To see a lot of couples in this situation

[Whatyoutryingtodo]

I see quite a few couples I know irl who've been together several years, engaged, own a house and have children, but no wedding plans made.
They've often been engaged for several years too but don't have any plans to get married, and say stuff like they'll 'get round to it at some point'.

Just curious as to why this happens quite a lot, not judging as I myself am unmarried and childless due to no interested suitors!

I think people will say that the man has everything he needs so why bother marrying her... Sometimes I wonder why people consider marriage more of a commitment than children? At least with marriage you can divorce, even if it's expensive and stressful, children you're tied for life.

You haven’t answered OP’s question of why say yes to engagement 10 years ago if you had no intentions ever of spending money on a wedding.
You were obviously happy cohabiting for the 10 yrs prior.
That’s what this post is about. Lots of people are happily unmarried but why get engaged to be married if you won’t ever marry.

I’ve been with my partner for 9 years, engaged for 4 years and had a baby at the beginning of the year. We did have intentions to book a wedding, but then covid happened. We also wanted to buy our own home first. Managed to do that last year, but have now discovered that houses just piss money 😂. So we have zero savings now.

His family is extremely difficult. Lots of politics, and would actually mean we’d probably not invite his mum. So it just seems too stressful to even plan a wedding! She told us once she’d never speak to us again if we didn’t invite her, so it’s put me off.

I’d elope to vegas in a heartbeat… but I’d love for my dad to give me away, and he refuses to leave the UK these days.

So I’ve now just started to tell people we’re not getting married. It’s a lot easier.

Have to admit I don’t understand it. By saying ‘you don’t want dp to get your money’ etc you are essentially saying you are assuming at some point you’ll break up. In my world I wouldn’t be with someone I didn’t intend to stay with therefore why does it matter..? Especially if a child is involved. It screams lack of trust or commitment to me. I wouldn’t stay with someone if I wasn’t in it for life

This was in a response to the pp who said that people weren’t in the right relationship, but I can’t work out how to quote

I struggle with this mindset. Nobody enters a relationship thinking they’ll separate but the majority of relationships do end so it is important to consider what will happen if they do. It doesn’t mean you’re not in the right relationship.

Yes true. But you can't control the other person who may suddenly run off with the post person or milkman.

Not really, you are just assuming that life won't be full of sunsets and flowers with absolutely no unforeseen circumstances occuring which mean actually being together turned out not to be the best way to live for both / either of you.

In my world I wouldn’t be with someone I didn’t intend to stay with therefore why does it matter..?

I intend not to be hit by a car, but I still look both ways. Close to half the marriages end in divorce, and the number of unmarried relationships breaking up is of course much higher. I personally don't think I'm so special that I'm immune to this risk. And then the fact that this was not your original intent really does not matter.

I think it's more about being realistic. Just under half of marriages end in divorce, most people go in to it intending to be married for life but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way.

I don't blame people wanting to protect themselves.

Gee whizz how naive are you?

I just think by the time you’ve shacked up and had kids, marriage or not, the house and assets aren’t ‘yours’. Everything is joint by that stage and should be split as fairly as possible with the kids’ needs taking priority, should you split up.
But of course, it’s an imperfect entity, splitting up. Shit gets ugly, inevitably. And what’s fair to one party is unfair to the other. And one or both parties tend to push the kids’ needs aside. It gets very selfish and painful.

No kids, I earn a lot more than my partner and am the only one with any assets. I’m very hot on my independence, so I would think very carefully about marriage - I would be thinking about it very differently if the roles were reversed!

We find even attending weddings really stressful and talk about whether we’d be up for or capable of “doing” a wedding at all for ourselves.

But I would be tempted by engagement! A beautiful ring, a romantic gesture, and I could stop referring to my 40 year old partner as “my boyfriend” 😁

I think if I’d been engaged for 10 years with no sign of a wedding I’d probably just quietly start referring to my partner as my husband. But only because in my current position marriage would just be a formality, I would push female friends who aren’t financially independent to get that locked down before having children.

