I am curious, what are some advantages of getting married?

I am 24 and have been living with my boyfriend for 3 happy years. As more and more of our friends are getting married, it's starting to cross our minds as well, but I'm not sure if there's any point to it. I feel "married" already, plus it seems to come with a lot of disadvantages: having to pay for a wedding, having to pay more taxes if filing jointly, parents' expectations for us to buy a house and have children, etc.

Is there any real advantage to getting married?

im 16, so this might sound odd
but i think that marriage is a wondeful and beautiful commintment
its a big decision though so don't make it on a whim

it is an expression of love and an unbreakable promise
i really admire my parents who have been married 18 years

i think its really sad that no one takes marriage seriously
with over 60% ending in divorce

plus its like every girls dream to walk down the isle in a white dress
thats were we will look most beautiful you know!!!!

so if you really love and trust your bf
and can you can see your selves growing old together i say go for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i wish you much happiness in your love life♥

... Although I know this isn't really my story to tell, seeing how the people themselves put this up online and is related to the world of anime-manga, you could always check out this if you're interested.

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I hate to break your dreams, dear... but sometimes, it just doesn't pay to stay married to say... a pedophile who's using a marriage/family as a cover for his "crimes", or to an abusive partner who routinely and nearly beats the other partner/children to death, or to say... someone who doesn't appreciate your existence or to someone who's easily addicted to many things and who refuses to seek treatment or therapy and so on. There are just some people who need a freaking psycho-therapist and likely endless medication and who don't deserve to be married until they do something about themselves.

Though, I think that life isn't about marriage but about whether you love one another and how much your love is, how happy you are, how many sacrifices you're willing to make and so on... Marriage ain't something that'll fix everything and if it were me, I'd rather that both the partners be happy than for them to suffer and be burdened with endless conflict and troubles.

Of course, marriage I've heard, is also like a miracle drug for certain couples. Instead of the relationship going bust, they get so much happier. And it changes their perspective on love, life and so on.

For every few "happy eternal marriages" I know about, there're at least 1 to 2 cases of neverending abuse which the entire family suffered just 'cos of some concept that "a couple must stay married forever". The kids often turned into wreck cases: the stuff you hear about in dramas/books/etc. and sometimes had severe psychological damage and were unable to maintain functional and healthy relations with friends, lovers and so on. For humans like them, to be them and to know them was likely hell on earth.

It's great to have such a wonderful perspective on love and marriage at a young age. And your parents are very admirable.

Having a good view on love and marriage also depends on your environment too y'know? My parents were never properly married, and my father was an alcoholic, abuser, and cheater. That has partially influenced my view on ever getting married, and I can never trust people completely. I know, there is bound to be atleast one human out there that would actually respect me, but yeah, I can't completely really accept it.

Well. It's not that those 60% of people don't take marriage seriously, things just don't work out as good as the.. I guess... 40%? There will be conflicts, disagreements, and problems. Heck, divorce may even be the better case for some people. Even if they don't really love each other anymore, some stay together because of money problems and/or kids.

This is all in my (pessimistic) opinion, but I don't believe in "soul mates." I don't believe that there is a "happily ever after" with the same person after a "long-term" marriage. But that's just me. That's who I am.

As for my view on marriage. I don't want to get married. Don't want kids. But lovers are fine. Just the idea of being lawfully tied down disturbs me.

And many congrats to those who are happily married! :3

Maybe my opinion will change in a decade.

White dresses are so gaudy.
Latex fits the female body better.

I think you only need to go as far as look at your own parents to see what sort of marriage you want or why you don't want to marry.

But there is always a point in time at which people want to get married, in my Dad's profession there is a phenomenal amount of financially successful women in their late 30s who can't get married because single men at that age or more have the choice of getting well... younger women. You could say I feel sorry for them but you got to understand that these were once confident young women who thought they had the world and wouldn't settle for anything less than Brad Pitt. Sure it works for both genders, but this is one of the best examples I have.

Expectations of marriage and what a partner needs to be can be too high sometimes and that is when I think it doesn't work. I think it takes certain types of people to make a marriage work and when it does I'm left in envy.

As for me and marriage?

Strangely enough I'm only 20 but am already into the idea of marrying and having kids at my mid 25s. The reason is as I stated above, a reflection of my opinion of my Dad. I look at my father with great respect and admiration as he gave me and my other 2 siblings a wonderful life, free of money problems, household drama. Always labored hard so all three of us can get out of University without dept. If a could give the same to my children then I'd have nothing more to be desired, and I only hope my children could appreciate my effort.
So where the hell does the spouse come into this then? That is the problem I don't even know about that yet ^^

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Do not feed the trolls

To me (as yet unmarried, and therefore a perhaps unreliable advisor), it seems that you and your boyfriend simply aren't ready for marriage. And that's okay - certainly you don't need to be convinced of it if you don't want to do it! It's quite all right to remain unmarried, but realize that by remaining unmarried you won't avoid your parents' expectations of marriage, houses or children. Lol. Just take it from someone who is at the threshold of the big 30 and has realized that staying unmarried doesn't take off the parental pressure - it only builds that pressure because the parents become more anxious! Once you're married and "settled down," any normal healthy parents will back off and let you live your lives (so long as you aren't doing something monumentally stupid, like feeding your kids crack cocaine or investing in corn-themed amusement parks). Marriage is a great way to get society off your back, really. Otherwise, people keep bugging you about it... "When are you getting married? No, really, when are you getting married?" Augh. You're in your early 20s right now, so perhaps it doesn't grate on you, but trust me, you'll feel differently in your 30s...

