[asiangrace]

Virgo man, those atheists with solid marriages might disagree with your views.
And, based on the OP's history, I think she might as well.

I agree... I really dislike when people think just because a marriage is Christ-centered means their marriage is going to be solid. There are a lot of atheist marriages who are happy and solid as can be.

[asiangrace]

Little, I wish you hadn’t replied to my post.

Your title of ‘Head of Operations & Moderator Management’ makes it unlikely that anyone will disagree with you and express support for traditional marriage.

Virgo

this is what bothers me about people who talk about the Lord...then they reply with this kind of attitude!

[Texinator]

I've had conversations with folks who think the 1950s were the Golgen Age for the US, because in how "traditional" society was, but they act as though unhappy families, unwed mothers, teenage mothers, gays, and all the other "evils" of our "liberal society" didn't exist during those times.

All the social stigma of getting divorced meant that unhappy people stayed together and stayed unhappy. It's didn't make for better families. Spousal abuse and child abuse still existed, and in fact it made it more difficult for people to get out of those situations.

When a girl or a woman became pregnant under the wrong circumstances, being too young and/or not being married, her family hid her when she started to show and then later raised the baby as her sister rather than as her daughter.

Gays pretended to be straight, even got married and had kids, all the while being miserable, and so on and so forth. "Traditional" was not a guarantee for happiness, and in fact it often meant sacrificing the journey to find true happiness for sake of keeping up appearances.

[rcoreyus]

To me marriage is a way of affirming to yourselves, to your friends and if you are religious to your god that you intend your relationship to be permanent. I don't think that marriage will in any way help a bad relationship, if anything will make it worse by making the couple feel they are "forced" to stay together rather than staying together because they want to.

If a couple is happy and committed, the being married may help them through a rare rough patch by making it more difficult for either to give up.

I think the decision to marry is completely private to the couple and unless asked, I'd never question someone else' s decision on this.

On the religious side, I think people are free to put whatever religious significance they think is appropriate to marriage. To some the religious aspect is all important, to others it isn't.

[Ashlee T.]

Well....my response goes for the religious and the non-religious, since I think it has little to do with what the OPis actually posting about.

I've posted many times and I know others like WC have as well regarding the societal pressures people face now days. In one breath, we're supposed to be career oriented, successful, financially stable, independent. In another breath, we're still stuck in the 1950's where many people think life without marriage is no life at all. Because of the past, many of us are still in the mode of "first comes love, second comes marriage, third comes asiangrace with a baby carraige!". We believe there is a timeline for us, a set chain of events that "should" happen in our lives to make us "normal" in societies eyes. This, my friend, is one of the big reasons I believe the divorce rate is so ridiculously high. Lots of people jump in as soon as they find someone that "might" be a suitable lifelong mate, plan an extravagant wedding and say "I DO" before they ever even know what's hit em.

As long as you are getting what you need and want out of the relationship, then taking your time and truly getting to know each other and establishing a friendship is the smart thing to do. On that note, I will say that if your friends know you're the type of gal that feels that marriage is really important, knows you want to be married, etc then perhaps they are afraid he's not on the same page. And something else to consider is, what are your thoughts in all of this? ARE you bothered by the fact he hasn't proposed? Are you okay with it, or is it something nagging at you, therefore their comments bother you even more?