Not believing in marriage is a luxury belief

[ironorchids]

Is it me or are there a lot of men these days who disbelieve in marriage for various reasons at the expense of the women they are with who believe in it, want it and have wanted it their whole lives?

Whatever the various reasons they give for disbelieving in it, at the end of the day, it is a luxury belief for someone who will never ever have to worry about or to take on the risk of potentially getting pregnant, having to have months or years off work to recover, feed them from your body, or even risk being left holding the baby as you're the one physically pregnant, if their partner leaves?

Disbelief in marriage is a luxury, and it's usually (not always) when you are free from all that risk and have that luxury that you can afford to believe all the other reasons so many men give (at the expense of the women they're with) for not believing in it.

I know plenty women who don’t believe in it either.

The trick is you need to find someone who feels the same way about marriage as you do, whatever side of the fence you’re on.

I agree.

I think only childless, FT working/financially independent people benefit from being unmarried when in a couple. And even then, you'd be better off married for tax purposes if one of you died.

I know women don't believe I marriage too, but I have heard time and again of relationships where the man does not want marriage but the woman does and it causes a lot of pain.

I have never heard it in reverse where a man believes in marriage but the women they're with doesn't. Maybe I have a very biased perspective.

I have no idea how many men behave this way. What I often see on Mumsnet, though, is confusion about what marriage is and why it is or isn't a good idea for each individual couple.

Firstly, there is no such thing in the UK as common law marriage. If you want your position as partners recognised in law you need to marry or get a civil partnership.

Secondly, don't get confused between marriage and a wedding. By all means have a party when you get married if you can afford it, but if you can see it would be best to get married don't put it off because you can't afford a big wedding.

What it is: a legal contract that gives each spouse legal responsibilities and rights. These matter if the relationship breaks down or if one partner dies.

There will be posters on this thread saying that they earn as much as their partner or more, and therefore if their relationship broke down or their partner died they'd be OK. That's great for them, but those women are very much in the minority of the population as a whole. Most women earn less than their partners once they have children. If they are not married or in a civil partnership and their partner leaves or dies they may be left in a difficult position. No rights over their partner's assets or pension pot. If the partner owns the house and the woman's name isn't on the deeds, she has no right to stay there. This lack of legal status really matters for a lot of women.

The big group who need to think carefully about marriage/CPs are people with children from an earlier relationship who want to protect their assets to pass them onto the children. If they married/CPd their partner would become entitled to a large share of those assets through the courts, even if the parent has made a will leaving everything to the children. Once they've been married for a while, that might well be what they both want, but in the early stages it probably isn't.

I know women don't believe I marriage too, but I have heard time and again of relationships where the man does not want marriage but the woman does and it causes a lot of pain.

Those men often go on to marry someone else though, very quickly after they start dating. Sometimes I think people need to read the room and leave, if they’re not getting what they want.

Why would a man get married when women clearly benefit far more from marriage than men despite how many times I’ve seen it claimed on MN that men benefit more 😂 most women will happily have children with men and live with them without marriage so who really benefits more?

I think it was one of the first beliefs to be identified as a "luxury belief"

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I think these are wise words. " Secondly, don't get confused between marriage and a wedding. By all means have a party when you get married if you can afford it, but if you can see it would be best to get married don't put it off because you can't afford a big wedding."

It always makes me laugh when people say they don't believe in marriage. It exists. It's not Santa.

I think there's a small number of people who have a clear, lifelong objection to marriage based on sincerely held beliefs. There's a much much larger group of people who claim not to 'believe' in this thing that demonstrably exists only whilst they're with someone they don't want to marry.

I don’t think not believing in marriage is a luxury belief (I’m a woman and I don’t believe in it) but I do think there’s a growing trend of Peter Pan men in their 30s who want to live like it’s their 20s. That means stringing along partners their age who DO want marriage/kids but who they have no intention of or incentive to marry because they get everything for free already. And they haven’t started thinking about kids. I know so many women in this position, where it’s like… do they stick with the person they love in a relationship that seems to be going nowhere or risk it all for a chance at marriage and kids with someone else

Other way round here. I'm the one who has no interest in getting married. Been there. Done that. Yes we have children and yes we love each other but we each own our own houses. I like it that way. I like that we can choose to be together every day and we're not be tied financially to stay together. No messy divorce. I like the simplicity of it. I love him just as much, I just don't need, or want the complications that marriage brings.

