The angry person in me wants to say *w..ker*Date: 9/27/2008 3:04:12 PM
Author: starsapphire
I have no idea. I dated a guy for 8 years. No marriage talk. I guess I should have ended it sooner, but I kept hoping. Then, when I dumped him, and got married less than a year after, he called me the day before my wedding and wished me well. Go figure!
Date: 9/28/2008 7:58:31 AM
Author: oddoneout
What about women who do not want to get married? A lot of you talked about men. What are womens'' reasons?
I can''t talk about women''s reasons for not marrying a person they are living intimately with over a period of time. I wanted to get married from the get-go. So my input on that topic would be pure speculation! Sorry!Date: 9/28/2008 7:58:31 AM
Author: oddoneout
What about women who do not want to get married? A lot of you talked about men. What are womens'' reasons?
Not true I''m afraid.Date: 9/28/2008 7:56:51 AM
Author: Addy
I didn''t want to. No particular reason, I just don''t see marriage as a big deal. To me, a government issued piece of paper, I''m not religious, does not make my relationship any more valid than a co-habitating couple''s relationship. Marriage does not make or break a relationship.
I live in the UK where couples, married or not, have about the same rights. My in-laws aren''t married and it''s just not a big deal. I only call my partner ''my husband'' when I''m agruing the phone company that I should be added to the phone bill. I also didn''t want to get married until gay couples also had the right to marry. In England that happened on 5 December 2005.
A woman who doesn''t want to marry? That''s like a black hole, interstellar aliens and bigfoot! hahaha!Date: 9/28/2008 7:58:31 AM
Author: oddoneout
What about women who do not want to get married? A lot of you talked about men. What are womens'' reasons?
I thought that married people got tax breaks when they have kids? But aside from that, it''s shown that children are raised in more financially and emotionally stable & secure households when parents are married. Children also have a much higher rate of avoiding prison if they are from two-parent families. I don''t think that marriage is necessary for a couple who doesn''t want to have kids, but if you have kids, I think it''s in the children''s best interest to get married, unless one of the parents is a criminal or drug addict or something.Date: 9/28/2008 9:34:02 AM
Author: Daydreamer7130
Let''s set aside the emotional reasons.. ie: committment fear, bad vibes from friends/family divorces, etc. and look at some logical and financial reasons.
Sometimes there are more financial reasons NOT to get married. For instance, social security payments drop when married as compared to collecting 2 SS incomes (especially for the eldery), there maybe some pension related financial issues, alimony issues, financial reasons when there are children involved especially health insurance. If there are children involved, it pays to stay single and claim head of household when compared to filing joint or filing married separate.
If you are a college student, one income will provide better grants/loans etc. instead of having to submit your joint household income when married. If you are a student with a child and single, the grant money is amazing.
Just my thoughts!
Date: 9/28/2008 10:26:29 AM
Author: Pandora II
Date: 9/28/2008 7:56:51 AM
Author: Addy
I didn''t want to. No particular reason, I just don''t see marriage as a big deal. To me, a government issued piece of paper, I''m not religious, does not make my relationship any more valid than a co-habitating couple''s relationship. Marriage does not make or break a relationship.
I live in the UK where couples, married or not, have about the same rights. My in-laws aren''t married and it''s just not a big deal. I only call my partner ''my husband'' when I''m agruing the phone company that I should be added to the phone bill. I also didn''t want to get married until gay couples also had the right to marry. In England that happened on 5 December 2005.
Not true I''m afraid.
If you own property jointly and one partner dies, you don''t have automatic rights to the other half of the property. You are also liable for death duties. If you are married you automatically inherit and don''t pay any duty.
One of the main reasons we had for marrying was that we wanted the protection that marriage gives us. Some hospitals may accept co-habiting partners as next-of-kin but many will not.
This is exactly how my mother felt. After my dad''s horrible first marriage and all my mom''s bad experiences with it, neither wanted to do it again and were perfectly happy as just an unmarried couple. Until my mom got preggers and as lawyers they felt the legal protections were too important to forgo. They are happy after all these years, but I understand completely why they were not planning to get married.Date: 9/28/2008 11:29:40 AM
Author: Madam Bijoux
I never wanted to be married because I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional household. My parents'' marriage was a disaster and I didn''t want to risk getting into the same situation they had. Also, I''ve always been a very strong willed, independent person-- the words ''negotiate'' and ''compromise'' are just not in my lexicon. All things considered, the nicest thing I could ever do for any man is to not marry him.
