[ol]
[li]Possible religious obligations - if you are marrying for this reason you’re beyond help, so fair enough[/li][li]Favourable tax treatment[/li][li]Excellent if you’re a gold-digger[/li][/ol]
Disadvantages:
[ol]
[li]Humans not pair maters. At best serially monogomous, and I doubt that[/li][li]Weddings almost always extremely expensive[/li][li]Lose privacy[/li][li]Commitment[/li][li]ENORMOUS cost when divorce occurs. Partner steals most of your money[/li][li]Sex disappears by almost everyone’s account[/li][li]Greater ‘obligation’ to put up with partner[/li][/ol]
I guess what I’m saying is the risk versus reward just doesn’t stack up, unless one partner is on their death bed, or there is some kind of religious reason that means pure reason cannot be applied.
So why did/didn’t you get married? And do you regret it?
How can this be universally true, unless both partners are stealing one another’s money? (If you point out that the lawyers get a ton, on the other hand…)
You left out people who want kids, and who want to create a ‘stable environment’ for them. Clearly couples can divorce, and unmarried couples can stay together forever, but I guess making divorce more of a pain than staying together is an added security feature for people who want to have a family, buy a house together, etc.
Plus all the love stuff, experiencing true empathy, wanting to face life as a team, ‘completing’ one another, anything else spouted in rom-coms but that turns out to be true, for some.
I married for love, 28 years ago. No regrets. Certainly sex did not disappear. Frankly, it’s only gotten better. Plenty of privacy, ‘putting up’ with her is no discernable burden for me. She helped to keep me from killing the kids when they were young, and I returned the favor. We are natural allies in dealing with them.
We make a point of having our own interests that we pursue separately, and manage to be fully functional adults in our own right, but our relationship as a couple is a high priority for us both.
I regret both of my marriages, even though I failed to steal any money from my husbands. I paid child support but no spousal support but the sex did disappear, to my chagrin. My weddings were not expensive. I married at 20 or religious reasons and at 40 for emotional ones. I didn’t get any particular tax benefit from being married.
They weren’t religious.
They never earnt enough money to make the tax breaks matter.
They weren’t gold diggers.
They never had affairs.
They married just after WW2, using a borrowed dress and with a handful of guests.
They supported each other.
They loved each other (and the kids).
They never divorced.
They used to hold hands when they thought we weren’t looking.
They brought tolerance and compromise to each other.
They married for love and got a wonderful lifetime of friendship out of it as well.
Marriage is more advantageous for women than for men (The OP clearly has a man’s point of view on the issue). As a man, I can’t think of a good reason to get married other than the fact that I probably want to have kids someday, and it just seems like the proper way to raise them is to be married to your partner.
We had an inexpensive wedding – in fact, it was pretty inexpensive for a big honkin’ party in the park with snacks and wine afterward, which is what it was, and I think everyone had a wonderful time.
I think your #4 & #7 belong on the first list, and some of the others don’t belong on any list as they’re not true for many or even most marriages. Pthbbt.
I am not trying to suggest marriage is a life of guaranteed misery. I am suggesting it has the potential of misery with little upside to make taking the risk of said misery worthwhile; is there anything about your touching story that would have been different had your parents not been married?
No, it’s really not. Marriage is more advantageous for the person who wants children.
Marriage is better for men professionally; people still think that a family ties a man to a job, but makes a woman unreliable. This is a self-fulling prophecy, because a couple will typically consider the higher paying job (statistically the man’s) more important, so Mommy’s the one who takes time off to care for the kids and the one everyone hates because she comes to work ill and useless and infects everyone else with her kid’s cold (because she uses her sick time when the kids are sick.)
Marriage is a partnership; every dime you make, every dish you dirty, all the dust on the floor, and every diaper full of poop are no longer Yours or Mine, but Ours.
Sometimes marriage just isn’t fun; sometimes a spouse can be amazingly selfish or annoyingly sensitive; sometimes you look at your spouse and actually run the numbers in your head.
Sometimes a job isn’t fun; sometimes your kids aren’t fun; sometimes life isn’t fun. We don’t quit, run away, or commit suicide. We suck it up and deal.
We wash each other’s dishes, share our earnings, somehow keep from killing the kids. And if we get resentful because we clean the damned bathroom 90% of the time or contribute 90% of our earnings to the household, we’d better grow up.
This isn’t the Magic Kingdom, friends; this is life.
I’m 38, he’s 42 and we’re getting married this October. First marriage for him, second go-round for me.
We want the legality, we’re enjoying living together and sharing our lives just fine, but we want everything that goes with marriage. The titles, the legal status of being next-of-kin, the commitment privately and publicly that the other is our choice above everyone else, the health benefits since only one of us has them, etc.
I really can’t imagine there will be much of a tax break, and it wouldn’t influence me either way, but the health insurance is much anticipated.
Neither of us has cheated, but if one of us had an affair, I can’t imagine it’d hurt any less if we weren’t married, it’d be a devastating betrayal regardless.
Weddings are as expensive as you choose, we’re looking forward to blowing a nice chunk of cash to party with our friends and family.
Neither of us desires privacy, we’re already living together and enjoy spending time with one another.
My ex and I didn’t bankrupt each other when I previously divorced. This time we’re older and wiser and making presumably better choices, but if the worse should happen, it’s only money, you’ll make more of it. Fear of losing money re: divorcing just isn’t on everyone’s balance sheet.
If you feel obligated to ‘put up with’ your partner, you probably shouldn’t have been with them to begin with or you’re hyper-critical and unable to cohabitate with any other humans.
I got married to make it clear to everyone that my husband is my family. It’s the least offensive way possible to let everyone know that this is the person you will put first.
Whether or not it’s forever doesn’t matter. If our relationship were to change–if he weren’t family anymore–I’d divorce him, and but that wouldn’t retroactively invalidate what we have now. Right now, we’re each other’s closest family member and being married announces that to everyone else. Duration isn’t a necessary condition.
Honestly, most of your list would equally apply to other family relationships (except for the sex part, and that declines as you age regardless. At least I don’t have to go out looking for it) People’s siblings, parents, and children cost them a fortune, impose ridiculous obligations, and intrude on their privacy, but it seems that being part of a family is important enough that most people put up with it. Your spouse is the only family that you get to chose and have society recognize and validate that choice.
Yes, you would. Toilets would get dirty, dust would accumulate, money would be spent on pesky necessities instead of toys, and jobs would still at times suck. (I love my job; it sucked today.)
Life is not all beer and skittles. Life is hard work. Sometimes it’s fun and satisfying, and sometimes you just slog through it.
Marriage can make it easier, marriage can make it worse. It depends on what you expect from life and from the marriage, and how much you’re willing to give.
As a promise of forever, as a way of telling the world that this person means more to me than any other (similar to Manda Jo’s “my husband is my family”), as a way of telling my hypothetical husband that he means more to me than all the rest . . .
I’ll admit to some religious baggage which promotes marriage as a precurser to having sex, and some practical baggage which says that if sex makes babies, marriage to the baby’s father (and partnership with same) is simpler than the alternative.
But the number one reason I’d like to get married is to have a promise of a partner with me through life, supporting me in my bad times, leaning on me during his, and generally making life smoother and less terrifyingly lonely.
By the spelling, you are presumably not American, but for most American couples, this should have a leading “Un” and be placed in the Disadvantages section. The tax position is only favourable if one spouse does not work or has a low income.