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’m a bit confused OP. What exactly are expected from you in these situations?

@Trying20 To be fair only one of Henry VIII's marriages ended in divorce, maybe 2 if you count Anne of Cleves (I don't, I think it was more of an annulment since she was supposedly so ugly he couldn't bring himself to consummate it). The others he either had executed or died until Katherine Parr managed to outlive him.

Until divorce became accessible to ordinary people in the 20th century it was still not uncommon for couples to break up. There was no law preventing people from just leaving their spouse, and many people just did. The problem was that they were still financially linked and up until the Married Womens Property Act in 188something a woman could be abandoned by her husband, work really hard to make a living on her own, and then have him swan back in and take everything she'd earned. Divorce made things fairer.

Anyway I am really on this thread to point out that the idea that in "the past" women "stayed in the home" is ahistorical nonsense extrapolated from Victorian ideals of middle class femininity, bearing little resemblance to how most people lived. My mum was probably the first woman in generations of our family to be a stay at home mum/housewife - working class women worked. If there has been any consistency in the meaning of marriage throughout history it's been its role in the creation of an economic unit, the promise to work together to build a household, and I think it's the element of trust and mutual respect you need to make that work which is the real lasting factor.

In this essay I will

OP, instead of giving other people’s weddings any mental energy, you can focus instead on learning the difference between discrete and discreet

I do think you are unreasonable. This is a happy occasion, something worthy of celebration! If you don’t like them, don’t go. What a sourpuss you sound.

Okay ignore my parents and grandparents generations (obviously GPs weren’t included in my figure and 3 of those I attended were of my parents generation) my experience of divorce is still low.

If I just think of the weddings I’ve been to since Ive been married (or during that year - lots of marriages that year and I was towards the end) - 15 weddings (I remembered another 3 since my first post) only 2 divorces, and two where one of the couple have died. Those are the weddings I actually attended, I know lots of people that I’ve met since they married and are still happily married. I honestly don’t know many people who have been divorced sorry.

Yanbu OP. I feel the same. Nothing at all to do with 'being miserable' FFS. We're all different and that's fine.

I agree - and I do say it out loud! Thankfully none of my friends are interested in getting married. Weddings and the wedding industry is just capitalism and misogyny on steroids, and as much as marriage and the terms on which people do it have evolved, imo you can’t really divorce (pun intended) it from its sexist history. It’s an institution that’s highly outdated in this day and age.

I’ve absolutely no interest in people getting married. I wouldn’t contribute to a collection for a colleague or bring a gift to a wedding with a gift list or pleas for money. I can’t bear the grabbiness of that, I’d turn up empty handed just to make a point. As I said, most of my friends are actively opposed to the idea of getting married so this is unlikely to become an issue!

and no, I’m not single or bitter. Strangely I don’t feel the same about same sex marriages because I think they represent something completely different.

just see it as a party. Doesn’t everyone love a party?!

@Trying20

Your really reaching. What one fat out of control King did doesn’t negate the fact that for the longest time marriage was for life and taken very seriously where as now divorce is easy and normal.
Marriage has never changed that significantly in western culture for thousands of years.

Op is everything i hope i never become.

@Trying20

And of course it means less today. In days gone by people meant their vows and it was about building a family, today someone could lose the feels and divorce at any time or “grow apart” and divorce after a lifetime. Knowing that of course it means very little in comparison to days gone by.

Married people used to call their Mil and FIL Mum and Dad and really mean it - because it was for life. Nowdays they’re just people in your life while your with your spouse, which may or may not be long, whatevs, play it by ear.

Hey op, you kicked a hornet’s nest here.
But to most people wedding/marriage is a tremendous social status symbol, so hearing someone not celebrating that (them) is going to make people angry.

YANBU

@badgermushrooms

Actually in the past most women were in the home raising children and doing “womens work” (which lessened with industrialisation and was always next to nothing if you were rich). It’s a modern delusion of some to pretend that their were women in the past who were working in comparable ways to today, possibly driven by some kind of feminist fantasy of the past, Idk.

