To marry or not to marry (updated)
Yesterday boyfriend had a longish conversation with one of his female friends who also happens to be his best friend's girlfriend. She told him that she expected his best friend to marry her within a year from now. Flabbergasted, he asked her why she wanted to marry so young (she's 22) and why she insisted on getting married despite the fact that her significant other didn't want to rush things. Or the fact that they aren't even living together.
Her answer: everyone's getting married. Boyfriend, as reasonable as he could be, said surely this can't be true. Then he named a young woman they both know as a proof. To his extreme shock she replied that this particular woman is getting married in Autumn and that she has already chosen her wedding dress.
Now. Am I weird for not feeling the need to get married young? Am I weird for wanting to see how boyfriend and I deal with living together? Am I weird for not fantasizing about wedding dresses or because whenever I see a wedding dress I don't see myself wearing it?
Surely the fact that my parents aren't married has a lot to do with my perception of marriage. To me it is but a paper (plus the party, but you may recall I'm not a party-goer). In our relationship I'm the one who doesn't feel the need to get married, while boyfriend said he would like to marry, but more for the party and celebration (of the relationship) than for the paper and the ring.
So, my reason telling me all these things, why would a woman want to marry? Especially so young? Are there some advantages my bohemian anti-marriage soul doesn't see? What's your opinion on the subject?
Update: upon asking boyfriend whether I represented his views correctly, he said that I did, but with a minor flaw. Boyfriend claims that he in fact would want to marry for the ring, because - lo and behold - by wearing his ring he wants to tell other women that he's already chosen his woman and is thus not on the market anymore. For a moment I thought he's just saying it to make me happy, but a tiny voice in my head told me he isn't like that - and wouldn't say it just to flatter me - especially not on such a serious subject. (Aren't I the luckiest?)
Oh! and another thing - I mean to keep my surname even after I marry, so getting married just to swap surnames isn't what I'm after. What do you think about keeping your maiden surname after marriage? (Not just adding another surname, but keeping it as it was before.)
Labels: life, random ramblings
10 Comments:
When we found out I was pregnant my boyfriend asked me if I want to marry him. I replied we have other things now to deal with but getting married. He was ok with that but I sad I will think about making him a married man. He smiled at me. Marriage was never my life goal.
My parents married as hypies in jeans more than 30 years ago accompained only by their bestmen. Until the school I didn't even know women usualy dress in white for wedding! :)
I share your opinion on marriage. I myself don't see any reason why even marry, not to mention why would anyone rush into matrimony this young. I would rather try co-living with my partner for a longer period to see how we match and understand each other when being stuck constantly with each other and dealing with those annoying everday tasks such as grocery and paying bills and the TRASH :)
Because you can be best friend with someone you see on a daily basis, but try living with the person and you may find yourself in a living nightmare.
I always thought I'd never marry, I still think so. Oddly enough, everyone else who knows me believes I will marry. Now I don't know who's right or wrong.
Well... I don't mind. I don't care if I ever get married - though if I do, I want to wear jeans, too - what a brilliant idea :)
But I really disliked one boy's opinion about how marriage is unnecessary and how he really doesn't understand why people get married - then, in his mind, they only stay together because they have to, not because they want to. Though I'm sure there are such cases, I believe there are people who want to take their relationship on a higher level by getting married and promising to stay together for life.
...and that's the only true reason to marry, for me. OK and maybe to get a green card :)
But to get married because everyone else is... or because church requires it... nah.
dejstvo je, da so nekatere stvari iz pravno-formalnega stališča lažje. Kolegu je umrla "žena" in je imel za eno leto dela z birokracijo, da je dokazoval, da sta živela skupaj v zvezi in da je upravičen do dedovanja, ker pač nista bila poročena.
drugače je pa poroka atavizem oziroma nekaj za nesigurne gospodične.
