To think that some married women on here think they are better than unmarried women?

[malificent7]

After reading the thread about legal rights, marriage and birth certificates I was struck by the patronising way in which some married women spoke to those who are cohabiting or not married.
True married women have better rights but it was the way in which the relationships of unmarried women were dismissed as lesser and these women were being sneered at.

Someone told a woman who had been cohabiting that her relationship meant nothing and that if you are not married you are single.
REALLY? I am not married but I am not single. I don't even live with the guy but why is my relationship seen as less valid? Some married people hate each other and don't have the guts to leave. Some of the best love affairs involve people who live miles apart.
I don't like the fact that I have to put single on a form . Why can I not be in a relationship?

Ok, If you are married you have some legal rights and security that the unmarried have but shouldn't we question this? Why should we make vows especially if you don't believe in the laws of marriage? Also, it was originally a religious ceremony..I don't believe in God and I am not a commodity to be given away by my dad to another male.

Does it lead to stability? My dp is divorced. The marriage vows didn't stop things from falling apart.

Marriage can be a great thing but the tone in the last thread was old fashioned and practically berated women for not managing to get a man to marry them. Surely there has to be other options if you don't believe in marriage ? It is a patriarchal tradition after all to do with male prperty rights. Also, many men want pre nuptuals as they are now wise to gold digging wives.

I think you can have some marriages which have less love than some cohabiting relationships. Why is one type of relationship more valid? I find it all very old fashioned.

Judging by the number of men who don't leave their wives a dime on divorce, I am not convinced by the stability argument.

Tbh I don’t even understand the notion of not knowing who you are. It’s not something that ever made sense to me. But I’m extremely changeable (not in a bpd kind of way, I don’t go hot and cold with people or have excessive fear of abandonment or anything) so the idea of having some kind of “who you are” that can be pinned down never made much sense to me.

And I think everyone ought to as much as their capacity allows make sure to have a wider support system beyond their partner, but there is a lower level of intensity in the support you’d get from any one individual in a support network than from a partner.

I agree.

I’m married. My relationship didn’t change when we got married, it just meant I felt like I had less freedom (rightly or wrongly, marriage makes me feel like property).

I respectfully disagree with that die.

I think there is a big difference between being subsumed by traditional roles and retaining a sense of self outside of being a wife and mother.

I also think that's some of the issues as to why relationships and marriages fail, the intensity element. One person cannot provide everything to another person. I view having a relationship to be very different than many people. It's not the centre of my world nor does one person mean more to me than any other, with the exception of dc which is a bit different. The project analogy was a good one, I just see my life as the project with different team members providing different skills and me to them in return. At the root though, is my independence and ability to support myself, so I am not reliant any one of the team members to make the project (my life) happy or successful. I am responsible for that, ultimately. No one else.

But I'm going down a rabbit hole and I must do some work:)

I see marriage more like a traditional business partnership (the aim of which is not to make money or make one another happy but specifically to raise children). It’s not there to provide everything you need emotionally or otherwise but to provide an environment to raise children. It seems far easier to me than trying to outsource everything to a diffuse web of service providers and people in your support network. And I fully admit to being lazy so easy is a biiiiig advantage to me.

Die, unless you're at a Catholic wedding, children aren't a compulsory element.

Do you think there's no point in infertile couples marrying?

I don’t honestly think there’s a point in marrying unless you intend to try and have kids no. I think kids are the purpose of the institution.

And my wedding was not catholic (was religious) and almost every other line was about being fruitful and wishes to see “your children’s children”. Let’s face it there would be no concept of marriage if it wasn’t for children.

Wow, so a heterosexual couple in their 80s who want to ensure the other inherits without a hitch- no point in marrying?

Or a male homosexual couple who don't intend to adopt, but one is going part time to care for the other one who has MND- no point in marrying?

Marriage is a financial contract, sometimes it suits, sometimes it doesn't. It's equally valid to choose or not choose, but I'd never say there's no point "unless you intend to try and have kids". That's not what legal marriage is.

