Why marriage?

View Quoted Comment Girl, same. To be candid, sometimes we've informally let's say "not corrected" people who have assumed we're married - like when he was in a car crash and I needed to get back and see him. (Not for like taxes, come on - still CPA.)
I wondered what state you're in - we have shared car insurance, domestic partnership health insurance through my work, a joint acct for house expenses and health/living will proxy in place. They more just happened to be options available to us (Virginia.)
Right now the limits I see are it still doesn't allow me to save at a joint 401k rate for both of us, and I'm not sure which way I'll fair on taxes. It'll be administratively less burdensome since we own a business together (just file one giant return vs two and other details), but I'm pretty sure we're going to get hit hard with the "marriage tax". Whomp whomp.

View Quoted Comment Administrative thought (for consideration) - even if he's your husband, it's good to have a living will and POA in place with your medical proxies and give multiple ppl copies. To solve the "well what about when it's really hitting the fan" issue - we have a Google Drive folder called "I could die". We both can access it on our phones and could pull up the final docs live if needed.

Our phones also have a lock screen that directs you to call the other one's phone if found - the morbid benefit is if we were in a car wreck without each other the hope is the ambulance crew maybe check the lock screen and let us know what's happened. Thought sharing that tip may help someone.

View Quoted Comment Texas. It's ridiculous. It's all possible but there is just extra hurdles to do it that is annoying. I don't know if that makes sense... But yes we could of just done the extra paperwork and extra legal stuff.... It just takes longer rather than it being the legal default. Domestic partnership here is a joke... You have to go through all the same legal paperwork of being married but less benefits. You can but the fees are the same and the recognition is less.




Taxes we get nothing except now only one of us has to do them.... For example, before we would have to do them individually. Married he can watch the kid and I go do both in half the time. Before we just switch off and he watched kid and I did taxes then I watched kid and he did taxes. I am faster at taxes, so I win the privilege of doing them


We're running into covid-19 issues for finalizing things like names etc. But we are legally married. Which is leading to minor issues, like some people briefly question the marriage because our names don't match... This is easily explained of yes we got married in Feb 2020 and covid-19. Nobody questions after that because hotspot.

View Quoted Comment Dang, that doesn't sound pleasant. I grew up in rural VA but now live in more "DC VA" - many women here don't change their names at all because they've got their own professional recognition. It would shock me to hear someone make that assumption since moving here (everyone just asks.)
Whelp due to the CPA thing I've filled both taxes, plus our partnership return for our business, since probably year 2. I can rattle off his SSN like it's my own at this point. 😂 So this is a big savings of my time I'm hoping.

Seriously? How about you’ve found the love of your life and want to celebrate that with friends and family? That’s really what it is about for us. We have been living together, own a house together, have pets together etc...so fundamentally almost married. But yeah, our parents are up there in age and we wanted them to be apart of it rather than waiting until it was too late, which it almost was with FMIL

View Quoted Comment Thanks for sharing! It was common practice in the past, for women to marry for financial security. I'm very glad that we have more opportunities today to financial provide for ourselves and marry a man because we want to rather than needing to do so.

View Quoted Comment

Amen girl!

View Quoted Comment I get where you're coming from but we could of just stayed in a relationship for the rest of our lives and had the same thing if that was the only benefit (love)... I didn't need marriage for us to love each other or to know he would stay by me. That was naturally already there. Marrying my husband didn't make him love me more or less, or any more or less loyal vice versa. I don't care about the extended family/friends aspect either.




It really came down to legal, financial, and technical stuff making it more difficult for us to function as a family. The love didn't change.

Wanting to spend our lives together and build our future. We got engaged July 4 2019 n married may 16 2020. We chose a short engagement because I turned 26 in june n would get kicked off moms health insurance. My jobs insurance isnt good at all. His health insurance is amazing, he works in an elevator union and builds elevators

I think this is a question that people should be able to better articulate their answers to; it's a good exercise to think about. I feel like for a while I could've said.. just 'cause, basically, lol.

While I do think that the factors mentioned play a role (no one is immune from societal pressure or being influenced by the images and cultural norms we're bombarded with every day), I will say that I never felt in a rush to get married even though I always liked the idea of it. After being single for a long time and taking care of myself, it's nice to choose to marry someone without needing to depend on them. Committing to be someone's life partner is pretty cool imo.

