Why would you be proud to be married?

The fact that DH and I have a good relationship has lots of positive emotions attached to it, for me, but pride isn't the right word for it. I don't consider it something I've achieved, particularly.

Likewise, I know we made a good decision to marry, but that certainly isn't an achievement.

Im proud of being married as its quite rare nowadas to have a happy long marriage.

This sounds weird.

I'm proud to be married to a wonderful man now... but not proud to be married in a general sense!!
Being married to the wrong person or just for 'custom' is a lot worse than being single!!

Always been quite proud to be single until I was in my 40ies, honestly ;)

I'm not proud to be married, although I am proud DH and I have maintained a 16 year relationship. That I think is an achievement as it takes work.

I am also proud of DH and proud to be with him.

But the fact we are married bit is almost an irrelevance in that I would feel exactly the same regardless of whether we were married or not

I'm married (18 years) we just married because we loved each other, not foe practical or legal reasons although I know marriage does have its advantages and I'm very glad we are married. I didn't take his name, children are double barrelled.

I'm very proud of my husband, and children, even though it's not an achievement of mine, anything they have done is all down to them (well, maybe I can take a tiny bit of the credit). I still feel proud of things they've done though.

As for being proud of being married, well, I don't know, maybe I'm a bit thick, but I just don't get that. I don't really understand what I'm supposed to be proud off.... I'll go back and try to read the whole thread to find out.

Also the best way to ensure people remain married because they want to, is to ensure that people are nicer to each other. That means getting rid of the sense of entitlement and ownership attached to marriage.

Yes I agree but you also need to look at the structural issues which mean poverty is gendered. You can't separate poverty from sexism.

The best way to provide for more people to stay married because they want to would be to ensure that any man who becomes a father is held legally, morally and socially responsible for half the cost of raising his children (including looking after their mother) during the period when the children are legally dependent. And vice versa. Holding women morally and legally responsible for half the costs also.

Children remain in poverty generally because one of their parents is not holding up their side of the maintenance bargain.

"This is a very good way of ensuring that you get to keep the domestic, sexual and emotional services of someone you're not treating properly, who can't afford to withdraw those services and leave you."

The best way to ensure this, in my view, is for a man to have all of those services without any of the legal requirements of marriage (in which a man is held responsible for his side of the bargain when it breaks down). I think women have been sold a great big lie, that being a 'partner' is just as good as being a 'wife'. It's not. The law does not adequately protect a partner for the services she provides the household unit in the childbearing years, whereas it does (generally speaking) provide for the services of a wife.

" Marriage between parents is statistically WAY less likely to end up with children in poverty, as a start."

Yes.

Don't you think it's time we stopped condemning the children of non-married parents to poverty?

Men arranged society so that if women didn't live with them, we'd be poorer than if we did. This is a very good way of ensuring that you get to keep the domestic, sexual and emotional services of someone you're not treating properly, who can't afford to withdraw those services and leave you. We need to re-arrange it so that it makes no difference statistically whether you live with a man or not, your household income level is not markedly different. That way, more people would stay married because they want to be married, not because they need to be to function.

I don't think you can be proud of having a series of short relationships, or a string of divorces to be honest.

I think getting married and being married is an achievement to be proud of. Being married is part of living a 'responsible' life. Marriage between parents is statistically WAY less likely to end up with children in poverty, as a start. So I suppose if I was to describe my pride in being married I would say I'm proud of being married like I'm proud of being insured or owning a car or owning a house or being promoted in my job.

Further, some of my pride in being married comes from knowing that my husband valued me and respected me sufficiently to want to marry me. He wanted the whole deal. And that makes me feel a bit special (even 5 years down the track).

Oops sorry . I did indeed misread your post Geckos

Have you misread my post yesterday? I agree totally with you.

Geckos
I don't think someone saying that they are proud to be in a relationship is implying anything, just that they are proud to be in their relationship.

I have been living with my DH for 30 years and I am proud of it, it doesn't mean I think single people, divorced people or people with shorter relationship shouldn't be proud.

I don't really understand why saying you are proud to be in a relationship for 22 years means you are implying peopld who have been in relationships for less time are not as worthy.

I am proud of my 10 year relationship because it is mine, its not saying anything about any other relationship but mine.

Why the insistence that we must judge ourselves by others standzrds and others by our own?

'But you seem to have mentioned the time in your relationship and your attitude to it so many times already its starting to seem, to me, that you regard your attitude as some kind of an achievement worthy of pride in and of itself.'

Nail. Head.

Plinky: quite a lot of the time though feminists are right and other people are wrong. And when they realise that the answer to their specific problem is a feminist one (EG 'leave this man. He's abusing you' when they have been told by people around them to stay in the relationship, submit to the man and blame themselves for his abuse of them) they are better off.

I don't see the fact I have lived happily for 22 years with my DP as an achievement.

Greenie, I am still very new to this board, is it a convention here where people feel its necessary to keep repeating things they have already written within a thread? I am more used to systems that insert sub-titled replies to other messages within a discussion rather than just appending everything at the end of a monolithic thread, so I can understand why people might repeat themselves a lot more here, sometimes I wish I had myself.

But you seem to have mentioned the time in your relationship and your attitude to it so many times already its starting to seem, to me, that you regard your attitude as some kind of an achievement worthy of pride in and of itself.

nkf Maybe because I don't consider 'marriage' as an institution and more about our personal experiences with marriage. We learn about relationships and marriage from our parents, our friends, family, experiences in life and then make up our own minds what it means to us. Of course marriage will be a personal experience.

I don't see the point in trying to define what marriage means in general? Some people see marriage as just a piece of paper. I see it as more than that, does that make either opinion right or wrong? There may be a legal definition of it, but I think ultimately whether we think marriage is oppressive/a good thing comes down to our personal view on it. It's easy to find stats to support our own view point.

I think it's sad when 'feminists' actually spend their time trying to convince other people that their ideas of marriage is wrong, or that there must be something wrong with them for holding that view.

On further reflection I agree more and more that it depends on how you define 'proud' and I like the example given upthread about being 'proud to be Welsh (or any other nationality, before I get flamed for being Welshist ).

I am married.
I am happy to be married and would marry DH again.
I agree that is down to luck more than anything else and still see that the institution of marriage is a rather outdated legal construct that has its roots v firmly in sexist structures.

Grennie, I agree with you that a married status is nothing special to boast about. But - what is achievement? You say that 22 happy years with your DP is not an achievement. But for other people it may be. And not only because they stay in unhappy relationships due to social pressure (and I agree with you here that this is wrong). Relationships can be very desirable but at the same time difficult for people for all sort of reasons. Many people grow up in dysfunctional families with totally twisted relationship models. Such people may do a lot of work on themselves, go through self-analysis and counseling before they manage to pick a right person and not somebody who will abuse them. Others may learn in the relationship to deal with their own negative behaviour traits such as not seeing housework for me and seeing too much of it for women. Overcoming the twisted ideas about gender and family relations embedded in may of us by our parents and society and through this building a close and loving bond with somebody else is an achievement.

We can also talk about achievement more generally. Academic success is widely regarded as "achievement". But is it for everyone? I somehow feel that it is less so for me, with my forth-generation-to-go-to-uni background, than for my friend who grew up in a house without a single book in sight.

What some get through luck, others get through hard work. But some things are obviously not worth working for.

I meant in my personal opinion, sorry I didn't make that clear,

I wasn't implying other people dont.