I've been married twice, to good men who treated me well. The first marriage ended in divorce at my behest, the second (as yet undissolved marriage) ended due to my husband not being able to deal with my bipolar anymore. I don't hold any grudges, nor do they. I decided about ten years ago that I would never again enter into a permanent relationship. I'm not religious and I have a bit of a problem with forced monogamy which obviously causes problems. Loving someone does not make me want to be faithful to them. I don't and never have equated sex with love, nor vice versa. Despite this I was never unfaithful but it sat uneasily with me. I think what it all boils down to is that I'm too happy to spend time alone. I'm not a very social person and have a very tight group of close friends who understand my needs. I did the stable home thang up until my daughter came of age. Now I see little point. I'm not ashamed to admit it, I'm looking after No.1 I've served my time, raised my daughter to be a good and decent human being. Now the only person I wish to please is myself, and truly, I can't do that having to be considerate of another's feelings every minute of every day. How very tiresome. Selfish? Yeah, damn right! But, and it's a very big but.... I would NEVER tell someone not to get married. Different strokes for different folks after all. I know plenty of people who were floundering through life until they met (and/or) married their significant other. Some people need that rock. I, however, do not.
I daresay they do... I love several people deeply but I still don't want to share my living space with them. To me love is love. I get and give love all the time. I don't need marriage for that. And I certainly don't believe that I love any of these people more than the other. I love each differently.
Not so much, anymore. Partly because it's so easy to get married these days. Many years ago when it was more difficult to travel, and record keeping was not what it is now, and rural areas really were very rural and quite isolated, and when women did not have the same rights or the same money-making ability as they do now, it was the equitable thing to do -- it promoted public policy to treat people as married who acted married and may even have believed themselves married. It's not the same today, so the societal interest in deeming someone legally married without them having taken steps to do so is just not there. Not all jurisdictions recognize common law marriage, and even those who had a law on the books don't likely use it today. It's now so easy to get married -- it's easier than going through all of the steps you'd need to take to simulate or replicate the rights you get in a marriage, so if two people have not taken this step, it's more likely that they did not want those rights and obligations.
I'm open to the idea of marriage, but I'm definite not thinking about considering it until I'm at least 25-30 which is 7 years away. But I wouldn't go out of my way to get married, I'd be happy living together etc; it would only be something to really do if the person I was dating was big on it.
Sounds like you're putting a bit TOO much emphasis on the long-term...! I think that, from my perspective, I'd edit that to "...only if I can see the possibility..."
@Lemex - I meant people who actually tell other people "Never get married". I guess in my head, I also hear those people saying it in a desperate, angry way where the very notion of being married is like suicide to them. That's obviously not you But then again I don't see you telling people "never get married", you're saying you yourself don't want to marry right now. And even though you say you don't even see the point in marriage, you're not saying "never" even for yourself. So far you've used words like "don't intend to" and that you would like to find someone one day. Actually, writing this, I realised that I also interpreted "Never get married" as "Never get involved in a committed relationship." (yes I'm aware partnerships where the partners aren't married can be perfectly committed and stable, but it's probably just my natural reaction based on my beliefs) @Aled James Taylor - why on earth would your friend's girlfriend (I imagine ex now?) give him an ultimatum like that?? That's just mean. If he was spending too much time cruising on his bike or washing it or whatever, surely they could have reached some compromise. Like, my husband and I simply have evenings and days when it's dedicated to each other. That means at all the other times, he can game to his heart's content (he still loves his computer games, the big child!) But it's what he finds relaxing. I love what you said about adapting to one another and changing yourself to suit their expectations better. It's basically the same thing my mum said when I asked her what makes a marriage work (mum and dad have been happily married for over 30 years and counting), and she said only one thing: Compromise. You must compromise. Find a man who is willing to compromise with you, and you must compromise for him too. The relationship can't work without compromise. However I'm not sure I get what you mean by "the trick is not minding that it hurts" - it makes me think as though your marriage hurts you? (totally *not* making any judgements on your marriage that I know nothing of! But I just didn't get what you meant) @Okon - plenty of people marry never having had sex and