife and I are both somewhat stricken with stage fright, so we skipped the crowds and got married all by ourselves - but she wore a pretty wedding dress, and I wore a nice tux, and we got hitched in a nice ceremony in a secluded outdoor garden at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

10

I would check to see what sit-com I was living in, and use my genre-savvy to set myself up as Ultimate Ruler (in a hilarious manner, of course), with my wife are the co-ruler and true Power Behind the Throne.

11

I get what the OP is on about.

Yeah, some people will not say they are married because, yeah, they aren’t married. But there are some people that seem to give off this weird vibe that because they aren’t technically married they really aren’t living the “married” life, when in reality they are as close as you can get minus that little piece of paper.

12

I have gotten scolded for saying I was married when I am not. It’s just shorthand to say “my husband”; we’ve been together fifteen years. But when I tell people that they are all “Why don’t you just get married then?”

People are such busybodies.

13

SWMBO and I are coming up on our 20th anniversary together. We refer to each other as partners.

14

My wife and I are friends with a couple who’s been together something like 15 years, own a house, dogs, cats and a couple of cars, but who have no plans to get married.

Primarily, it’s because of the woman’s childhood experiences with her parents, and her rather odd conviction that being married makes her the property of her husband. Her “not-husband” as we call him, wouldn’t care one bit if she woke up one morning and wanted to be married- he’d be down with whatever lets him stay with her.

15

I’ve asked the same question, with regard to certain celebrity couples that shall remain nameless. I fail to comprehend why people would behave as though they are married when they are not. Nor can I understand why people who claim to be married do not consider themselves bound by their vows.

That said, other members of this message board have recently made it clear to me that my definition of respect and honor between man and wife are not welcome in our modern day and age. Apparently we live in an age where “marriage” can be defined however we please, and it means something unique to each individual.

16

Marriage is a sort of legal partnership sanctioned by the state, and depending on your religion (or lack thereof), the partners have various obligations imposed from on high.

As far as the states are concerned, they don’t care if you live together, who you sleep with, etc… Some religions don’t either, I’m sure. Some are very concerned with a lot of other stuff- who obeys who, etc…

Ultimately, anything outside of the legal definition comes down to whatever the two married people agree to- if they’re swingers, then they’ve agreed to something different than say quiver-full people, and both have agreed to something different than say… most Muslim married couples. Every couple will be different on what they agree to- no two people are alike, so it makes sense that no two marriages will be either.

And none of it is my business, or anyone else’s but their own when it comes right down to it.

17

I have to admit I’ve been all over the different sides of this issue, at one time or another. I’ve been with my partner 28+yrs, ‘without the benefit of marriage’, as they say!

I came from a home where the parents maintained a highly dysfunctional, bad environment, out of sense of divorce being, ‘not done’. Trust me, it would have been the merciful thing to do. Children in this scenario often grow up with a great big, ‘Never, not ever!’ chip on their shoulder. I watched my elder siblings walk down the aisle convinced, by the power of youth, and the optimism of true love, that ‘it’ couldn’t happen to them. And then it did.

People, sometimes rightly, sense that getting in the dress, and saying those words, taking on that title, will in some way, open a door for them to transform into, ‘vile wife/husband’, similar to what was modeled for them as children. When we choose partners, especially when we are young, we are often drawn to that which is familiar, and thus comfortable. We find out, too late, we have somehow recreated a dynamic that we actually despise. This magnetic draw of the familiar runs real deep in humans, it seems to me.

Firstly I would point out; people who choose not to join the files of the married because they have commitment issues, pretty clearly. After a while they begin to think what’s protecting them is, not taking on the language, better not change that!

When we began, a few years in, when we were in prime age, and attending lots of weddings, we fielded lots of questions about When? Which we dodged. With the passage of time, and the failure of many, if not most of those unions, suddenly we were being often told we were somehow, ‘more married’, than most people with the paperwork!

But the truth is for the first 10 or so years, we were both somewhat strict about correcting an every widening group who found it easier to refer to us as husband and wife. I was very much an, ‘I never will marry, I’ll be no man’s wife, I intend to live single all the days of my life!’, kind of girl. He was mostly taking his cue from me.

But then we did a lot of traveling in the third world. Into some countries where cohabitation was technically illegal. When you’re facing a language barrier, ‘husband’ and, ‘wife’, are useful words, even if they aren’t correct, that will probably be understood! Several trips later the word, ‘husband’, just rolled right off my lips, as easy as you please. It’s just a word.

Some people set out to frame a relationship not by contract, but by choice, every day. They want to know the person they are with, is there by choice and not obligation, in a way. And if that’s what they truly need, marriage isn’t for them!

18
  1. No, technically they aren’t married. Legally, they aren’t married. And to some people, there is a big difference between “living together for 20 years without gettting married” and “married”.
  2. Why do you care?
19

One other issue re: common law marriage. I’m in one of the weirdo small states that actually does have common law marriage and at least here, one of the requirements is that the couple has to “present themselves as husband and wife.” This means that in the situation you describe, they would avoid being common law married by calling themselves boy/girlfriend or partners or whatever instead of husband and wife.

20

Just call people what they want to be called. It saves a lot of fuss.