How long did it take you to get married after being in a relationship?

[Inexperiencedchick]

Just wandering how long have you been in the relationship before marriage.

We didn't officially live together before marrying but that was due to me being at uni and he was in the RAF. If we'd both stayed in our home town, I think we'd simply have married sooner as we were engaged 3 years, together a total of 4 1/2 years before we married but it was only 2 weeks after my graduation. 17th wedding anniversary in August.

Does it matter if you're married? Well, it's how you feel about it, not everyone else :)

I'd separate the 'moral' viewpoint some people have from the practical one.

It's not immoral to live together without being married, and for some people it works really well. I have friends who've been together twenty years and are blissfully happy, not married. Some people don't like the idea of it as an institution and that's fine too. In an ideal world we wouldn't need it, as we'd all be blissfully happy, never leave or cheat etc.

So don't let anyone put moral/social pressure on you to marry,(a religious friend of mine is under such pressure right now and it's not nice.) but do be practical.

Marriage is as much a business contract as a romantic one. It gives you both certain legal rights for example to do with next of kin/asset splits if you divorce. If you're a regular mums netter you'll see plenty of threads of sahm unmarried mums getting screwed over for example.

Met at 19, living together at 22/23, married at 30 - we took our time

No like I said I wasn't correcting you! just the last 3 posts I went to had the same spelling and I found it odd! I went back to spell it myself to check I hadn't got it wrong haha

@allinall it was 28 years ago...

Not many people think the way you or I think :)

Moved in together after 2 yrs
DC1 born after 3 yrs together
Married after 5 yrs together
DC2 born after 7 yrs together

So slightly arse about face!

We've been together 15 years. Not married. He keeps suggesting it but it's not really my kind of thing x

@coffee LOL :D

Sorry about weird x in my post.

In bed 3 hours from meeting, engaged in about 10 days, married after 10 months ( I had to move to a different part of country so no living together). Married 31 years this year. Very happy!

Dh and I got married last week, we have been together just over 17 years, we took our time.. Well not really we moved in together very quickly and had ds1 within a year and a half of being together. Then had another four kids, yhe youngest of whom is four before finally getting married :)

@Skipton

I had pressure until last September... It's not nice at all.

I openly told my mother that I won't get married due to stress and pressure I had.

No pressure any more or its silence before storm, who knows :)

I'm really in the crossroads here...

I've been married twice.

The first time was to my childhood sweetheart. We'd been together from 18, lived together from 19, got married at 28, he had an affair 18 months later and it was all over.

Met DH 18 months later. We were together for 2 years before we got married, didn't live together (would have upset the MIL and I figured it hadn't worked for me the first time, so why not try something different). It was a lovely adventure coming back from honeymoon to our new life together.

It took time to adjust though...by that time, we were both in our 30s, a bit set in our ways (XH and I had practically brought each other up, so there was no question of adjusting to each other's ways...we never thought about it). We did row quite a bit during that first year...

...but 10 years on, we're still together, with a DS and happier than ever.

Only about a decade.

We got married 19 months after we started dating, engaged after 5 months

We were in our 30s and had a close mutual friend who introduced us and who could vouch for us

Moved in after 9 months, engaged after 2 years, married after 3.5 years.

Married after 14 years. Never engaged.
Lived together from the day we met though.

@coffee

At a crossroad, not "in" right? ;)

DH moved in after 7 months, proposed 6 months later, married a year after that.

3 years

We got together at 27(had been friends for a long time), moved in together after two years. Got engaged two years later, and married a year after that. So five years from fist date to marriage. We've been married four years.

Moved in together after 18 months long distance (two weekends on, one weekend off). It was something of a shock to my system but I got used to it. Engaged 6 months after moving in together, married 18 months after that. Been very happily married for 11 years now.
And I 'just knew' that I wanted to spend my life with him. And I hate it when people 'just know' things!

7 and a half years - but I was just turned 15 when we started going out and he was 15 too

Engaged after 5 years, married a year later. Moved in together three months after we were married (delay due to slow house buying process). Marriage wasn't on my radar and DH's proposal came as a complete surprise.

We were together for 18 months when he proposed (and had been living together for a year). Got married 11 months after the proposal.