are in happy marriages. My parents never had pre-marital sex and have been happily married for 30 years and counting. My sister didn't have sex with her husband before and they've been together for 6-7 years with their second child coming next year. I *did* have sex with my husband before and we've been together for over 3 years so far. A pair of my friends are actually courting each other right now - because the girl's Indian and the concept of dating simply doesn't exist in her culture. For her, it's either friendship or marriage - she still denies any claims that they're "together", but in the west there's no right term to describe what she has with the guy. They haven't even held hands, I think, and definitely not kissed. And this guy's been courting her for about 2 years now - he actually moved from the US to the Czech Republic in order to try and build something with this girl - at the time of the move, the girl was interested but unwilling to be "together" because to be "together" is to marry him, and she couldn't make that decision so soon, and actively discouraged him from pursuing her. What I'm saying is, sex doesn't matter half as much as people make it out these days. Sex not accompanied with a real friendship and love is just physical sex - and I don't imagine sex buddies know each other better than a couple who chat and share and laugh and cry together, but are without sex, would know each other. As for love, I read something cute on Facebook the other day. It's not about how much love you start with, but how much love you build by the end.
Yes, this is one way to approach a relationship. Sex comes second. Compromise, compromise, compromise. It's not about being starstruck in the beginning, but building up trust and companionship throughout the years. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
It's not about "building companionship coming first". In my case, it started with starstruck, and has now reached companionship. Compromise is (probably) the key to that transition.
Over the years I've slowly come to understand that hey, there's still courtship in this world you silly Westerner, you. Sure, I myself want to have none if it, I would've been bored to tears if @T.Trian had taken that approach with me! But people go about relationships so differently, and there're so many paths to a happy relationship. Fascinating. Maybe in some people's mind sex becomes more valuable or precious if it happens after the marriage ceremony, or maybe they, in general, don't value it so high they'd have to check the merchandise before making the purchase, so to speak, or just simply see it very differently. As for marriage being patriarchal... If so, I guess patriarchy ain't all bad, then.
Yes, and just as fascinating to me is the difficulty so many people have of seeing beyond their own path. A writer, it seems to me, should be able to do that.
Well, truth is, hopefully you'll be starstruck everyday. That every so often your partner will do or say something that makes you starstruck all over again. If you find falling in love over and over again a major case of ZZZZZZZZZ, then I shall assume you're not currently interested in relationships. Awesome for you. But I'm not sure I've ever heard of a working and happy marriage where the partners actually say, "Compromise? Nah. SO not needed - just not the way we do things!"
I like your thinking And yes, I would've been bored to tears too with courtship. Speaking of courtship, there's one such wave in Christian circles, but that's probably a whole other topic. Although now I'm wondering why I find courtship that occurs naturally in someone's culture perfectly acceptable, but Christian courtship quite definitely not... lol.
*raises hand* Simply because we believe that a good marriage should function on it's own, so sex is not allowed until after marriage. It's just the icing on the cake, so to speak. At least that's how i understand it...
Surely this is courtship that occurs culturally? I get the impression that courtship was normal in Western culture within living memory, and I can imagine that Westernized Eastern cultures will also move away from courtship within the lifetime of some of us.
I guess I'm eating the icing straight from the bowl (or wherever icing is made) before it's even spread on the cake. Oh well. I also eat the dessert before the main course if I get to choose... Or have another dessert afterwards.
During my college years - in the early '70s - I had a friend whose parents were Ukrainian immigrants. His older brother was getting married and my friend mentioned to me that there had been a courtship. The word sounded anachronistic even then. Here in the US, at least in the northeastern part of the country, notions of courtship, and of family oversight of the process, were probably already dying out in the early part of the twentieth century. Two world wars and the social changes they wrought - including a radical change in the role of women - saw to that. I find "Westernized Eastern cultures" to be a singularly interesting phrase, here. We really mean people from Eastern cultures who are assimilated into Western ones, whether because they have actually migrated to the west or because they have been lured by western materialism. I suspect that will be a faster process than our own cultural evolution, but I also suspect that it may produce a kind of cultural/economic fundamentalism in reaction to it.
