Do you think there’s a difference between a husband and a partner?

[YaWeeFurryBastard]

Obviously we all know that legally there’s a difference! But do you feel there’s a difference in commitment/ a social difference?

For me, I felt a difference once we mere married and a greater sense of “permanence” and security, but I know others feel no difference at all!

YABU - no difference between the two except the legals
YANBU - a husband is a more committed relationship than a partner

Many couples are fairly equal in terms of earnings nowadays. In my friendship group, almost everyone earns within £10k pa of each other. All above national average but not “wealthy” (everyone in the £35-45k bracket)

I think this is probably more pronounced in younger couples than it was in, say, my grandparents generation, when being a SAHP/part time worker was more common for women.

@Mamma2017

This. A lot of smug marrieds out there! Meanwhile I don’t think the blokes care as much either way & often feel pressured into popping the Q.

I know. Usually these people have been in an organised guilt campaign and passive aggressively bullying their boyfriends to propose to them behind the scenes for years. And then turn around and behave as if being married gives you some automatic moral superiority.

See also the people who fall over themselves to correct you if you have the audacity to describe someone as a "partner" when you don't live together.

The internalised misogyny is strong.

marriage is saying that you trust this person above all others and you are literally backing that up with all your worldly goods.

Marriage is really the opposite of this and anyone who gets married because they "trust someone above all others" is a fool. It's saying: "If I'm giving up work to look after your kids you will compensate me for it and insure me against the risk of you going off."

I see this quite often on here when high-earning women are accused of hypocrisy in not wanting to marry a low-earning partner. But the thing is marriage is really designed to protect someone who is not working because they are giving birth, nursing and looking after children and therefore can't maximise their earning potential. It was never designed to enable a man to sit back and enjoy the fruits of a higher-paid woman's labour, particularly if he isn't pulling his weight domestically.

I would have a degree of sympathy for a SAHD who had committed to taking 10 years out of the workforce to be a primary carer looking after children complaining if his female partner wouldn't marry him (when does that ever happen?) Why should an able-bodied man who has a job (and who in most cases isn't doing more than half of the domestic labour) get to expect the protections of marriage?

Marriage to me means an NHS pension and death in service benefit we both work in the NHS, on the same band, so it's a two way street though. I also don't fancy half my house going to DP's mum if he dies.

I have been married before and it ended horribly, I guess the romantic naive in me wants to have a stab at 'getting it right'. Under no illusion how wrong it can go though but it would be nice to enjoy a marriage before my life is over.

I didn't realise that I felt a difference until my husband told me he was leaving.
I realised then that, for me (although clearly not him), marriage meant trying everything to stay together, including marriage counselling etc, before admitting defeat.

I also realised that marriage is not a contract - when one person wants out, that's it.

Can’t you name your partner on your pension? I don’t work for the NHS but I do work for a local authority and our pensions are pretty similar, my partner is a beneficiary for my pension and death in service payments (and I am for him - he is also a local authority employee)

Plus we have a will stating what happens to the house on the event of our death.

Marriage isn’t needed for these reasons.

Just like the misogynistic generalising in your post, so all or a majority of marriages are due to the manipulative, blackmailing behaviour of women. Sorry but that is just bollox!

@Goldenbear

It's a fair challenge: I'm not saying all marriages are due to the manipulative, blackmailing behaviour of women by any means, of course they are not. But I think if you were to draw a Venn diagram of "women who look down on other women for not being married to their partners" and "women who spend a long time dropping hints about engagement rings and bullying their partners about marriage" you would find the intersection quite big.

There is still a widely-held view among a lot of women that a marriage proposal is a) something which has to come from a man b) something which women are supposed to ambiently agitate for without actually coming out and saying they want and c) the goal of most women's lives.

Some of the posts on here bear this out quite a lot.

@Thepeopleversuswork surely the point of getting married is because you trust each other above all others, are actively choosing to be each other's person in all ways - legally, emotionally, financially?

If you don't trust your partner above all others, not only should you not marry, you shouldn't be in a relationship at all!

I get the pov that marriage is insurance for the less wealthy of the two, if that person cuts back on their career for looking after kids etc, but it still requires a lot of trust to put themselves in that position - it's a leap of faith for both.

Massive difference for me personally. I took my vows very seriously and there have been times when I’d have walked if I hadn’t been married. Fortunately those times were short and infrequent so 23 years on here we are. It’s the best it’s ever been.

No I disagree. I see it as the other way around tbh. If you trusted your partner totally marriage would be an irrelevance. It's specifically because the financially weaker partner can't ever totally count on the lifetime support of the financially stronger one. This isn't just because of the risk of cheating, there are plenty of other reasons why someone may not be able to or want to support you.