Ne da se mi razmišljat v angleščini. :)
Poročila sva se pri mojih 27tih, s fantom sva takrat hodila skupaj že deset let in sva dve leti živela skupaj. Meni ni bilo toliko do poroke, njemu pa zelo.
Ločujem dve stvari: poročenost in poroko. Poznam kar nekaj žensk, ki imajo nadvse romantične predstave o dogodku tisočletja P O R O K A, vse se vrti okrog nje, obleka, kakšne rože, gostje.... meni osebno to ni všeč, najina poroka je bila v družinskem krogu in nosila sem kostim /prvič in zadnjič v življenju/.
Res, da je to lahko eden od posebnih dogodkov v življenju, ni pa BISTVO vsega.
Meni je fajn biti poročena, tudi pravno formalno so izzvenzakonske skupnosti že dokaj dobro urejene. Je pa nekaj hecno: če si poročen, je otrokov oče avtomatsko tvoj mož. Če pa nisi poročen, mora oče na Matični urad podpisat priznanje očetovstva. Nama se je zdelo to tako razvrednostenje očetvostva kot takega, da sva se šla poročit noseča :)
PositionFemale: what a story! :) If I ever marry, I don't want to have a huge party, but boyfriend does. And again, congratulations on your pregnancy.
Clumsy: excatly! Especially as I have reason to believe that household chores could be a problem with us. Boyfriend doesn't like them and neither do I.
Lilit - but do you really take your relationship to the next level by getting married? I'm not so sure about that. I'm not religious and neither is boyfriend, so getting married because the Church demands it isn't important to us. (BTW: Noticed your blog is not private. Do you mean it to stay like this or is it a temporary thing?)
Domen - ravno to se sprašujem. Poznam par, ki se je poročil, ker sta iskala službo v tujini. In so jima rekli, da poskrbijo tudi za moža/ženo le pod pogojem, da sta poročena. (Kao je to bolj resno kot izvenzakonska zveza.)
Hirkani - tudi komentarji v slovenščini so dobrodošli! :) No, ravno to se meni upira oz. ne razumem, na kakšnem čustveno-mentalnem nivoju so te gospodične, da si še vedno tako pravljično-idealisitčno predstavljajo svojo poroko. Smešno: kot da ženska, ki je poročena ne more zanosit z drugim moškim (sicer ni lepo, je pa možno in se dogaja).
My wedding day is a great memory, and it really does feel different after that. For me it did anyway. But financially I think it's a mistake. My wife and I pay much more in taxes and for things like kindergarten just because we're married. The smart thing to do would have been to just live together and have her listed as a "single mother." (Which is what a lot of people seem to do.) It's ethically sketchy, I guess, but still...
Why not? It's something similar to your bf's view - he wants to tell other women he's taken. In the same style, people want to make a promise that they will stay together forever and they want to make it official (not because they need some artificial ties that force them to keep their promise, but because they want the whole world to know it - or something...)
The blog thing is temporary.
I think you're absolutely right in your feelings about this. Why rush it? My girlfriend and I have been together for 7,5 years, and people keep asking us when we're finally going to get married, which is sort of understandable considering we've been engaged for 4 years now. It's not that simple, though. We got engaged mainly because we wanted to make some kind of explicit statement of commitment to each other, not to make a legal bond. The actual wedding thing seems mostly to be a hustle, but maybe that's just us, since our situation is a little peculiar with our respective families living in different countries. Where should we have the ceremony as to not disappoint one or the other side of the family which may not be able to come? Which leads back to this; who are we getting married for? We certainly don't feel we need to for our own sake.
As for the name thing. Why should you have to swap? Maybe your boyfriend could swap? I would maybe like to get married just so I could take my girlfriend's name. She's from Slovenia and has a much nicer surname than my Swedish one, and it happens to go well with my first name. The problem is, she would like to add ny name to hers. And then I can't change, because of Sweden's strict renaming laws (maybe if we do it in Slovenia - what are the rules there?).
Anyway, sorry for butting in. :)
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