To ask why you got married?

[namechangeo]

So love is the main reason, isn't it? But it's obviously argued that it's a bit of an outdated institution now.

What are the reasons (other than love) that you married? What changes when you're married rather than 'in a relationship'?

@Sexnotgender Fri 25-Jan-19 12:31:26

Because he’s one of the best men I’ve ever met and he makes me a better person.

Also due to his job we couldn’t live together or start a family unless we were married.

Vicar's wife?

We got married so I would be entitled to live in his country..... he said that he wouldn't have been as keen to get married if it hadn't been for that, but as I was giving up so much to enable us to make our life together he felt it was only fair.

Personally I'm a good Christian girl and believe in the promises I made in church: in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer and until death us do part.

Because he wanted a family and I was not prepared to have children with a man who was not prepared to marry me.

Marriage makes us a unit that is greater than the sum of its parts. Our finances are inextricably linked in a way which is difficult to navigate without the framework of a marriage. It allows us to take greater risks than if we did not pool resources. It is like flying with twin engines. There were situations where one engine sadly did fail for a temporary period of time and the other took over.

That said, both of us work and so it is a relatively equal marriage.

Marriage is a business relationship as much as it is a romantic one.

Maybe @ladyinlavende 😂

It all came down to love, really. It meant something to me to make a real and tangible commitment in a public way. There is a weight to a promise made publically that is important to me.

I know there are financial benefits and additional security that result from marriage, but even if there hadn’t been I would still have done it.

We wanted to get married before having children.

I never really wanted to get married but then I met DH and knew I specifically wanted to marry him. If anything were to happen I am not sure I would marry anyone else.

I can't really explain it as we are both very feminist and pretty left wing/not traditional. I earn a lot more and we don't have any children so not for those reasons. I guess we liked the idea of a formal legal contract between us.

I feel we are taken a lot more seriously as husband and wife then as boyfriend and girlfriend (not sure by who?!) but that wasn't really a consideration at the time. In a very cliche way I feel we are more of a team now building a mutual life/future together but again I didn't know I'd feel that way at the time.

That's a really great analogy @blueshoes!

I suppose it's something myself and hubby believe in (morally rather than religiously),we both come from families where all the couples are/were married and married for a long time.We loved each other and both of us couldn't ever see ourselves with anyone else and each wanted children with the other so knew we were each other's 'the one' so getting married seemed logical,we'd had a conversation that loosely went we'd both like to get married at some point in the future to each each other but left it at that and when he felt we were ready to get engaged my hubby proposed.

Because we love each other. Simple as that. Love being married. Feels completely different than being in a relationship. Love that we're committed and I have his name.

Mostly love.

Legal protection for me if we have children and also for financial things such as owning our home together and pension schemes. Also because some laws require someone to be a spouse before they have any entitlement to making decisions about your health if you are incapable, and I want him to be able to advocate for me if needed and vice versa.

I wanted security for me and our future children. I wanted to have the same surname as my children (yes they could have taken mine but I wanted us all to have the same).

We wanted to live together, and because my accommodation is tied to my job and there are strict rules, DH would only be allowed to live with me if we got married.

I needed him to be able to make medical decisions as my next of kin (not family members who might "legally" be my next of kin but I haven't spoken to in years)

It has/had huge tax benefits

automatic inheritance Protection (e.g. default inheritance rights, we hadn't made wills when we were first together)

tsonlyme
Are you me?

Love, making it official, wanting to join each other’s families officially, wanting to create our own family (just us and the cat so far, but it counts for us!), wanting to have the same name, husband wanted it for tradition reasons...and I’m sure there are more reasons. Commitment wasn’t one of them. We had that before we got married and didn’t need the certificate or ceremony to prove it. Financial/legal protection also wasn’t one of them at the time, but it is a benefit.

For work visas. We were living overseas and I could not get a visa. Getting married did not change my feelings for him. I loved him just as much before.

I think I may have been drunk.

Because we love each other. Nothing more really.
And I have never for one moment regretted it, 15 years, 1 dc and a load of ttc heartbreak later.
We both LOVE being married and the feeling of being in it together no matter what happens. And a lot has happened to us over the course of our 19 years together, 15 of them married.
He is the best friend I have ever had and we laugh every day.

1. Because we love each other (deeply)
2. Because we wanted to demonstrate our commitment to each other in front of our loved ones, and make firm and public promises that we would always be there for each other.
3. Because we knew we would like children in the future and we wanted to share a family name.
4. Because we wanted a special day and a honeymoon :) (and my wedding day was one of the best days of my life! So didn't disappoint! And our honeymoon was incredible, think about it almost daily still! At least weekly!)
5. Because I guess it's tradition! And we always imagined marriage as part of our future.
6. Because when else do you get the chance to wear a beautiful dress that costs more than a car! And that makes you feel like a million dollars :)

PS. For context - my cars have never really cost more than 500 pounds!!

So we could both have the same surname as our kids.

I offered to change my surname by deed poll but he thought that boring and since we do love each other to bits it made sense

So that I can get a HM Forces Railcard and save one third on rail fares?

www.hmforces-railcard.co.uk/

So I felt more secure having dcs with dh. I was quite happy living together and owning a house together. It felt easier to have the same surname, I guess more conventional.
I was really worried that I'd be a rubbish wife. I had therapy. I felt much happier just being the girlfriend. But now I'm glad I'm his wife and he's my husband. Boyfriend and girlfriend are stupid at 45. We're not 21 anymore.

Primo dynamite sex

Financial protection. Just as well we did as we were only married 4 years when DH died. I'd be well in the shit if we hadn't married