[missyann]

My boyfriend and I have been happily living together for the past few months and I was under the (false or misunderstood....still figuring that out) notion that as soon as my bf packs up and leaves for law school next year, we would get married. Just for a little background information: we talked and established the 'me going with him to law school' part, but not so much the 'marriage' part.

I come from a traditional family and I am still hooked on the romantic notion of marriage. My bf isn't so much. In fact, he's quite against it. I can understand his argument: going through the institutional practice of marriage and letting the law establish your unity. Yes, it does become a problem when you let the law establish your rules--especially if divorce comes up.

Last night, I was feeling particularly brave and decided to 'lay things down' for him. No marriage, no going with him to law school. I know this sounds fairly harsh, but I have been pressured by family/friends to get married to the guy before making that kind of commitment. And this was his reply:

"You give me a good reason for us to get married and I'll do it". So I listed of a few reasons: establishment, for family, official status, etc. He told me that none of those reasons are for myself and we can have any of those without an official marriage. The more I've thought about this, the more I have become confused. I honestly can't give him a reason. Please enlighten me--not simply to give me answers so that I can turn around and spout them to him, but because I know there are many of you out there who are like me and still believe in marriage. But why is it important? Thoughts, please.

[silvertae]

Potential tax breaks.

[WildChild]

Ah marriage! You've about hit the nail on the head here, what are your reasons for wanting marriage? Tradition, family expectations, pressure from other people, status? Are these good reasons for making a lifetime, legal committment? All of these are about other people and social and religious expectations. Depending upon your point of view and both may be vaild, the reasons marriage was developed was to protect women and children in situations where a woman couldn't provide for her children alone, covering the hunting and gathering, while raising babies was too much, it needed not just a man around but a whole tribe.

Then social systems were developed to control women and their reproductive power and make them subject to men's needs and marriage bound the woman to a specific man's home while he was free to roam the world or at least the neighborhood. He felt reasonably assured that he wouldn't be supporting other men's children. The flip side was that in this oppressive environment where she was considered the source of evil coming into the world and a temptation to all the men, the woman was assured of at least minimal support and a roof over her head for herself and her children. And she had the status of being married - not a spinster or old maid who couldn't attact a man. If she was really lucky, she didn't get beaten and was actually loved.

So you want to get married? Why? In the present world you can support yourself, the two of you can form a voluntary partnership and can through wills, powers of attorney or other legal instruments, have pretty much the same situation in terms of property. Your taxes will be a bit higher but there is a movement afoot to change that. With the ease of divorce, marriage is essentially a volluntary association these days anyway. Who wants to be in a relationship where they are legally "stuck"? If you manage to entice him into this, how well is it likely to work when it wasn't entirely volluntary? The arguement can be made that marriage is needed to protect the children's rights. With DNA testing there is no longer any question of who's kids are who's if there is any question and the matters of child support and custody will be handled pretty much the same married or not.

People used to be old at 40. They didn't deal with mid life crisis because so few made it that far. Menopause was a regarded with some awe because that happened to the ancient. Things are different now a marriage that used to be a 20 or 25 year committment - if you lived that long - can now be 70 years. People change and grow and we get exposed to a much wider range of experience and we don't always grow together. Really long term marriages that work are tough to achieve.

All this said, why do you want to marry on such short aquaintence? Do some research on the 'infatuation' chemicals that your body releases when you fall for someone new. You need to take the relationship past the time those are active to see if you really have something or not. That means at least two years together. And then you need to BOTH want it and it shouldn't be to please family or society.