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I am frequently appalled at why people marry. This is why I am basically opposed to legal marriage entirely, even now that I am legally married.
www.quora.com/He-and-I-have-been-together-for-2-yrs-I-want-to-get-married-I-want-to-have-his-name-and-the-respect-that-society-gives-to-the-wife-Instead-he-thinks-of-it-as-a-government-conspiracy-and-gives-me-the-divorce-rate/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper
Q. He and I have been together for 2 yrs. I want to get married. I want to have his name and the respect that society gives to the “wife”. Instead, he thinks of it as a government conspiracy and gives me the “divorce rate” argument. What can I do?
A. You two clearly have diametrically opposed worldviews. Even if you manage to convince him to marry you, your marriage is probably doomed. Mutually exclusive worldviews do not lend themselves well for long-term compatibility.
Incidentally, you do not have to legally marry and let the government into your bedroom in order to obtain many of the same things that marriage can afford. If the “respect” of a society that doesn’t think you are worth anything unless you are attached to a man is important to you, you can arrange your relationship to resemble a legal marriage without the legality (assuming your partner is willing to participate).
Nobody demands to see a marriage license when you introduce yourself as Mrs. No banks require a marriage license to purchase property together or open joint accounts together. If, at this point, you don’t know that babies can be born outside of wedlock, I don’t know what to tell you.
Personally, I don’t believe that anyone should get legally married unless their intention is to become legally entangled in exactly the ways in which a legal marriage entangles them. If you want something other than those legal benefits and responsibilities, there are other ways to get those things. You can even have the big party and white dress without the legal license, if you really want it.
Tying yourself to another person, ostensibly for life, just to get the “respect” of a bunch of strangers who wouldn’t know the difference if you weren’t legally tied anyway, is probably the worst reason to get married*, IMO. Followed by getting married to “lock them down” into a commitment. Marriages are easier to break than getting out of a shared mortgage these days.
If what you’re looking for is some societal respect, you’re probably going about it the wrong way. But that aside, your partner clearly does not share your views on how important that respect is or how to get it. All that convincing him to marry you will do is increase the odds of a divorce in your future.
At least if you stay unmarried, when you inevitably break up, you won’t be a divorcee, you’ll just have a paranoid ex-boyfriend in your past instead of an ex-husband.
*Excepting same-sex marriages … sort of. The reason why queer people fought so hard for the right to marry, as opposed to “different but equal” (which they weren’t) civil unions, was partly because of this exact “respect” argument.
As long as same-sex marriages were illegal, same sex partners could not pass themselves off as “married” and get the same respect, because the people who don’t respect them knew that their “marriage” could not be legal and therefore they did not consider their marriages valid. So they fought for the social recognition of their unions as part of a larger issue of validating and legitimizing their existence and their relationships, which, in turn, was part of a larger issue addressing the inequity and discrimination of an entire class of people based on who they love.
However, if it is generally known that two people are *able* to get married, then it is possible to just pass themselves off as married without the state-issued license and they will receive that societal “respect” because nobody actually checks for licenses when people say that they’re married, as long as they believe that those people have the ability to get married.
So, for an entire class of people to demand social “respect” through being allowed to access certain legal benefits that were previously only available to one class of people, that is a different situation than an individual person wishing to tie themselves to another individual person in order to get “respect” for the association. And that is what I meant by it being the worst reason to get married.
Fighting for class equality is not in the same camp as individuals using their romantic relationships to force those other individual people around them to “respect” them.
www.quora.com/He-and-I-have-been-together-for-2-yrs-I-want-to-get-married-I-want-to-have-his-name-and-the-respect-that-society-gives-to-the-wife-Instead-he-thinks-of-it-as-a-government-conspiracy-and-gives-me-the-divorce-rate/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper
Q. He and I have been together for 2 yrs. I want to get married. I want to have his name and the respect that society gives to the “wife”. Instead, he thinks of it as a government conspiracy and gives me the “divorce rate” argument. What can I do?
A. You two clearly have diametrically opposed worldviews. Even if you manage to convince him to marry you, your marriage is probably doomed. Mutually exclusive worldviews do not lend themselves well for long-term compatibility.
Incidentally, you do not have to legally marry and let the government into your bedroom in order to obtain many of the same things that marriage can afford. If the “respect” of a society that doesn’t think you are worth anything unless you are attached to a man is important to you, you can arrange your relationship to resemble a legal marriage without the legality (assuming your partner is willing to participate).
Nobody demands to see a marriage license when you introduce yourself as Mrs. No banks require a marriage license to purchase property together or open joint accounts together. If, at this point, you don’t know that babies can be born outside of wedlock, I don’t know what to tell you.
Personally, I don’t believe that anyone should get legally married unless their intention is to become legally entangled in exactly the ways in which a legal marriage entangles them. If you want something other than those legal benefits and responsibilities, there are other ways to get those things. You can even have the big party and white dress without the legal license, if you really want it.
Tying yourself to another person, ostensibly for life, just to get the “respect” of a bunch of strangers who wouldn’t know the difference if you weren’t legally tied anyway, is probably the worst reason to get married*, IMO. Followed by getting married to “lock them down” into a commitment. Marriages are easier to break than getting out of a shared mortgage these days.
If what you’re looking for is some societal respect, you’re probably going about it the wrong way. But that aside, your partner clearly does not share your views on how important that respect is or how to get it. All that convincing him to marry you will do is increase the odds of a divorce in your future.
At least if you stay unmarried, when you inevitably break up, you won’t be a divorcee, you’ll just have a paranoid ex-boyfriend in your past instead of an ex-husband.
*Excepting same-sex marriages … sort of. The reason why queer people fought so hard for the right to marry, as opposed to “different but equal” (which they weren’t) civil unions, was partly because of this exact “respect” argument.
As long as same-sex marriages were illegal, same sex partners could not pass themselves off as “married” and get the same respect, because the people who don’t respect them knew that their “marriage” could not be legal and therefore they did not consider their marriages valid. So they fought for the social recognition of their unions as part of a larger issue of validating and legitimizing their existence and their relationships, which, in turn, was part of a larger issue addressing the inequity and discrimination of an entire class of people based on who they love.
However, if it is generally known that two people are *able* to get married, then it is possible to just pass themselves off as married without the state-issued license and they will receive that societal “respect” because nobody actually checks for licenses when people say that they’re married, as long as they believe that those people have the ability to get married.
So, for an entire class of people to demand social “respect” through being allowed to access certain legal benefits that were previously only available to one class of people, that is a different situation than an individual person wishing to tie themselves to another individual person in order to get “respect” for the association. And that is what I meant by it being the worst reason to get married.
Fighting for class equality is not in the same camp as individuals using their romantic relationships to force those other individual people around them to “respect” them.