Women were in the home in general in the 1600’s, in the 1200’s - actually pretty much every time since the cave. Then we were in the cave. That’s the reality, but it’s not a disgrace to say that because there was mportant work and child rearing to be done in the home. Still is, just less grunt work now because of technology.
If you were working and you were a woman in those days it wasn’t in any job you would want - but something that unmarried or abandoned wives eked out a neater existence through. Working was nothing to aspire to for women back then.

When you make up a false past around this you knock your sisters from those times to build yourself up. You don’t need to do that. There is no shame in being in the home.

And of course it means less today. In days gone by people meant their vows and it was about building a family, today someone could lose the feels and divorce at any time or “grow apart” and divorce after a lifetime. Knowing that of course it means very little in comparison to days gone by.

Yes it does mean less. Most people getting married today are already living together. It’s not the start of a new life, the step into the unknown, the leap of faith that it used to be. I’m 61, I went to a few weddings in my 20s when the couple weren’t cohabiting (in fact my own was one of them!} and there was a real emotional charge compared weddings I’ve attended recently where the couple had been cohabiting for several years.

Most people still see marriage (to pretty much any man) still as an highest achievement woman can make.
That and having kids.

I bet you have so many friends 🤣🤣

People absolutely do expect women people to be excited about Suzy’s fourth baby. I do sign cards, obviously, but what I object to is the fawning and excited squealing and being expected to want to participate in endless talk about names, clothing and birth plans. If this doesn’t happen where you work then lucky you, I guess.

@YouAreNotBatman Nailed it.

HATE weddings, HATE getting invited to them, HATE the expense, HATE sitting beside people I don't know making small talk, HATE listening to people's shit speeches, HATE the group photo, HATE the stupid photo booth, HATE the crap DJ and HATE Rock the Boat and Dancing Queen. HATE the long, crap, boring, drunken day and night of it.

So I always make an excuse and don't go. Weddings are expensive enough with me sitting there taking up a seat and a dinner and absolutely hating it.

@YouAreNotBatman

Most people still see marriage (to pretty much any man) still as an highest achievement woman can make.
That and having kids.

Yep. And this is what some of us bristle at.

It's the unspoken expectation that a wedding is always the pinnacle of any woman's lifetime achievement and that it trumps almost everything else: work, friendships, academic success, hobbies, everything.

Go into any average workplace in the UK and try this out: there's a distinct difference in the reception afforded to a woman saying she's just achieved a PhD compared with a woman saying she's getting married. There's a sort of hysteria which takes over when a wedding is involved which some of us find utterly baffling.

It's not that anyone wishes anyone getting married any ill or is jealous or bitter. It's a sense of confusion, frustration and irritation that in this day and age it still is seen to trump any other achievement.

Most people still see marriage (to pretty much any man) still as an highest achievement woman can make. That and having kids.

Yes. So depressing.

@Thepeopleversuswork

People aren’t really impressed by PHD’s these days though. It’s not the big deal it used to be when higher education was more limited and prestigious.
Academics may think people should be impressed and wowed by it but they’re not.

@Trying20

The point you were making was that marriage changing from being for life and divorce being looked down to marriage being easily broken and divorce commonplace wasn’t any bigger change than had been happening in centuries gone by and so didn’t lessen marriage. That point is completely false.

Divorce becoming common and easy is a fundemental change to marriage and far more minor changes over the centuries didn’t alter the basic conception of marriage as that has.

Marriage was for the longest time, expected to be life long. Today it is a celebration of a relationship which may or may last and can end for any reason (and will a large minority of the time).

You can wilfully ignore that or try to argue against it but it’s just reality. Marriage is not the big deal or as special as it once was, the consequences of it and binding nature of it are far less than in the past - and so people gradually see it as no big deal, just a days party for a relationship.

These days a wedding is more like a birthday party, if you miss someones there’s always next year lol.