I'm not saying you have trust in a relationship by the way, you should, and that applies not just in marriage but in less committed relationships. I just don't believe its either possible or desirable to have total trust in one person above all others forever. You can never know beyond doubt that someone won't cheat on you or get bored of you or die. And you may just outgrow one another and that's also OK. You may feel you have reasonable certainty at one point in time but relationships change and anyone who claims they know what's around the corner is deluding themselves.

That's where marriage comes in: it's the contractual right that underpins your right to say "you can't just refuse to support my kids now just because you don't fancy me any more". Or "my husband was killed in a freak skiing accident, I need to unlock equity from our house to support my kids".

Aside from that it's meaningless, really.

I'd say YANBU. 100% there's a difference but I also think most people who are not married aren't going to be able to compare or will be comparing to a bad marriage experience so it's not a balanced comparison.
Marriage is a commitment like no other, when both parties take the vows seriously it's a beautiful thing.
There's also the thing that if you're not married and do have kids you could be in for one hell of a shock when one partner dies. I don't understand why anyone risks their children's futures by not getting married if they're genuinely as in love and secure as they want us to believe.

No I disagree. I see it as the other way around tbh. If you trusted your partner totally marriage would be an irrelevance. It's specifically because the financially weaker partner can't ever totally count on the lifetime support of the financially stronger one. This isn't just because of the risk of cheating, there are plenty of other reasons why someone may not be able to or want to support you.
It’s got nothing to do with trust. I totally trust my DH. But if he had a car crash tomorrow and we weren’t married, I can guarantee that my MIL would use her status as next of kin to block me from making any decisions about his care. And if he died before we had kids, she’d have taken half of our house and all of his personal assets, as well as claiming his life insurance. Or if he has ill health in the future and needs to go into care, the state would take his pensions and assets and I would have no entitlement. Marriage is an insurance policy against adversity.

Are you familiar with the concept of a will? Or LPA?

Wills can be changed. A marriage certificate is watertight.

I can't explain it. Yes it's different because it was the final bond sealed in our relationship.
But in reality it feels no different, not sure if it's because we bought our house, got the dog and had ds first? So it literally was the last thing to tie us together.

As a single, childless man (not sure if I am allowed to post on Mumsnet - if I am not I apologize) nearing retirement with a reasonable chunk of assets, I would be crazy to get married unless one could enter into a fully enforceable prenuptial contract (as one can in certain American states but in the UK they are only of persuasive value and so far from certain a future divorce court would take any notice of them.

You can definitely declare an unmarried partner to benefit from your NHS pension - there's a ln online form for this.

I think the difference between how it feels to be married or unmarried is clearly a social construct. Lots of us grow up with the idea that marriage = forever, despite clearly knowing it doesn't. I think some people have the idea that marriage = success and validity as a woman.

Personally I feel like marriage = ownership by a man and I don't want to get married. I'm aware that's not real either, and is just a thought stuck in my head, but it's hard to shake.

There isn't really a difference beyond the legal ramifications. Any difference in the quality of the relationship is in our heads.

Exactly. It's an insurance policy against adversity (of which trust or lack of trust is a possible but not necessarily an automatic part). It definitely protects you against all the things you've described and many more.

But the poster above was arguing that trust in another person was a reason to get married. I would disagree with the logic of that statement because a) I think unconditional, in perpetuity trust in another person isn't possible and b) if you could actually fully trust someone in the sense that you could guarantee access to their income and assets in any scenario ever getting married would be a waste of time.

However you look at it, at its heart its an insurance policy.

So would a woman in the same situation. In fact a woman with children would be even more crazy. Equally as half of a married couple with a reasonable chunk of joint assets, either my husband or I would be insane to contemplate divorce.

@Stompythedinosaur

Personally I feel like marriage = ownership by a man and I don't want to get married. I'm aware that's not real either, and is just a thought stuck in my head, but it's hard to shake.

I agree with this as well. I know that's far from the full story and there are many sensible practical reasons to get married but the idea of being sexually and emotionally tied to one person forever makes me feel stifled and a bit controlled. Even though in practice I don't have any desire or the energy to look for anyone other than my DP, the idea of being formally codified to have to be with him forever makes me feel a bit ick.

They can only be changed by the person who owns the will. Nobody else. Presumably if you are vindictive enough to change the will, you would be “losing” assets prior to divorce anyway.

Who knows? The fact remains that a will can be changed without a partner’s knowledge. And in most marriages both partners have a pretty good idea of what joint assets there are and what they’re worth, it would certainly be very difficult for my bloke to hide anything in the event of divorce.

Isn't the obvious one the difference between a husband and partner the financial protection side?

How many SAHM's living in houses owned by their partners end up getting screwed over in they split up.

If their married they'd at least be able to have a chance at staying in the martial home or getting a chunk of money towards accommodation for themselves.