Still, I can understand your financial/legal concerns. I have a neighbor who is in a lovely, loving relationship with her partner of 20 years, and they have two children, the eldest of whom has just entered university on a music scholarship (very gifted!). But they are NOT married. We never asked them why they aren't married and it doesn't really matter, since they've ended up doing everything typically married couples do anyway (like buying the house they live in and raising kids together). All that matters is that they're happy the way they are, and their kids are obviously happy and well-loved as well. At this point, after all this time, it doesn't really matter whether they get married or not. I'm happy for them anyway!

But personally... The biggest advantage of marriage for me is that it cements a relationship emotionally and socially, as in, there is a greater degree of perceived permanence in the relationship both between the lovers and outside in society. For example, if you tell someone you have a boyfriend, they won't think that you'll stay with this man forever or that you want to stay with him forever, or that you're committed to him for life. However, if you tell someone that you have a husband, that carries greater weight and engenders a greater respect for the permanence of your relationship and of your commitment to each other. It means that you "really love each other" and plan to "always love each other". I think having that kind of commitment acknowledged socially and between the two lovers is a great advantage of marriage. It removes a lot of the uncertainty that comes from easily-made or easily-broken relationships, both socially and personally. Marriage is damn hard to break, that's for sure! A lot harder to break (financially or legally or even emotionally, quite often) than any other kind of romantic relationship. Therefore, people who commit to marriage are automatically seen as being more serious about their relationship and more serious about each other.

Now, that might be a bogus perception because some married couples DO get divorced (so much for "permanence"!) but I'm just talking about social perceptions here, not necessarily the reality.

Social perceptions do make a difference, though, for people to whom they matter. Not to everyone, but to those who care. E.g. those who don't want their families to wonder if they're "serious" about the relationship, but want to proudly announce to the world that: "Yes, this is the person I'm spending my life with..."

I happen to be someone to whom these things matter, so I could not IMAGINE loving someone and not marrying them, or at least wanting to marry them as soon as practically possible.

However, citing the example of my wonderful neighbors, I can also say that marrying isn't necessary for long-term peace, pleasure and mutual commitment. Many couples can pull that off without all the wedding/marriage stuff. It really depends on what you want to do and what is most important to the two of you as a couple! Good luck!

I will admit i have not read every 10th of every word people have put here but i would like to put some irony to what people have put.

I'm seeing the word trust alot. However did you know that acording to statistics the more succefull marriges are based on lies...
Yes if you trust the other then there is more succes of not finding lies So trust can cause succes to marrige argh harhar




Last edited by fr33noob at 2:25 am, May 5 2010

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I believe in letting people do as they wish, as do I myself. Sometimes, of course, what I wish to do is kill them and they do not wish to die. This gives life interest.

Statistics are flawed way to skew data to prove whatever point the person who came up with them wishes for

I believe random statistics as much as I believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny.

They're good for a chuckle though!

Did I have any doubt? No, not at all. I knew it was right fairly immediately.

Was I worried about my parents approval?
Not in the slightest, for 2 reasons: 1) It's MY life. If my parents didn't like it, they'd just have to deal, and while I'm very close to my parents, I wouldn't put up with them harassing me. 2) I knew my parents would live with whatever I chose because that's how they raised me to be. And even if they believed I made a mistake, they'd either see that I was happy and keep their misgivings to themselves or they'd be there to pick up the pieces when they proved to be right.

Advice for the doubtful:
Don't try to rush it because you want "this" to be "it"; be honest with your assessments and don't sugar-coat things mentally (don't talk yourself into it - either it's right or it isn't). Believe in yourself. As RuPaul says: If you don't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love anyone else?


There may be some societies for which that is true, but I know there are a lot of couples in the States who are married but who don't want children. Don't automatically write off marriage because you think that means there must be children eventually. One does not automatically equate the other (in either direction, in fact). However, make sure that your partner is on the same page as you, for sure.


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If you've ever thought or said "Nice Guys finish last" and really meant it, then you should probably read this LJ post by DivaLion. It's incredibly insightful whether you're male or female.

From a bumper sticker I like:
"If you're gonna ride my ass, at least pull my hair."

Soon to be! Just got in engaged actually. (Poor bastard. )
But in all honestly, a marriage is no different from a relationship before marriage in my opinion. It's just important to go into a marriage with an already strong relationship.

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If it weren't for the gutter, my mind would be homeless.

I'll agree with this statement with one caveat:
You have to have lived with the person before marriage for that to be entirely true.

Why? Because there are habits that you'll never see without living with each other for an extended period of time. Visiting for a week when neither of you is on a normal schedule does NOT count for this purpose. There are some people who think that the way that someone is while you were visiting on vacation is how things will always be, and that is almost invariably WRONG because neither of you is being who you truly are while you're taking off time to visit with each other especially. It's when you get into your real daily habits that the truth sets in.


QFT.

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If you've ever thought or said "Nice Guys finish last" and really meant it, then you should probably read this LJ post by DivaLion. It's incredibly insightful whether you're male or female.

From a bumper sticker I like:
"If you're gonna ride my ass, at least pull my hair."

Not married, but I feel like it. I'm been with the same person going on 8 years this September, and we've been living together for 5 years. All we really need is a piece of paper stating it so.

I won't regurgitate any answers as I agree with most of the married users' responses.

Too young to be married...... and i mean i'm very young, i think im the youngest one here..... >.>