Why are you married?

I got married last year, when I was 19. We both wanted to be married before living together and now we're living in another country and expecting a baby. Very happy to be married!

We got married for the usual legal and romantic reasons. If you want to create a legal partnership you can do it in other ways but those ways are more complicated and more expensive. Marriage is a legal short cut, and it pre-dates Christianity and Victorian morals so I really don't see any principle worth cutting my nose off my own face for.

5 years after we got married DH was diagnosed with cancer so it turned out to have been the sensible thing to do. Medical professionals never once questioned my right to be involved, and neither of us had to worry about his estranged relatives turning up and interfering. And I never had to ask him to make a will. I am your age, OP, so don't think that this is only something to worry about later in life.

Honestly? It felt like the next thing to do. I've always assumed that my long term relationship would end in a marriage, although I didn't feel any different after the wedding.

Neither of us are insecure. Despite the above, I don't see marriage as something that solidifies a relationship- you can still separate and walk away.

Don't look down on other people either. I'm of the opinion that people should do whatever they feel is best for them, and I support them in that.

It's far more than that. It is sensible financial planning for the family unit. I have never been financially dependent on DP nor him on me although at times who was the higher earner has varied.

I pass my unused tax allowance to DP which reduces the amount of income tax we jointly pay.

We can pass assets between us without penalty and some of them will pass to the surviving partner automatically without having to go through probate. Some are jointly owned but we can apportion the income between us in the most tax effective way. Others are split between us so that we can use the IHT legislation effectively which will save my DC a lot of tax.

In the unlikely event we split up, we are both entitled to an equitable share of the family assets which in this case will be a 50:50 split.

There are other tax quirks and benefits that attach to the married state. In the past marriage as an institution was purely financial and dynastic. That it should be primarily a romantic union is pretty recent. Love in a marriage was always a bonus, not an expectation.

I was anti-marriage but it was the only way to get the visa I needed. I had said that we should get divorced as soon as the visa wasn’t an issue but I actually found the marriage was important. It changed the way people treated us and came to mean something more than our previous years of living together and our financial and other ties. So we stayed married for more romantic reasons and I wish I’d married him just for the sake of it when he first asked.

@Aquarius1234 the legal parts of marriage are the same if you're 21 or 61 so why do you find it odd that 21 year olds get married.
I was at home not working for a just over a year (before my daughter was born) and supported by my (then partner) husband - essentially what used to be called a "housewife".
Why?
Because for my mental health I needed to leave my job. My husband understood that and wanted to support me (emotionally and financially).
So yes - some men are happy to support wife/partner at home even when there's no children.

My Mum made me

I got married because it was my ideal. My parents have been married for decades and I wanted the same success.

Unfortunately I chose badly and we are near the end of the legal divorce process.

I think marriage for my generation was regurgitated as a goal so much in 1990s rom-coms that it was a major ambition for most of my circle. Now I'm older I wish I had waited until the right partner had come along.

My DB on the other hand, has been with his (older! Divorced!) partner for 20+ years and has no desire to marry. His partner also doesn't want to go through that rigmarole again. It's as good as a marriage and they have legal bits in place should one dies (my brother was very ill years ago, which put a lot of things in perspective) so I think they are a success too. I now identify with my "sister in law" because I don't want to go through this hassle and money and stress that I've spent disentangling myself from someone again.

I think if you find the right person and you work at it then marriage is a good thing. It brings stability and certainty, and can bring couples even closer together. However, if you choose badly, it's a right royal pain in the bum to sort out.

DH and I are married because it would've been silly not to, in our circumstances and with our preferences.

Yeah I got a very superior vibe from a so called Christian woman. She told me my partner (long term, much much longer than her fledgling relationship) obviously didn't think much of me as he hadn't married me

I think she forgot it takes two people to agree to marriage.

Anyway, we eventually married after decades together (legals) and she got divorced after a few short years of making his life hell.

The name change thing can be separate to marriage. I am married without changing my name. My unmarried friend did change her name by deed poll. If you want to double barrel thats also a deed-poll process, yet most of those people are married.

My new partner and I are both 52 and divorced with adult children. Getting married is pointless for us.

However, I have sons and I’d be disappointed and embarrassed if they strung along the mothers of their children. I don’t respect men who refuse to marry their girlfriends when they share children, the girlfriends having to pretend to be cool with it then posting on Mumsnet naively asking about their “rights” (few!) .

My partner has a 20yo daughter who’s in love with a nice man, but I hope she won’t have a baby and go part-time without being married.

There are absolutely loads of men who have their own business and stick the wife on as an employee for tax reasons. Kids or no kids. My old boss's wife was the "Company Secretary" on paper but I never met her.

I loved my DH, he loved me, and we wanted to make a public and legal commitment.

It was no more complicated than that.

But, DH died last year, and being legally wed made the legal processes much easier.

I have know this to happen in immigrant families where the spouse has no right to work in the country.

But yes it's not the norm and I agree most men wouldn't want it! Unless they have tens of millions and the wife's salary is irrelevant.

Or if the wife is sick.

"Why did you bother getting married?" Because I love my partner, we'd lived together nearly 10 years and I'm a big romantic (I also proposed)

"Do you feel one or both of you are insecure hense the marriage?" This question sounds a bit loaded and perhaps projecting lol, however, I've never trusted anyone more in my life and visa versa. Happily married for over 10 years.

"Do you feel superior to those in long term relationships but not married?" Most of my friends that are in long term relationships are not married, I don't feel superior to them at all.

On top of the romantic stuff, there's alot of legal benefits to getting married, we're each others automatic next of kin in an emergency, we also own a house and have a child (I like sharing the same surname with my family).

I consider myself a massive Lefty feminist too if you think that sounds a bit conservative. I like marriage for both romantic and legal reasons, I enjoyed my wedding and our honeymoon too. However absolutley no judgement about those who don't want to.

I am curious why you ask though OP, what triggered this?

OP made the mistake of thinking marriage was a trap.
It's actually the opposite, if you have kids.
I have no idea why people think signing a piece of paper that gives them rights is a huge commitment.
But creating living things, that will need feeding, housing and raising for the next 18+ years, together with another person, isn't.
The mind boggles!

The catalyst for our marriage was that DH got an amazing job in the US and being his wife rather than gf enabled me to get a visa so he could take the job and we could move there together.

That said, if we hadn't moved to the US we would have got married anyway but probably several years later when planning to have children. Being legally and financially tied enables us to make decisions that are best for the family unit, rather than ones that are best for us as individuals. For example, I took time out to have children and I wouldn't have felt safe doing that if unmarried. Which would have been a shame really since it's what I wanted, what my DH wanted, and what (I feel) is best for my DC.

I have a friend in a LTR who is unmarried with a child and her set up works for her. They don't frequently move country like I do, and they share childcare equally. There isn't really a reason for them to get married that I can see, aside from inheritance and next of kin stuff, but I assume they aren't worried about that.

At the time, 45 years ago, it was pretty much the norm. The only people I knew who lived together were divorcees. Likewise generally people married at a younger age than now.That was just how it was.

We wanted to be together and we still do.

Thread after thread on here of miserable women who didn't get married but did SAH with children, not on the house deeds, meaning they can never ever leave no matter how shit the DP is, because they would be homeless with their children.

SO GREAT!

Op I do think being married helps you stay together during the bad times, of course. It's hard work though. Ups and downs and all of that. But I'm glad we did it.