Look I wanna wear a pretty dress with spiked shoulderpads

“Marriage” gives you benefits and rights just living together won’t.

This is why we got married.

If your GF has an accident and falls into a coma, you have zero say in her treatment, as you’re just a roommate as far as the hospital is concerned. You can’t even go see her. Her parents will most likely make all the decisions, do you trust them?

Inheritance is another, depending on the local laws, usually the spouse has different rules for inheriting than a roommate, even if you have a separate will in place.

In here for example the other spouse gets to live in whatever apartment or house they were in even if the other half goes to the children or whoever is next in line.

We got married in 2011, moderate sized wedding and reception. What a waste of money. If I’d do it again I’d get married at a registry and then take the family out for dinner. Result would be the same and I’d probably be $20k AUD richer. 🤷

Being married is fine and pretty chill. Weddings are stupid

My partner and I dated for nearly a decade before we decided to get married. It’s more important that you two are on the same page than it is for you to measure up to some arbitrary cultural norm. Even after a decade, we still laid some ground rules and made some agreements about HOW we would handle things in a worst case scenario. Prenup/postnup type stuff. People may view this as nonromantic, but I can’t think of anything less romantic than arguing about shit after the fact with someone you already broke up with.

Make sure you have your paperwork in order though. If you want your partner to be able to make decisions for you in an emergency or if you want them to inherit something if the worst happens, you should check because you likely have to explicitly set that up.

Relationship going on 6 years. In the latter part of
my thirties, too. I am of the same mindset—marriage over complicates things. I just want to enjoy the ride.

Depending where you are in the world you likely have the equivalent to marriage rights even though you aren’t actually married.

“if we’re happy together we stay, if we’re not we split.” Beautifully put. You and your girlfriend have been together for 5 years, which seems like a commitment in itself.

Personally I seem like marriage is an outdated practice, from a time where women were treated as property. It’s a legal contract, like you’d make with a business partner. Marriage isn’t even permanent (nor should it be). It just makes separation more expensive. Even if both participants want to split, and they agree on how to do it, now they need to get a judge to dissolve that contract.

And in the modern economy, many couples are choosing to forgo marriage, and put the money they save toward a shared house, which is a commitment in itself. People might argue that it’s necessary if you plan to have children, but most couples can’t afford that, some others don’t want that. And if children are a future goal for you and her, wouldn’t you have a commitment to that child? Plus, there are child support systems in place, whether the child was born in wedlock or not.

I could ramble on. The whole system of marriage only ever mattered because society said it should, and now that women aren’t forced to be a “side-piece”, and people don’t gasp at the idea of premarital sex, it’s just an expensive celebration. Marriage won’t make a relationship more stable. It will just make it harder for both people to leave.

I love being married. It gives my wife legal rights in my jurisdiction and it gives me legal rights in her jurisdiction should we decide to move.

I personally see value in the complexity of divorce. Maybe not to the extent that some places have, but generally speaking I think that making some barriers for breaking up is good as it can give people tine and reasons to reconsider. It’s especially important for people who tend more towards impulsivity.

For example in a married couple saying “I want a divorce” is very far from actually divorcing. But in a non married couple, saying “I want to break up” can be as close as packing a bag, blocking a number and forgetting about it.

But I respect your opinion, I don’t think anyone should get married if they don’t want to, just something to consider and that might be relevant to some people.

As Big Black sang back in the '80s

🎵 The only good love’s unenforced

I acquiesced to marriage twice over the decades. Both times I didn’t really want to get married. The problem was I didn’t really NOT want to get married either. I think these choices, well-intentioned and made with love, kind of fucked up too big of a chunk of my approximate 4000 weeks of life. Unless there is a seriously pressing reason to do so, my very subjective advice is always: DON’T DO IT.

We are not the same, you are not interested in marriage where marriage is not interested in me!

I love being married, I met my wife 10 years ago and we got married 3 years later.

The wedding was just with our close family and homemade food, nothing expensive.

One big aspect of being married is that our relationship is not a question anymore. By being married we are committed to each other, it means we can make decisions accordingly.

For example I love the house we have, but without being married I don’t think we would have bought it. The house is a lot of work, will take years of renovation and is perfect for our family currently but would not be as good for either of us separately.

So if we were in the mindset that we could split up at any time we would have never bought this house.

I find marriage is actually freeing.

I’m guessing you don’t have kids and have not yet thought extensively about retirement.

Marriage is about responsibility sharing in a way that survives even the worst of breakups while keeping all parties responsible in a fair way.

I’m also suggesting you entertain a thought experiment where you swap genders in the relationship and also assume you have at least one child you love dearly and taking care of it takes about 100 times more time and effort than you currently think.

Now you might have an inkling why people get married.

Full disclosure: not married but have most if not all the responsibilities in writing with the mother of my children so she does not end up in poverty if we ever split after raising our kids with so much of her life love and health.

Marriage is just a formality, with the government. So there’s probably very little benefit if your jurisdiction recognizes defacto relationships, if it doesn’t there are some advantages, but also jurisdiction dependent.

Weddings are 100% bullshit.

I was in your same situation but younger and told my girlfriend the same thing, which is that I see the value in marriage for the protections it gives when a couple decides to have children or real estate.

Eventually I wanted a house and kids so I proposed and the rest is history.

In hindsight I regret causing her unnecessary insecurity when I knew we were going to have both of those eventually.