It's not the disbelief in marriage that I have objection to, and can think of circumstances where a couple may decide they don't want marriage, or where someone is clear they won't be marrying again so their assets go to their children.

What annoys me is the so-called disbelief in marriage some men have, but they also expect their partner to have children and sacrifice her long term financial future and short term financial independence to play wife and run the home. These men don't lack a belief in marriage. They know exactly what marriage would mean that's precisely why they don't want it

You only need to read some of the threads on here to see why some men are probably right to not believe in marriage.

You think all the "getting my ducks in a row" posters are all perfect wives who happen to have terrible husbands. There are always two sides to a story.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s it was very, very unusual for couples to live together and have children without being married. Looking back now, there will have been unmarried couples, often because one of them couldn't get a divorce from a failed first marriage, but they usually pretended to be married to avoid the stigma for themselves and their children.

Now, I'm glad we don't shame people nowadays, and I'm totally behind the idea that if a marriage has failed it should be fairly straightforward to get a divorce. But we do seem to have forgotten some of the reasons marriage was invented in the first place. The Peter Pan types mentioned on this thread must think they've died and gone to heaven. They can stay with a woman as long as it suits them, have children, build up their own assets, and then when it doesn't suit them any more, walk away and start again, assets intact. Selfish gits, but why are so many women unable to assert themselves to say 'No, I'm worth more than that'?

I have a friend who is pretty clear. When she was younger neither she nor her partner 'believed' in marriage . Two and a half decades later most of which spent as a single parent, she thinks she was a complete fool.

The dad, who came from a very rich family, swanned around taking the kids on nice holidays but left her to pay for the day to day stuff and do the child rearing. Even now the kids are grown, her financial position is not great, and she will have to work for a long time to pay off her mortgage on a very ordinary small flat.

Marriage provides women with security. Women usually are the ones who need to provide kids with security.

Perhaps more importantly why do these women out themselves in that position ie staying with someone who wants something so fundamentally different? This is 2024, it's really very easy to make your choice and stick to it.

I was one of the women who didn't want to get married while my partner did.

Tbh, he wasn't 'the one'. Wise decision not to marry him, as I later found out he was keeping £100k of unsecured debt secret from me. No, I have no idea how he managed to borrow so much.

My husband now? Couldn't wait to marry him, and he felt the same.

There wasn't a chance in hell that I'd have had my DC outside of marriage. I made that clear from the beginning. We both earned roughly the same salary when I was pregnant with my first, but I knew it was going to be me that took the financial hit. I knew that I was going to be more vulnerable.

It was my choice to take the hit, and ultimately most women end up making career sacrifices when they become mothers. They often choose to make those sacrifices willingly. It's too bad that unmarried women that make this choice often don't realise their mistake until it is too late.

Almost every post I've read on here by a woman who's divorced but dating again is hardline against getting married for a second time. (And for good reasons.)

I have 3 kids and a women, never been married and never will.
just my choice.

If you want marriage just get married before you have kids, it's not rocket science.

I'm always slightly puzzled at why women live with men they're not married to.

I mean, years ago, living together was like a kind of "trial marriage" where people lived together for 6-12 months to see if they were compatible before getting married.

So, those of you who live with men you're not married to, my question is this - why? (not talking about people who do it for financial reasons obviously)

@NotSuchASmugMarriedAnymore but why if not for financial reasons is it needed ?
my DP is now no longer around but we lived with kids without being married for many years. There was never a need for us to get married and it didn’t change anything.
our day to day lives were exactly the same as if we had a wedding.

I cant afford to get married again because I want my DS to inherit my home and assets. I couldn't possibly risk a man fleecing me.
I've been proposed to twice in recent years and both left when I said no and explained why.
I just don't trust men any more. There are a ton of cock lodgers out there wanting an easy life.

Thats interesting that both the men who proposed to you left when you said no. You'd think they'd have stayed if they loved you so much they wanted to spend the rest of their life with you.

Incidently, where are they now? I presume they just found another woman to live with.

I don't trust men either. I think they see women as a "resource" - something that exists to benefit them.