I'd guess that the 'Christian courtship' you refer to (no sex until after marriage) is a custom observed mainly in the breach, the claims of those awful Duggar people notwithstanding.
The notion of "courtship" goes a lot further than no premarital sex. It involves family oversight and ultimate approval of the match.
@stevesh - while Christian courtship definitely includes no sex before marriage, the kind I was thinking about is actually this wave that came over evangelical Christians back when I was about to enter university. This book called "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Joshua Harris became immensely popular, in which he argued for the idea of not dating at all and simply courting. I never did finish reading the book and don't pretend to remember anything from it - but I do remember disliking what I did read. I checked out Chapter 1 again a year or two ago online and disliked it all over again lol. I hear Harris is actually quite a decent pastor these days - at the time he published the book, I believe he was 21, or so I heard back then. And after that came the phenonmenon of the "side hug" and in the US it went further onto purity rings and I even heard about purity balls held by fathers for their daughters, where their daughters pledge to stay "pure" (eg. no sex before marriage, not even kissing before marriage I believe) to their fathers and their fathers then slip on this purity ring as a symbol of their promise. In truth, I don't know what all this stuff is. I think it's what some well-meaning Christians turned romance into in an attempt to avoid sex, I honestly don't know. Thankfully, I didn't grow up in such an environment. My church wasn't conservative like this lol. I think how far you take it depends entirely on the individual. @Shadowfax - you quoted only half of what I said, so I'm actually not sure what you're referring to, sorry. To reiterate - the sort of courtship my Indian friend and her American 'friend' is going through is certainly naturally occurring courtship. And I find it acceptable. The kind of "courtship" I don't really find acceptable is the strange phenonmenon I mention above where I replied to stevesh, that strange Christian purity pledge and side hug stuff, that people who grew up in modern day England or America and have never even seen what a courtship looks like and never believed in it, suddenly over time come to believe that somehow dating is dirty and decide courtship is the only way that pleases God when it comes to romance - except no one seems to understand what courtship is because they weren't actually raised in that environment. What happens instead, then, though well-meant, is this strange stiffness that results in men being extremely awkward around women and women dating non-Christians even when they'd prefer Christians, because there's simply not a normal Christian man left who isn't already married! (the normal good ones get snapped up very, very early, especially when it's within the culture/faith of believing marriage is the end goal of every romantic relationship. It is common amongst Christian circles to be married by your early 20s) So anyway, that's what I meant. Natural courtship - woohoo, sure. Not for me but sure, why not. The above odd "I kissed dating goodbye let's do some side hugs to avoid temptation and making our brother in Christ stumble" sorta courtship - eeesh no thanks. Run a mile. Seriously. @Keitsumah - Are you a Christian? Cus a lot of what you're saying sounds just like a Christian at the churches I grew up in would say. Yes, I totally believe a healthy relationship is a pre-requisite to healthy sex. Sex is the good stuff that should ideally come after a firm founation's been built between two people who love one another and are committed to one another. However, sex is definitely an important part of a relationship. On a purely practical aspect, it's difficult for a man not to get aroused by simply seeing hot girls pass on the street if you're not having sex with him regularly lol. He might be a good man and choose not to look, but it's arousal he has to fight - and it would be a much easier battle for him to fight if you had sex with him regularly. I imagine it's the same for women who have high sex drives. For me, if my husband didn't want sex with me, I'd start wondering what's wrong. This desire to want each other's body should be present in every healthy relationship. But then I'm only in my late 20s - I don't know if this changes when you get to your 50s, or 60s. As far as I know, my parents still have regular sex though and they're in their late 50s. I don't believe sex should make or break a relationship - but at the same time, I'm not so sure it's simply the "icing" on the cake. I also don't think it is fair to tell one's partner "Well if you love me, you wouldn't need the sex". As for sex isn't allowed until after marriage - that's not something I understand the reasons for very well, when I took the time to actually think