Thats when the legal battle ensues, while the life of the person in question hangs in the ballance.
Fwiw- a friend of mine that is gay got married (in part) specifically because he knows that his parents would act in contradiction to his & his significant others wishes.
I dated my wife for years before marrying her. Years longer than I needed to know that I wanted to commit. We lived together, planned long term ideas together and on and on. We were conjoined, committed, together.
We did decide to get married before having kids, largely due to traditional pressure behind the idea, but I can tell you that going through the motions and publicly declaring commitment to each other through all the traditional vows, and meaning them, brought a new level to what we already had.
I can’t give an objective reason why, but reaching a point in a relationship begetting ritualistic signs of commitment carries significant weight.
This is something in psych I’ve never quite understood and was somewhat interested in studying for a bit
I doubt it can be understood from an analytically observational perspective.
For a lot of people, speaking something aloud brings it to life.
In its simplest form- Saying thank you. Seems simple right? Coould even be ignored and left unsaid.
Until the recipient starts to feel unappreciated or used.
Saying “I love you”. Left unsaid, can leave a relationship to decay or disolve. But once said aloud to the other can lead to a long lasting, emotionally fulfilling relationship.
Declaring your vows to God, friends, family, etc- definitely next level dedication. You have 100 or so people and one supernatural entity to be accountable to if you change your mind or sober up in 6 months.
What does your word mean after you’ve done that then gone back on it?
Thats the kind of familial and community accountability that I think @BrickHead talks about when the subject comes up.
I don’t know. I think I would feel silly if I were middle aged and was still introducing the woman I’d been living with for years (and possibly had kids with) as my girlfriend, or worse, my partner and not my wife.
It’s always the people who are not married who say it’s just the same as being married while those who are married, and would obviously know better, say it isn’t.
A professor told me yesterday that partners are for law firms and crime, not those you’re in love with.
I see a robustly healthy relationship as consisting of two people who are able to see to their own happiness and who also prioritize the other’s.
So: I think I’m a good person. I’m never late to work, am a team player and good worker there, am generally kind, and try hard to be an all-around good egg. I think I deserve happiness to the greatest extent I am able to create that for myself. Right up to 100% happy, if I can achieve it. Luckily, I know how to make myself pretty happy. It’s about a warm, clean home; a healthy, fit body or sometimes a time away from that focus; books; friends to laugh or share secrets with; friendly random social interactions; and work that feels important along with the competence to honor that importance.
I want a similarly happy person. So I have a man who was happy when I met him and is able to see to his own happiness. He loves being outdoors. He bought a large, inexpensive parcel of land and has been working to improve it for like 20 years now. He takes down trees, puts in roads and retaining walls, grades fields and builds structures made from lumber he’s felled and milled. He hikes, he cooks, he makes weird gadget-y things, he welds things together, he makes wooden bowls out of “good” knots he finds doing the other tree stuff. He plays golf.
I haven’t asked him, but my impression is that he believes that he deserves to be happy at top levels. I certainly think he does. He’s kind and generous; hard working; a good father and stepfather; and very hygienic.
So I prioritize my happiness at top levels and so does he his own happiness. But here’s the lovely thing: we each prioritize the other’s happiness as well! I want me to be happy all the way at the top of the scale, but I also want that for him. I want him to be the happiest husband ever, and am pleased to help with that in any way I can. Because happy him makes for an even happier me. I believe my husband feels the same way, so when we were talking about his very limited time home this weekend he suggested eating out because I’ve been “stuck at home” while I think we should stay in. He’s had enough restaurant food and will be leaving again at 1 am on Monday. He must crave home time. Also (back to my happiness) I’m really trying to cut and that’s easier at home. I’m very, very content to stay in. Win/win.
This comes into play when I ask him to say mushy things back. It’s not transactional because I’m happy to babble on about how much I love him, how handsome or strong he is, etc. Sometimes I just want to hear those things, too. So I ask. It’s not a challenge to his autonomy unless he frames it as such. And he doesn’t. No one can be made to feel inferior without their consent.
How much effort we each put in changes depending on circumstance. Sometimes I’m irritable and have to make effort not to be a jerk. Sometimes he’s irritable and I have to make an effort not to start a fight. When I started a private practice he had to take up slack because I was spending a lot of time focused on work. Sometimes he’s consumed by something and it comes at my expense. That’s marriage.
Interestingly, a great number of men are surprised by this initiation despite being able to say some variation on “yes, she did talk to me about those things, but I didn’t think it was serious.”
I recently came across a letter my mother wrote to my father when I was very young. It was distressing to read, and most distressing was how much it resembled letters I wrote to my ex-husband.
LOL…according to whom? Upon what data is this based?
Yeah, this.
I agree with @SkyzykS’ take on it. I view my marriage as something much more than “boyfriend.” It’s a promise made before God and family. It took me more than 20 years to leave my first marriage because I so believe in keeping vows, but he was simply unable to keep his own vows, and I didn’t want to drown with him. He wasn’t ultimately capable of being a husband in my view (fidelity, other forms of integrity).
