Been in a long-term relationship for 10 years. Engaged for 1 year. More good times than bad times. We live in a house together — that’s only under my name. We share a dog together. We’d both like to have kids together in the next 3 years.

Confession: I’m in zero rush/zero desire to get married. Convince me I’m wrong.

likefunny
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I love being married. I like the security i feel knowing that we’ve made this commitment together to support one another no matter what comes.

With that being said I don’t think you HAVE to be married to feel that within your partnership and if you need to be “convinced” then why bother?

Throw a party with everyone you know, get married at the courthouse, or do none of it but there are all sorts of family structures that exist - just do whatever works for you.

If you don’t mind, why get engaged if no desire to be married?

likehelpful

This may not be the popular opinion but I can say that being married for some reason forced our partner and I to tough it out through some really rough times and we’re better for it. I don’t know why and it seems like it shouldn’t matter, but I do know that the commitment pushed us to work it out instead of walking out, which I know either of us would have earlier in our marriage.

I’m not advocating it, but that’s been my experience. We’re not religious and it’s not about the vows, and it may be just the fact that divorce is so unappealing that it makes you try harder to avoid it, but regardless I’m glad we stuck together when we were still learning how to be good life partners.

likeuplifting

What Director 3 said. Exactly.

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I can only speak from experience, but of the three couples I’ve known in the same position, where they were in a longterm relationship but not married, when the Big Break occurred decades down the road, the men all found younger partners and went on to have pretty happy lives, while the women are still all alone and struggling with rebuilding theirs without as much success. It seemed, unfairly, infinitely easier for the guys to find companionship than the women.

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Update:
Make that four couples now :/

Legally speaking, marriage helps with the kid thing. If you’re trying to do anything more than courthouse, that takes time to plan. Assuming you didn’t get together at 16, and assuming hetero, one of you is starting to work against biology for kids so it might not happen as fast as you like. So your window is like “warmish now” for marriage and potentially “lukewarm now” to start trying

likehelpful

So....then don’t get married. Live the rest of the life you are describing, and be happy

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Having been married before, with a shared house but no kids, separated and divorced and now happily remarried to someone else with our first child, I can say that having a child together is far more of a commitment to each other than getting married or buying a house together. Whilst emotionally draining the later two can be undone without that much difficulty unless it’s seriously acrimonious.

Honestly you don’t need to get married. Depending on where you live, your relationship alone affords a level of rights to your partner if you were to break up. A mother is more likely to get custody of any kids and you’d be part responsible for bringing them up in any event.

For me, choosing to marry again was tough, but ultimately I felt the desire to create a single family unit for our child was more important than any commitment and emotional pain hang-ups I had about marriage. I have no idea if it helps legally; I’m assuming parental guardianship has more legal weight. If anything I’m more likely to lose assets if we were to ever break up but that’s fine. There might be some tax benefits to being married and it probably makes passport control and hospital trips easier but that’s about it.

Ultimately you shouldn’t listen to anyone else on this topic but yourself and your partner. You do what’s right for you as you are the ones that have to live with any decisions. F anyone else and their judgements. They simply don’t matter. You’ll be happiest if you decide on that basis regardless of the outcome.

Plus, having had two weddings, they cost a lot, for basically a big party. My second wedding was tiny due to Covid but I quite liked it that way - just our parents and literally no one else. We’re still having a big celebration when we can though $$$🔥.

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Together 10 years before we got married. Honestly, the tripwire was when he ended up in the ER and couldn't speak for himself and they kept calling me 'MRS xyz, sign this', 'talk us, Mrs xyz', and I didn't correct them...the thought of them kicking me out and calling his mother because we weren't legally partnered was a lot to digest.

I understand that we have come far enough that there are few things that require the official thing...and maybe they wouldn't have booted me in the heat of the moment, but it definitely gave us pause to think that someone else didn't think we were committed or that we might not be able to speak for one another because we lacked the marriage license.

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Why do you want us to convince you you're wrong? Not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious.

Anyway, since you asked, here are some answers:

- Being married is awesome. It's the most fun relationship state I've experienced so far. Being able to share marriage memes with your best friend is better than any other type of meme sharing.

- Being engaged is the worst relationship state I've ever experienced. It's all the stakes of marriage with none of the benefits, there's all this stress around planning the wedding and it damn near cost me my relationship just to get through it.