I sure there’s individual cases but it’s not really what marriage is. I mean there were two heterosexual men who got married so they could avoid inheritance tax. It made sense for them as a legal contract but they weren’t really a married couple in the sense of marrige as a social custom.

It's not really what marriage is in your, minority, opinion, luckily.

Most people see a couple in their 80s marrying as lovely, and exactly what 'marriage is'.

Do you think there would there be such a thing as marriage if humans reproduced asexually or even if their young produced sexually didn’t require extended nurturing?

I tell you who think they are better, then single women or seconds wife's ... ex wife's with children!

I tell you who think they are better than single women, married women, ex-wives with children, and second wives.

Men.

And all this slagging each other off just allows them more power than they've already got. We should support each other (and advising a SAHP who is not married to get married is supportive, not bitchy).

If marriage is just for kids, then why do infertile people/gays/old people want it?

Because it's not just for kids. It's for any couple who want it. And it's ok not to want it.

Why? Some probably for financial benefits but mostly because lots of romantic ideas have gotten attached to the concept of marriage. Surely all the people happy in loving relationships without getting married attest to the reality that those romantic ideas are not really the point of marrige since marriage is neither sufficient nor necessary for them.

No, the romantic ideas aren't marriage, it's a financial contract. Kids not compulsory.

They’re not compulsory but they’re the reason the contract exists on a societial level.

Humans like companionship. Most people of whatever persuasion choose to couple up given the chance.

Dh ain't a millionaire, and romantic? Well, he tries occasionally. But we are best pals. Marriage for us is being official best mates.

I think, however, that it is a bit of a class thing. Posh people I know are not "best friends" with their spouse; it is a separate relationship. And amongst wc people the model is more to have a close relationship with mother/friends with men being rather superfluous apart from the obvious.

I don't feel the story of Ruth backs that up, the idea that marriage is just about children. It's a legal way of joining families and financial obligations. Marriage was founded to protect and pass on assets. I don't agree it's foundation is in children, it's about property.

Marriage is about property and money.

You’ll have to be more specific if you want me to know what you’re getting at.

You say marriage has always been about children. I say, it's always been about property, and ensuring the property stays in the family- women and children being seen as a part of that property, along with money.

It's why no one cared about lower classes being married for centuries, no register etc. Marriage was for upper classes, to ensure the care of the property.

It's important to point out that marriage doesn't financially benefit all women, but it's equally important to point out that financially it benefits us as a cohort. That is not a reason to do it if you don't feel it would be of any benefit to you, but it is a reason to be clear about how we are better protected as a class.

Also, children aren't a compulsory element even at a Catholic wedding. A woman who's too old to have children can have a Catholic marriage ceremony. I don't think there's ever been a time in the history of the RC church where that wasn't the case?

There’s no family for it to stay in without children.

And “no one cared” about lower classes marrying? Prior to the existence of the Catholic Church in Europe no one registered marriages of any class (though people in all classes celebrated them and literate people like the Jews provided written contracts) and afterward there was a massive push to register all marriges, not just those of the wealthy, to forbid private weddings, to punish elopers, and to ban the practice of requiring parental consent for marriages.

I had a friend with a medical condition struggle with part of the ceremony where you have to say you're 'open to children'. However, they decided they could be 'open' without in any way saying they would have them themselves! But the underlying assumption is that the union is about children, in that ceremony, with that line.

The line is: "Will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the Law of Love and Compassion?" Hard to say that with integrity, if pregnancy could kill you...

I do find it interesting that the insults of stupid, pitiful or nasty seem to coming from married women, aimed at other women expressing a different view.

There's another thread on here from the past few days comparing marriage to joining the Ku Klux Klan.

Yep, and married women have been accused of being thick, gullible, boring, resentful etc, and defined entirely by being married. And some evolutionary biology horsecrap in which all men are promiscuous and all women are not, making anyone who doesn't conform or who is gay or infertile or into kink an inexplicable evolutionary outlier. Which, given how many of those people exist, in itself makes a mockery of it.