It's easy to say you wouldn't stay with someone if it wasn't for life but you may not get to make that decision: people don't tend to have a child with someone they don't intend to build a life with. Life gets in the way. Relationships fail. Nearly half of all marriages fail. You can feel as trusting and committed as you like at 25 or 30 but that doesn't guarantee how things will be 30 years hence. You can't control what the other person in the partnership will do or stop them running off if they choose to do that. All you can do is make sure you are contractually protected from that eventuality (whether that means being married or not being married).

Trusting your entire financial future to someone else just because you love them and want to stay with them for life at a specific point in time is just self harm.

Also many of us have children from previous relationships. I have a 13 year old DD from a previous marriage. I trust my partner completely but if I married him I would be gambling with her inheritance.

If we split up he could theoretically take half of everything I own, including everything earmarked for her. I birthed her, raised her single handedly from the age of four to 11, fed, her, put her through school etc without input from my DP. Why the fuck should he benefit financially from investments I made before I met him which were specifically designed to support my daughter?

It's one thing when you have shared kids. It's quite another matter if you have children from previous marriages/relationships. In that scenario you have a moral responsibility to put their needs before those of a partner who is not the child's parent.

Money? Specially in the last few years. If you got engaged in 2019 or so, the pandemic, cost of living crisis etc will have taken a massive toll on people's wedding plans and funds.

Did you ‘get’ your surname from your dad or your mum?

If it’s your dad, then you technically have taken a man’s name as your own, but your dad’s rather than your husband’s 🤷🏼‍♀️

Only halfway through the thread so apologies if this has been mentioned already.

It gets trotted out most days on MN, and doesn't get any more logical with repetition.

If your husband gets his own name, so do you. If you don't get your own name, neither does he. It's not swapping your dad's name for your husband's any more than it's swapping your own name for your FILs.

But the whole tradition of surnames going through the man's side is patriarchal BS so I can see why lots of woman couldn't give a toss if their name came from the man's side of her family or the man's side of her husband's family. The only way I'd feel attached to my surname is it is was made up or came through my mum's side, or anything else other than the current norm of forgetting woman exist

I'm in this situation.
For years it was lack of funds. I wanted a small wedding with just a few witnesses, and my partner wanted a big wedding with all his friends there.

Fast forward 16 years and he's now conceded that we should just get married with a couple of witnesses as it's just getting silly.

None of this makes the post I replied to any less a logic fail.

If people don't care, that's fine, but they can say as much without the double standard. Not that most of us know how our surnames originated anyway. And if anyone wants to say that their husband and father get their own names, despite virtually never being the first to have them, explain why that doesn't also apply to women.

Weddings do NOT have to be expensive FGS. Also, I find it inexplicable that you had a baby, which costs 1000s of £££ a year, but couldn't manage 1 or 2 hundred £££ for a wedding.

Book a ceremony at Birmingham Register Office | Book a marriage or civil partnership ceremony at Birmingham Register Office | Birmingham City Council

I feel attached to my name because I've had it for 35+ years. No matter where it came from, it's my name.

The double standards of men having their own name but women having their fathers name also doesn't help with the current norm of forgetting women exist.

That Birmingham link is similar to the Manchester one I shared, only marginally more generous. Price creeps up to get any guests more than the two witnesses. Price creeps up to do anything other than the one day, Tuesday. Price creeps up to secure a booking over a year in advance. It seems a cynical fulfilment of the statutory duty.

Been with my partner 5 years, 6 in January. Engaged just over a year.
We got pregnant at the end of covid, told it would be difficult to get pregnant, expected to have to do IVF.
Bought a house 9 months later and moved in 3 months after as we did a big renovation.
We are already tied together with mortgage and child so a piece of paper really doesn't add much.
We are saving and want our child to be about 5 or 6 when we get married so he can enjoy it and spend the night with family.
The Engagement is to show that we want to get married, plan to and love each other. We would just rather get on the housing ladder and start a family.

We are already tied together with mortgage and child so a piece of paper really doesn't add much.

calling marriage a piece of paper is a nonsense, and why so many women get screwed over time and time again.

I don’t regard marriage as a commitment - divorce isn’t exactly difficult or expensive.

However I do regard marriage as a bullshit tool of the patriarchy and would never willingly get married because of that.