I’m going for simple thread questions this week. The only specification I’ll add is that the question is aimed only at people who have actually undergone the legal rite. If you’re cohabiting with your partner and have never had the relationship solemnized by a priest, minister, justice of the peace, or other such official such that dissolving the relationship would require legal intervention, well, I’m not looking at you. I’m looking at people who’ve gone to the effort to jump the broom.
Also, I buy into the concept of marriage. Maybe it’s a weak-minded, consumerist, I-see-it-so-I-want-it mentality, but I really did want legal consecration of my relationship with my husband. So we can see each other in hospice if nothing else.
Because I loved her and she loved me and I thought she would be a wonderful wife and mother. We don’t have kids yet (we have time), but I still think so.
Both of us wanted to get married and we found each other through a mutual friend. Quite quickly we realized we are compatible. From then on, it was just a matter of time before our individual circumstances (school for both of us) allowed us to be in the same place long enough to get married. It took a couple of years, but it was just a matter of time. The good news is that after 37 years, we each are convinced we got the better of the deal!
I didn’t really want to because I am skeptical of the whole institution to but she pushed the issue at about the right time in our lives and I knew I wanted kids before I was older. It is a miracle we lasted ten years before divorce and I can’t say I enjoyed a single day of the marriage itself. I don’t regret it because I got the kids that I wanted and she is a better ex-wife than wife but I wish I had come up with a better plan.
More of a leap of faith on his part than mine I suspect. His dad married three times. In my family, marriages that lasted over 50 years were common. I went in without any illusions about the amount of work involved. I chose him because I loved him AND he was my best friend. I knew that we had enough in common in the way we thought, and in what we considered important (politics, religion, children, money) that we stood a good chance of working through the rough spots. The physical side was/is good too.
Because I thought the legal, financial, and social advantages of marriage outweighed the disadvantages.
I love my husband, and am committed to him for life. To me, legal marriage is about benefits and drawbacks. I was emotionally and socially married to him long before we signed paperwork.
Because I am a romantic, and I wanted to wear a ring, call her my wife, that sort of thing. She wasn’t into it, still won’t refer to me as her husband, but I wore her down, and 20 years later, we are still married, and we still have a bunch of the cookware, flatware, etc. that we registered for. So we got that going for us anyway.
I fell madly in love with my best friend and she with me. On a pragmatic level we were a great fit in many ways. There was some of the social pressure to eventually go down the road of marriage and kids but we were early enough it wasn’t a driving factor in settling or getting married right then. I just couldn’t imagine having a better lover and partner to share my entire life with.
I was also most definitively wrong. The road paved with good intentions did in fact lead to it’s metaphorical destination. :smack:
I really like the idea of a companion, best friend, and partner-in-crime for life. No, you don’t need a piece of paper to make that commitment. I can only speak for my own marriage here - whenever times get really tough, sometimes that piece of paper is what prevents us from just walking away. And that is a good thing because the tough times make us stronger.