- If you do your wedding right, and do something for the two of you and not any other stakeholders in your life, then you have an opportunity to blow too much money on the best party you'll ever have, planned exactly to your standards and preferences, with an ideal guest list of all your favorite people. My wedding was the best week of my life. It brought together everyone we like and everyone had such a good time, people still talk about it to this day. My wife still sometimes half-jokes about getting divorced just so we can get married again. It was the peak moment of my life so far and I don't see that changing until I fulfill a lifelong dream, or have a kid, or something else as epic.

- If you're not married, the logistics of family planning become much harder. You don't get an automatic pass to visit someone in the hospital the way spouses do. Their parents get legal precedence over unmarried life partners in the event that any end-of-life decisions (like whether to turn off life support) need to get made. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have the power to make sure my wife's end-of-life wishes get carried out, because I know her parents won't respect her wishes and that would devastate me to see.

- Your kids are going to have to explain to a bunch of other idiot kids why their parents aren't married. You may think this is stupid, and you'd be right. You may think it's not a big deal, and you'd be wrong. You may be a decent parent in every other way, but you run the risk of putting your kid through the experience of having to grapple, at a young age, with the question of "do my parents love each other less than my friends' parents who are married?" Despite the wokeness of the moment, we live in a very socially conservative country where people in general - and other kids in particular - point out the other-ness of non-nuclear family units (whether unmarried, same-sex, poly, or anything outside the archetypical norm). People are cruel and prejudiced. I'd do just about anything to spare my future kids any avoidable pain and I haven't even met them yet. I'm sure you're the same.

But ultimately none of these reasons matter if you don't want to get married, which is why I asked why you're looking to be persuaded. If you intend to be in a stable, lifelong family-raising relationship with a single other human partner, there is really no reason not to get married. Marriage is just the set of legal privileges and protections society has cooked up to facilitate exactly that state of long-term monogamous family-building partnership. If you don't actually want to exist in that state, then not only shouldn't you get married, it might make sense for you to honestly examine why that is, and whether being effectively common-law married (as you're describing) wouldn't make you just as unhappy

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My moms best friend growing up was engaged for nearly 30 years. An official Marriage or not shouldn’t justify your love for one another.

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My great aunt was engaged for about 30 years though they never had kids. In retrospect, I think she was maybe not heterosexual. She was born in the early 1900s so I get it. But honestly she inspired me. I was named after her. My first name was her middle name and she was just so amazing. Marriage is mostly a legal arrangement when you get down to it. If you’re having kids together and sharing a home, I would recommend some sort of legal arrangement but you don’t have to get married.

uplifting

Wedding gifts?

like

You’re in no rush because you already are married.

Living together and been with each other for ten years?

That’s longer than a lot of marriages.

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Been with my male partner for 13 years, I am a woman, not really interested in getting married, don't care. No kids, we are both financially secure, happy as can be. Marriage is not going to change that.

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PS: We both have wills to cover anything a marriage cert would have covered.

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I don’t understand how people see parenting a child together as less commitment than marriage.

like

A lot of people are worried getting married will complicate things or ruin the relationship.

It really doesnt in my opinion. It just makes the feelings you already have, much stronger.

So if youre sure youre happy, you feel even happier. And if youre insecure or unhappy, you feel reaaaaaally insecure and unhappy.

likesmart

Well, you’re putting your partner in a much more precarious spot than you in case things break up, since the house is only in your name. You’re also preserving your ability to walk away without much hassle or responsibility even as you guys supposedly get closer to making a life long bond though having kids. Neither of those things seem particularly kind or loving to me, and if I were your partner and you dropped that you were thinking this way, it would give me serious pause. As a woman, honestly I might end up walking. You seem to be prioritizing your own convenience over your partner’s security, and personally I would not want to start a family on that foundation.

likesmart

Is the issue you don’t want to be with your partner long term and you’re questioning the future? Or is the issue you don’t believe in marriage?

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They’ve already been with their partner longterm so hopefully that’s not it.

Zero rush to be married or to have a wedding? There’s a difference.

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Is he in a rush?

You’re not wrong. Just be open about it. 10 years is too long for something like that to go down badly. I say be sensitively upfront.

Stay together. Don’t get married.

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