Date: 9/28/2008 7:56:51 AM
Author: Addy
I didn''t want to. No particular reason, I just don''t see marriage as a big deal. To me, a government issued piece of paper, I''m not religious, does not make my relationship any more valid than a co-habitating couple''s relationship. Marriage does not make or break a relationship.
Date: 9/28/2008 3:21:28 PM
Author: Black Jade
Marriage protects women and their children.
It''s not so easy to be ''equal'' to men in terms of working at a job when either pregnant or breast-feeding, and caring for children, especially little ones under 3 years old. No matter how capable and intelligent you are. Obviously single moms do what they have to do in our current society, where women are left to fend for themselves more often than not, but no one could say that it''s an optimum way to have to cope. Women who choose to be mothers benefit immensely when the security that married women used to have, and then society benefits because the next generation is cared for and educated up to the point where they are mature citizens and can carry on.
Women give up an immense amount to bear children and care for them--their independence, what would be their best earning years and the years that they would put in a job to get a pension for their older age, the time they could be using to keep looking attractive, etc. etc. Especially if they have more than one child. Marriage made sure they were not left up a creek without a paddle, as all too often happens nowadays with either no marriage or no-fault divorce. Marriage does have benefits for men, too, but they are relatively less and nowadays a guy can get many of what used to be the benefits of marriage for men, with none of the responsibilities. This is why you get the situation an earlier poster describes where the woman in the relationship is hoping for marriage, sometimes for years, but the guy has no incentive to commit.
Of course a woman has a perfect right to not want to have kids, and then in my opinion SHOULDN''t have kids, in which case the playing field is levelled a lot and she can enjoy her own career, interests, hobbies, etc. and then she doesn''t need marriage--she might want it for the companionship and romance, but she doesn''t need the security that it was created to provide.
Of course, if a whole lot of women choose not to have children, a society is in trouble, there is no next generation. This is actually happening in much of the developed world. I have no answer to this--you wouldn''t want to force women to have kids. But you can see that it''s a problem when childbearing is not an attractive idea to a majority of women, especially those whom society has invested the most in (the better-off and the better educated).
You hear a lot of talk nowadays about marriage being a ''right'' and even a ''civil right''. But in my opinion, it was never a right. It was something that developed as a very practical trade-off to make it worthwhile to women to give up a lot of their rights and to help them with the hard job of bearing and raising future citizens. The whole institution has no point (from society''s point of view)if society isn''t getting something back--it just becomes individuals demanding special privileges in return for --nothing.
Married couples who have children do get tax breaks however, if you get a bigger standard deduction when you are filing head of household (single with children under the age of 17 that you provide at least 50% of their living expenses). I agree that children are better off emotionally and financially when both parents are involved and in a positive manner.Date: 9/28/2008 1:16:07 PM
Author: vespergirl
I thought that married people got tax breaks when they have kids? But aside from that, it''s shown that children are raised in more financially and emotionally stable & secure households when parents are married. Children also have a much higher rate of avoiding prison if they are from two-parent families. I don''t think that marriage is necessary for a couple who doesn''t want to have kids, but if you have kids, I think it''s in the children''s best interest to get married, unless one of the parents is a criminal or drug addict or something.Date: 9/28/2008 9:34:02 AM
Author: Daydreamer7130
Let''s set aside the emotional reasons.. ie: committment fear, bad vibes from friends/family divorces, etc. and look at some logical and financial reasons.
Sometimes there are more financial reasons NOT to get married. For instance, social security payments drop when married as compared to collecting 2 SS incomes (especially for the eldery), there maybe some pension related financial issues, alimony issues, financial reasons when there are children involved especially health insurance. If there are children involved, it pays to stay single and claim head of household when compared to filing joint or filing married separate.
If you are a college student, one income will provide better grants/loans etc. instead of having to submit your joint household income when married. If you are a student with a child and single, the grant money is amazing.
Just my thoughts!
Also, here''s an aneddote for a friend of mine who''s having a horrible situation, because her & her fiance have never married - they have been together for six years, have a child together, and have been engaged but never bothered to tie the knot. The woman said she never knew why they would ''need a piece of paper.'' Well, it''s recently come out that he''s cheat on her. Since the house and most of their assets are in his name, when they broke up, she had to take her child and leave. She has no rights to their house, or most of their money, because they were not technically married. Also, even though he is going to have to pay child support, it''s going to be much more complicated legally to establish paternity and start payments. So for people who think they don''t need the piece of paper, I think that women will often get the short end of the stick in case the relationship ends.