to think a lot of men will not marry if they already get everything?

[Pinkshocks]

If he is already getting everything on a plate, a committed partner, a sexual relationship, children, someone to split the bills with, emotional support and a family life, all without making any legal or lifelong commitment, why would he change anything?

I know this does NOT apply to every couple or to ALL men. Some people genuinely do not want to marry and both are happy with that. But if one person wants marriage and the other keeps putting it off year after year, are they really going to change when they are already getting everything they want?

Why would someone buy the ticket when they are already getting the whole show for free?

So how would you describe a women who lives with a man and isn't married to him yet provides all the trimmings a wife does ?

I'd also describe her as a 'mug'.

But is he my fuckable domestic appliance? He does all the cooking and more cleaning than I do.

Like I said, it's grim sexist nonsense.

You may think of yourself as a cow but I don't.

Are you under the impression that unmarried women spend their times fussing around their boyfriends being subservient to him and catering to his every whim?! Or is that what wives do?

Yes, to the first part of your post.
No, to the second.

This is what I have observed anyway....

Basically yes, she was used for sex, giving him offspring and manual labout but she never was good enough to be his Mrs.

You can't have observed that much, then.

OMG, you were being serious.
I'd call her by her name.

What is grim is the woman who gives everything away, then appears baffled when he sees no reason to marry her.

Many women will turn themselves inside out for the promise of a wedding ring.

How refreshing to read the comments. The unmarried living with a man and breeding with him but not on deeds, or having access to his money and questioning their old years, speaking of sexist nonsense. LOL. Tell me who in the matter created the sexist nonsense????

It will only make sense when you are loved, cherished, supported, married to him, treated like an equal and a first priority in his life

I am married, but I wasn't someone who particularly HAD to be married - I'd have been happy without the official stamp.

But I wouldn't be with someone who wouldn't marry me. I'd rather be alone than with someone who didn't care about me, or have romantic enough feelings about me, to deny me marriage if that's what I wanted.

If as a woman you want to be married and your partner refuses, get rid. If he isn't prepared to put your wishes first because he loves the very ground you walk on, walk away.

Do elaborate on what "giving everything away" involves. Is it sex and housework? When I was unmarried I had sex because I enjoyed it, and then-DP and I divvied up the housework equally in order to live in a nice home (he probably did more than I did because he has higher standards).

No one I know!

That's their problem, though. It's not some sort of ironclad gendered rule.

I think a man can love his partner, but not enough to marry her.

Women who give a man everything a wife would give without the legal and financial protection of marriage are making themselves vulnerable. Such relationships have poor long-term outcomes in most cases.

Yes. I would say it's obvious that - unless a woman has substantial independent resources - she would rather be married to the father of her children than not, so in the majority of cases it's reasonable to assume he doesn't want to marry her.

Of all the unmarried couples with children I know, the woman would marry him in a heartbeat if he was willing to marry her.

Some men do settle for a woman who "will do" until the "right" woman" comes along and - inexplicably in my opinion - these women are happy to accept this arrangement.

I think the reason some couples have children together and marry much later, is that the man eventually realises he has over-estimated his romantic worth and the "right" woman will never appear (or if she does, she won't want him).

He then starts to realise he is no better than the woman he settled for and he's facing a lonely old age. Then he'll marry her, if she will still have him.

My point has consistently been that if a woman wants marriage and a man is already happy with the relationship as it is, he has less reason to change the status quo.

So are you suggesting we make our relationships less happy so that a man marries us? You make statements that say why something is a problem, but offer no solution. And what you say is a problem really isn’t?

So do you think that in general men want to have children so bad that they want will get married just so that a woman will have them.

If they don’t want to get married they probably won’t really want children either so it’s not the carrot you think you are dangling.

You aren’t answering it from the point of the original post. Your arguments about marriage are logical, better protections etc. But this isn’t what the thread is about.

The OP tried to say that a man wouldn’t want to get married if he could have all the perks without getting married. But I cannot see how withholding having a child is going to help get a man to marry you…

It's the women who has to physically carry the child for 9 months, have her body wrecked with all the problems that pregnancy creates and then go through a horrendous experience to get it out into the world.
If she's lucky enough not to have a tear and stitches, her fanny will never be the same again and she could end up with pelvic organ prolapse.
So, yes, the process is a woman's responsibility.if she chooses to have a child.
Hubby meanwhile is fed up with no nookie and a baby crying every 2 hours.

And women are sitting there like poor little victims? They have no say in their lives, no choice of their own to make?

If a woman finds herself in this position, she had a hand in it too.

If you want to get married to a man, find one that values marriage itself. A man who believes that marriage is a necessity. Probably will be for Godly reasons

Also.

I had our child before I got married. It didn’t change whether we got married, we did marry a few years later.

We have always pooled money, my husband earned while I was on maternity leave and I spent it on groceries and bills and keeping house for that time. Then I got a full time job at the end of that year.

We earn the same (within £250 of each other annually), our pensions are the same value (again within a couple of thousand), and we still pool our money.

A lot (NOT ALL) who have a child before marriage and end up financially stuck have done so because they’ve picked bad men. Pick a good one and they’ll want the same things you do, love, happiness, respect, equal worth, and if you both want, children and marriage

We regularly have threads on MN where women complain that their husband is useless and won't help with their kids and generally won't pull their weight.

Was he ever asked if he wanted any, for a start?

And having found out he was a useless lump of lard with the first one, why did they go on to have more /