It seems hypocritical to say that I take my marriage vows very seriously, but I do. If he gets sick, I will care for him. I know he’ll do the same. My ex-husband, OTOH, cheated on me when I was found to have cancer at 28, which was noticed by my obgyn - I was pregnant. He was messing around with a 19-year-old (poor her!). I didn’t find out about it until many years later, when I’d discovered that he was taking viagra with him on business trips to Las Vegas and he admitted to hookers. I told a friend, and she told me about the long-ago cheating. She hadn’t at the time because…she didn’t know what to do. I wish she’d told me at the time. But anyway. Still I stayed, because his business was collapsing and he was taking a job in another state and we had young kids and I didn’t think breaking the family was the right thing. He was also expressing suicidality. (Again.) The infidelity did break the family. It just took time for it all to play out.
Yes, me too. My person before God, and in my case with my current husband, my children. Vows to them are also sacred to me. Like @Njord, we were together for years (3.5 in our case, but we’re older). We’d already bought a house together, but marrying brought a whole new feeling of commitment/rightness/permanency.
OMG, this is the world’s longest post. Sorry!
If my wife and I started keeping score on who contributes what, I’d be concerned for the health of our marriage. I have no idea who does the most, or how you even score it. Is mowing the lawn more valuable than folding sheets? Is hiring a lawn crew out of my account cheating the system? Is my significantly larger income buying credits? Is her family ranch available for my use at any time a wash?
I haven’t found marriage to be a scoreboard. In our case schedules often dictate who does what based on availability, and we do have a generally defined set of chores that more of less follows gender stereotypes 
On the rare occasion someone feels overworked, overwhelmed or unfairly burdened we discuss and adjust, but it’s a fairly fluid thing. I think obsessing over who did what would cause more problems than solutions for us.
We fall into it sometimes. It never improves things!
The use of partner took hold among the gay community in the 70s. Then the feminists decided that wife was offensive as if, when a man referred to his wife as “wife” he was really thinking slave or servant. Now, people use it in order to not offend the mentally ill non-binary crowd. They get offended, or more correctly, “literally” physically hurt, when they hear heteronormative words. In my opinion, the words husband and wife have an inherent quality of expressing love and commitment that words like partner or that other stupid term significant other, will never have. It’s similar to using birthing parent vs mother. I can’t imagine a woman wanting her child’s first words to be “birthing parent” instead of mommy.
This is a great thread! Lots of good information.
@Andrewgen_Receptors - have you ever come across anything that refers to differences in dead bedrooms between different regions?
Here’s my home right now. I think the climate could be marketed to some loveless couples who would be forced into some physical activity just to stay warm.
No but I’m willing to bet that a non-zero number of pregnancies started as “retaining heat”.
Some interesting statistics here
I’m aware they have an agenda and you’ll never find ONE answer as to why people divorce. I will say that if you google “divorce + boredom” that you’ll find its not men who have this complaint.
I think i saw an Oprah link (lol) saying #2 reason was boredom and #1 reason was criminality. #3 was finances and #4 was infidelity.
How funny, the difference in our perceptions of the process by which it became mainstream. Yours is so…victimized. Really, how much power do you think the feminists have?
I see it as having been picked up by heterosexuals as a way to prevent harm to gays - that if we all use “partner” then gay couples are not forced to either lie about their status or use a term that outs them. For younger people, it seems to simply be a normative statement - I’m sure some of them assume it’s used because it’s no one’s business whether they’ve made religious vows. I think it’s also, for gays or straights, a middle-ground between boyfriend/girlfriend and spouse. For when you live together and share a vacuum.
“Then the feminists decided that wife was offensive as if, when a man referred to his wife as “wife” he was really thinking slaveor servant” seems a wild stretch to me. No one has ever, explicitly or implicitly, suggested to me that the use of the term “wife” was degrading me. None of the books or mainstream articles I’ve read - and as stated above I read widely - have suggested it. I’m a social worker and required to have continuing ed. The feminists are all up in social work’s business, and yet I encounter none of the campaigns against men I read about on these boards. That said, I can choose my courses, and I’m inclined to positive psychology and other solution-focused opportunities, so maybe it’s out there. But gender study stuff is just a tiny portion of the whole.
I don’t like the broad use of “partner” because it breeds confusion, and as also stated above I like clear, direct communication and “partner” used to indicate something. OTOH, I probably only need to know someone’s orientation at work, so “partner” was handy code. Socially who gives a shit. If I get to know you and we become friends, I suppose I’ll uncover your relationship status and you mine.
In closing, I would note that the married gay people I know either through work or socially seem to like the use of “husband” or “wife” if that’s the case for them. They say it with the same possessive pride I do.
The Nazis did experiments in this. Pretty skeevy; putting men out in the cold until nearly dead, then having a woman sexually stimulate them.
But anyhoo…
Not to be argumentative, but men are generally not the ones stuck home with the kids. I could go on, but I won’t. (Because I’m going to google divorce + boredom and also have lunch and put the clean sheets on the bed and maybe some other stuff TBD.)
I think I got busy and neglected to say that I don’t think you’ve overplayed your usefulness at all. I would like to see more of your posts.
Actually an aweful lot.
Most westerners hold fundamentally feminist beliefs, even the anti-feminists and conservatives.
I think my reaction to this is telling me my steroid doses are too high 
It’s a fair point, but i do believe this is mostly a choice on the women’s part - no?
Sure, some men dont want their wives working (me included), but if the woman wanted to work - there is nothing the husband could do to stop her.
I also think women staying at home to raise children is the ideal dynamic most women would want, were it not for feminism valuing the importance of work over family. I could be wrong, hard to tell.
This has not been my experience but I’m aware that I’m in Texas, and I believe you’re in California.