My FH has been more interested in marriage than me in general, though. His parents did not have a great relationship and divorced. He also doesn't have many strong family ties, and I know he has longed for a "normal" family unit for much of his life, so marriage is something he's been really looking forward to.

View Quoted Comment Exactly this 💯
Obviously there will be a piece of paper and benefits to being married, but that is not why we chose to get married

I never wanted to get married. I grew up with 3 younger brothers and I thought boys were gross and I never wanted to live with one lol. I was raised in a very strict high demand religion, that I have since left thank goodness, but in that religion marriage (in the church, a legal marriage doesn't count) is required to go to heaven, so I grew up knowing that was required of me no matter if I wanted to or not. With that background, I would have never guessed that when we moved across the country to Texas I would meet my best friend and FH in high school PE class lol! LOOONNGG story short, we started dating, my parents did not (and still don't) approve, and I ended up losing my faith around the same time. We ended up moving back to my hometown the summer before my senior year (FH had graduated that year) and I went to college after I graduated for a semester before my life kinda crashed and burned and I kinda ran away back to Texas to be with FH. We ended up getting an apartment and everything and have been living happily ever since! Anyways, I knew I wanted to marry him after our 2 year anniversary, and I feel like my biggest reasons are 1. to start over with a new family and not be tied so close with my toxic and somewhat abusive family (they have gotten better with the distance between us thank goodness) and 2. because I couldn't imagine being with anyone else so why wait, and wanted to prove that our relationship was serious and real! We are younger than most (but actually the same exact ages as FH's parents when they got married lol!) but why wait when we know we want to be together forever?

I also think alot about Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell in these discussions as my "back up" why marriage is just...a thing. They've been together over 30 years, committed in some fashion and had kids. They clearly don't need the financial and other benefits of marriage, they clearly love each other and have defined how their relationship works - I bet they've even exchanged some jewelry, just without a notarized form. 😂
That's why I don't like equating love as a reason to get married - did you not love each other before? Will you love each other "better" now?
Or is it really an external issue - how you're perceived as a couple, or by the government, or by insurers...

View Quoted Comment Okay I definitely see the benefits.

View Quoted Comment Okay, thanks for sharing your perspective.

View Quoted Comment This is a very good point. My answer would have been, "because I can't imagine anything happening that would make me not want to be with him," and his is basically a list of reasons why her loves me, but getting married doesn't prevent you from breaking up with them and it automatically happen because you love someone, so I guess my reasons are more practical.
As cute as they seem, I kind of hate when wedding things say, "and so the adventure begins," because I feel like a wedding is a little bit late to be starting an adventure with someone.It is however, an appropriate time to start legally sharing things with each other, and while I've actually been able to get medical information about him in the past, it makes me feel a lot more comfortable knowing that if something were to happen and he arrived at a hospital unconscious, I would be the first one to get that information. (Where we live, same sex marriage has been legal since 2004, which is great, but because any two adults have been allowed to get married for a quite a while, most entities here do not recognize domestic partnerships.)

I guess I want what we've already promised each other to be recognized legally. I want to plan a future and buy a house, he wants to adopt my children and have a 50th wedding anniversary. I want his grandchildren to know me as their grandmother not grandpa's girlfriend. There are many, many financial benefits, but ultimately I want to share his last name and know that, if something happens to me, I'll be able to give him the future we envisioned together. Some of those things could be done in other ways, but i don'ts want red tape for him or for me. I want to be his wife, in every way, and recognized as such be every entity for the duration of my life.

View Quoted Comment Okay, thank you for sharing!

I've had 2 serious relationships before this engagement. One for 5 years, where I was not legally allowed to get married at the time and finally realized it wasn't the right fit, broke it off when she did ask for my hand in marriage. The second for 10 years where my S/O did not want marriage and I was "content" with just making the commitment with each other. That relationship ended for reasons I still have no idea, but I hated how easy it was to just walk out of a 10 year old relationship without having divorce proceedings etc. Being in two long term relationships without the legal protections of marriage I was well aware of how difficult life was or could be in the worst of circumstances. I was tired of living that way, I wanted commitment, I wanted the legal protections that I was not able to be afforded in either long term relationship and wanted to feel wanted and worth something like I was not in the second relationship. Then enter FH; who is more than I ever could have asked for in every aspect and I truly can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him.

Marriage is my Vocation (calling from God), and I want to pursue it with the person God chose for me so that we can help each other be better people and get to Heaven.

I come from a very secular place, so it felt weird even typing that, but at the end of the day that is our one and only reason for getting married.