To not want to celebrate people's weddings/marriages

[Waferbiscuit]

There are a number of people in my office getting married and the grumpy old cynic in me is finding it hard to get excited. I'm not sure marriage means much these days, what with the almost 50% divorce rate. Given that it's a commitment that is fairly easy to escape from, what exactly are we celebrating - the hope that it will work out or a legal contract committing them to one another?

In fact I can't help but feel that for many couples marriage is primarily the joining together of two people's assets and/or protecting one another, and in that way perhaps couples need to be more discrete about marriage, a bit like one is when they win the lotto or come into an inheritance.... keep it quiet.

Of course if couples do want to make an emotional commitment to each other, that's between them and seems like something you'd agree to privately.

I'm happy to celebrate major achievements in life that involve a lot of effort, things like someone graduating with a Phd or getting a black belt in karate. But celebrating a commitment that can easily be unravelled or a legal contract that ensures the sharing of assets... well that doesn't seem much to celebrate, does it? AIBU?

I don't think you need to be excited for colleagues getting married. You just need to be pleasant and wish them well.

Would love to go to a black belt in karate celebration. Would be full of terrible kung fu antics.

I kind of get you. But I am currently very jaded.

As someone coming out of a truly awful marriage, and surrounded by.a good 50% of friends also having left fairly awful marriages / relationships, when faced with a wedding card in the office - I do have a wry smile and almost sick in the stomach feeling as I draft my best wishes for a beautiful day and a lifetime of happiness for the happy couple, and stuff some
gift money in the envelope.

When really I am thinking…

I hope you chose well!
Do you really know your partner? Seriously?!
I hope your partner will share equally with you on the domestic front!
God please let you not be unaware you are in a coercive controlling relationship and you just don’t know it yet!
Do you have any sense of how your partner will support you if / when children are involved?
If it comes to it, what will your partner be like through divorce!
I hope you marriage will be far happier than mine…

But I am content to acknowledge that I am seriously jaded right now on the relationship front, and look forward to a time when happier thoughts might prevail.

I agree with OP, I hate weddings. So awkward. I've never understood why people think I would want to waste a day at a wedding.

I too have some sympathy with the OP. I work in an office where the only things anyone seems to value or celebrate are weddings and fecundity. When it’s your family or close friends then I get it but expecting everyone to get genuinely excited at Suzy from accounts’ fourth baby is just too much.

I could not agree more with this.

You are a tad grumpy OP.

I find weddings incredibly dull and a total drag to attend. However, I am always very happy and excited for the couple coming together and making a commitment to spend their lives together. Regardless of divorce statistics, I think people are entering into marriage, for the most part, with good intentions and lifelong plans.

YABU and miserable OP. Life isn’t just about how you die, it’s about how you live! So what if half don’t make it to death together, they are celebrating life right now. Don’t go to weddings if you don’t want to, but personally I’d prefer to spend life celebrating happy events rather than just poo pooing them and passing judgement about peoples abilities to stay happy.

How lovely you are

Boy aren't you a wet blanket! You can hold whatever views you want, but basic office courtesy is to at least feign an interest and express warm congratulations. Definitely do not start going on about divorce rates. Which are only about 33%, by the way, not half as you seem to think. The substantial majority of marriages do last.

Weddings are usually rather tedious and boring hence why people get rat arsed to dance like loons and mingle with strangers and relatives you can't stand....
These are normal thoughts you're better off keeping to yourself

Put that as your email signature and no one will invite you to celebrate anything, ever again. You sound like an energy vacuum.

I don’t think the OP is openly being scornful to the people getting married she is just expressing scepticism and fatigue with the whole topic and there’s nothing wrong with that.

i would never dream of telling someone I was bored at the thought of their wedding but it doesn’t make me miserable to yawn inside.

There seems to be an expectation that women in particular ought to get terribly excited about weddings in the abstract and some of us just don’t feel it. As long as you’re not openly rude I don’t see the problem.

This is what I’m finding very bizarre just now, coming at it from the other side though. I’m getting married and have just had my hen do. I’ve done some major things in life like got a degree, a job, had a baby, ran a marathon and they all deserve to be celebrated but I found it such an odd concept that people wanted to cheer etc at me on my hen do when I’m already living in our house with my husband to be and child so other than signing a form what is it that I’m actually achieving? 🙈 I feel like it sounds ungrateful if I say it out loud so I’ve just sort of smiled through it but struggling to understand it. I think marriage is so old fashioned still and all based on these traditions that are way out of date now. The whole white dress thing for someone being pure when I already have a child with him 🤣 the dad ‘giving you away’ from one male to another like a possession thing. The speeches, the gifts etc all acting like this is the rest time these people are going to live together when more often than not now people already bought a house with the personZ we’re having a very low key wedding and no one can get their head round my lack of need for a long drawn out ceremony, speeches and all the formal bits. I’ll sign the bit of paper and have a party but even people bringing gifts doesn’t sit right with me

You sound fun.

You wouldn't survive an hour in my office, the people I work with are brutally honest and would tell you what a miserable bore you are if you spouted that out loud 🤦🏻‍♀️

Is that you, Colin Robinson?

I agree with you OP. It’s taboo to say it out loud though and you have been panned for it by the response on this thread, which I think is unfair because everyone is entitled to voice their own opinion and should be able to express it with being insulted. Speaking up about taboo issues is not a bad thing. Silencing people is. .

Well I wouldnt not go to a wrdding, or not get a gift etc but I very privately believe that going through life as a single person is more of an achievemen than getting married. It's like swimming upstream, drawing on bravery.

Being in a couple is The Norm. The world is built for couples. So, we'll done.....

I've been single, not single, single!

Feel like being single is an achievement that should be celebrated more than it is.

Op you are being a miserable cynical old goat... weddings are lovely!

Are you married? Have you been married?

You’re not married are you OP? 😁

Yabvu and sound incredibly jealous.

Omg I LOVE a wedding!
The happiness, the getting dressed up, the ceremony, the dancing, the mingling, the hope for the future...
In a million years though I wouldn't invite you!!