Married or not?
#17
BE user by choice
Joined: Oct 2010
Location: A Briton, married to a Canadian, now in Fredericton.
Posts: 4,854
Re: Married or not?
I lived with someone for 16 years, and we didn't get married and never felt the need to. We were happy and civilized, I hope, and when we outgrew each other there were few regrets and no arguing over who kept the cutlery, we sold the house and were fair with the finances.
Then I met my, now, husband and we were together for seven years, and very independent and didn't feel the need to get married....then....I very unexpectedly got pregnant! My husband was married before so didn't want more children, and I just thought what the hell I'll have it on my own. Anyhow it all got sorted out during the pregnancy and we decided to stay together, but after our son was born in France, they very much put a distinction on me being a 'concubine' as opposed to 'celibataire' or single woman, and we knew this would also be true in the school system. When our son was ten months old we popped off to Jersey and got married, it was a wonderful wedding, it was just the three of us, just a little excuse for a week's holiday!
Oddly enough it has mattered since. There have been a few times that our relationship has been tested, and I think that if we didn't have the rigmarole of a bit of paper, we might have both thrown in the towel on occasion, and I think that that would have been regrettable (I hope he feels the same way too!). Our marriage has been a good one, and on the whole happy and sometimes bloody hard work. Certainly it just makes it easier from a bureaucratic standpoint, the boxes are ticked.
It's not so much the decision of whether or not you choose to do it, so much as whether you've chosen the right one to do it with!
Then I met my, now, husband and we were together for seven years, and very independent and didn't feel the need to get married....then....I very unexpectedly got pregnant! My husband was married before so didn't want more children, and I just thought what the hell I'll have it on my own. Anyhow it all got sorted out during the pregnancy and we decided to stay together, but after our son was born in France, they very much put a distinction on me being a 'concubine' as opposed to 'celibataire' or single woman, and we knew this would also be true in the school system. When our son was ten months old we popped off to Jersey and got married, it was a wonderful wedding, it was just the three of us, just a little excuse for a week's holiday!
Oddly enough it has mattered since. There have been a few times that our relationship has been tested, and I think that if we didn't have the rigmarole of a bit of paper, we might have both thrown in the towel on occasion, and I think that that would have been regrettable (I hope he feels the same way too!). Our marriage has been a good one, and on the whole happy and sometimes bloody hard work. Certainly it just makes it easier from a bureaucratic standpoint, the boxes are ticked.
It's not so much the decision of whether or not you choose to do it, so much as whether you've chosen the right one to do it with!
#18
Re: Married or not?
"Marriage is when two people are joined together to become one desperately boring person." Ardal O'Hanlon