about it several years back. I no longer remember why I even thought it's unacceptable, except that I was taught that as a Christian and raised to think like that. I believe it is a good idea to keep it for marriage and I definitely don't believe you should just sleep with anyone. The mindset of "no sex before marriage", however, has been known to cause some damage, because sometimes people can't just switch from thinking, "No sex, I'm not allowed to have sex, if I have sex now I'll be sinning and I should feel guilty about that, and I do feel guilty about that. No sex, not yet," - to switch from that to, overnight, once you're married, "Sex is excellent and healthy and there's no need to feel guilty about that. In fact, you should have sex with your spouse! And enjoy it!" People have been too conditioned to think of sex as some forbidden fruit that even after they're married, they can't snap out of it because they've come to see sex as dirty. Another issue people come across is - when you've saved yourself all your life for "the one" and your "the one" actually has had sex already with someone else. We're not taught how to deal with that. I think if you choose not to have sex before marriage, that's great, but you should really understand why you've chosen that. Not just because you're raised that way. Not just because somehow, it's "the right thing to do" - understand why you think it's the right thing to do. Don't be afraid to question yourself and your beliefs. Because when it comes down to it, you want to live by what you really believe in, not by what you've been conditioned to believe. In any case, there're many arguments for why no sex before marriage is a very good thing - I think as long as you know why you believe what you do, it's perfectly fine for you to choose that way. It's true no sex before marriage has fewer risks than sleeping with your partner long before you're committed, but then courtship has even fewer risks. And then if your parents chose your partner for you (it's been known to work where the child has the right to refuse. I don't mean forced marriages) has even fewer risks. But anyway, what risks are we talking about? A broken heart? That somehow it's gonna hurt less because you've given less? (that's what some people believe, I think) I'm not sure I can say definitively whether that's true or not, but when you're in the midst of a heartbreak, I'm not sure you'll know the difference. Pain is pain is pain - it's gonna hurt like hell no matter what when someone you love leaves you. What I do know - don't let anyone pressure you into having sex, and don't let anyone pressure you into not having sex. Have it or not, let it be because you believe in what you're doing and because you understand exactly why you believe as you do. Starting sex when you believe it's wrong can be damaging. Stopping sex once you've started it can be equally confusing and damaging for both partners. So either do it or don't, just don't start and stop and start and stop and end up in a horrible cycle of guilt that's terribly difficult to get out of, where your partner's body become the symbol of sin and your own guilt for you rather than pleasure and delight.
Yes, I am. And i understand what you're saying. In fact i think i've already bent the rules a heck of a lot further than is ideal already... (leave it to boys to be all cute and innocent then catch you off guard the next he keeps asking me if im okay with it though so i have to give him permission) But my mother has actually had "the talk" with me about it and though she doesn't want me to have sex before marriage, i think we're both just more worried about me getting pregnant. Me and my current boyfreind are both in college so we don't want to make any silly mistakes until we know we can at least handle the consequences, because even though i am extremely terrified of the pain of childbirth, i aint even gonna think about aborting. (and he's the one joking about us having triplets... something tells me he's gonna jinx us ) And i guess i am extremely lucky because even at eighteen going on nineteen, he's told me that he's never had an actual "girlfreind" besides one girl who used him to get back at her ex. It only lasted a week as far as i know and he shudders every time he mentions her. So yeah. We both don't have any idea what we're doing but he's not scared of having sex one bit. Honestly i think the nervousness about the sin would apply to me, but over time i have gotten better about it. He doesn't rush me and he asks me permission on almost everything to the point where it's almost annoying. But having met his parents (who adore me to bits) i can see where he gets that from. Looks like the women in our families are the boss . But i think im going to push him a little more to make some decisions on his own, and since he knows what im comfortable with he won't have to ask me about absolutely everything. So... i guess thanks for that advice. I'll definitely mull it over.
