Why don't more of us women 'demand' marriage from our 'man'?

[faraday]

Should I say Flame Alert! Stand well Clear! Touch Paper Lit!

But seriously, as an older person (46!!) it still- well, surprises me how many of us perhaps talk ourselves around in knots into believing the actual commitment of marriage isn't for us but it's actually a smoke screen for fear that if we DEMAND our 'DP' marries us he may run away?

What do we think?

You can get so far with a legal contract, but you will never have all the financial equality of being married. I know I keep banging on about htis, but a share of pensions etc is very imp.- for oldies like me. Many of my friends Dhs will have pensions in excess of £50k a year- they would get half if they divorced (unless clean break and offset) and a quarter when widowed.

That's a lot of money to throw away.

If you just don't care or need it, fine, and if marriage really doesn't mean anything to you, fine, each to their own, but please stop saying that legally it's all the same, cos it's not.

Dittany

Yes, the law was wrong- no one can possibly disagree with you on that- that's why it was changed - by men!!!

But how many men actually used the security of marriage to rape? Doesn't say much about the man or the relationship does it?

I hardly think that an repealed law is a reason to say you don't agree with marriage per se, and ditto your comments on "property".

It is possible to have a co habitation agreement.If you have a pension and have a nominated recipient this can cause problems in some cases if you aren't married as some co's don't recognise it.If you don't state a benficiary the money is paid into the estate and then the partner gets it.We have all this covered and it seems water tight and I know several others who have.Are you a lawyer?

howtotellmum - I agree with what you said.

Dh & I were together 13 yrs before getting married - plus I had an aunt & uncle telling me I was walking the edge of a fiery pit by cohabiting, the wrong thing to say to someone who was into extreme sports.

However at 30 the biological clock started ticking & although I do enjoy upsetting the religious fruitcakes in the family, I did want the legal & financial security marriage brings when we had children. My dh was also 'born out of wedlock', although his parents subsequently married, in the 70s 'bastard' was a term still used in its proper sense, so although he wasn't much fussed about the big white wedding he did want to be married if we had children.

In the end dh was gung-ho for the white wedding since it was 'better value for money' than the registry office his sisters had.

Romance played little part.

Has the institution of marriage actually been debased? I don't think so. Dittany, are you single?

Heated, my DP isn't very romantic either. If he ever does try to surprise me, it always backfires! lol. I agree with your legal and financial reasons, but not as much as the 'committing to each other' reason. Perhaps that comes by default in a lot of marriages.

'I wanted to have a ring before I lived with anyone again, but I've been living with my DP for almost a year now without any suggestion of marriage.'

See, I don't get that. If you wanted to be married before you lived with someone, then why did you still move in with him?

I understand, you love him and all that, but sorry, I love me, too, and if I knew it was just going to make me unhappy to live together and not be married, then I'd have never moved in. The only result of that is usually misery for all involved because you're not happy and end up resenting your partner.

I wouldn't want a man who had to be bamboozled into marrying me, or have his mates hint at it.

There are plenty of men out there to marry without having that.

DH and I married because we wanted to.

It's actually impossible to have "all the legal stuff in place" because cohabitation agreements aren't legally binding. If you don't want to get married, it is essential that you each have a fair share of your joint assets in your sole name.

All assets of my relationship are mine and in my name. Dp doesn't want to get married & it is only him that would benefit from marriage so there is no way I will ever be "demanding" it from him! And he is against it on principle so he isn't about to ask me ever!

I doubt I am the only one in this situation but I think a lot of folk feel automatic pity for women who are not married to their partners!

Just to clear up this 'marriage was an institution for men to rape women' point.

It is quite correct that it only clearly became law that a man could be convicted of raping his wife in 1991. That was a result of the decision of the House of Lords in a case called R v R.

There was never any statute exempting a man from rape laws, in fact there was very little law on the point at all. The problem was that one legal commentator, Hale, had given the view in 1736 that as marriage was irrevocable and involved consent to intercourse rape of a wife was impossible as there would always be consent. There were hardly any cases on this point but when there were in most judges expressed reservations, got round the ?rule? (e.g. where there was a separation) or convicted of something else. Once the case got to the House of Lords the all male judges decided unanimously that the ?supposed marital exemption in rape forms no part of the law of England?. I hesitate to post wikipedia references but it is actually quite accurate here

So the ?supposed? marital exemption was always based on scant evidence, hardly applied and it's doubted that it was ever a true law. Of course it was an outrageous and degrading supposed law but it hardly discredits the whole of marriage. I?m sure that there has been ?rape? within marriage throughout time but that is also true of abuse in non-marital relationships. The sad fact is that there is often abuse within intimate relationships,

There were, however, other very clear rules that did treat women and their property as being under the control of men. Again I don't see why that discredits marriage now. For example, employment relationships were historically exploitative and could be degrading but we don't view employment as a legal institution as permanently carrying connotations of master/servant.

Of course I'm not saying that everyone should marry (though I do think there is a worrying ignorance in the country as a whole on the issue) but I can't agree with the view that marriage is permanently tainted by the past.

My point, expat was that perhaps the urgency of marriage is slowly diminishing in my relationship. I'm very happy just to be with him. And I can't stop his mates asking him when they should 'buy a hat' because I'm not normally there when they say it. I haven't asked them to say anything and would prefer it if they didn't. See?

PS I do want to marry him one day, all the same.

On the topic of rape within marriage, you only have to read some of the posts on Relationships to realise that many men are almost if not actually raping their wives and partners, by having sex withthem against their wll.

You can't say that by marrying you submit to an outdated version of the law, or that in some perverse way marraige reinforces the idea of rape being acceptable.

Back to the OP- if you have to coerce your partner into marriage then it's not worth having- it should be a joint decision- better find out why he is not interested.

PLEASE WILL SOME PRO MARRIAGE PERSON EXPLAIN THIS:

a much voiced reason for getting married is that without the legal commitment you can be left high and dry financially because you have no claim on your man's pension, property, assets.

PLEASE EXPLAIN what is in it for the man in this scenario?

The woman in the piece is already acknowledging the possibility of a split and wants to be covered in that event.
If the man acknowledges this same possibility (and we are assuming he has the assets) WHY THE HELL WOULD HE WAHT TO GET MARRIED????

PLEASE SOMEONE. I have asked this question in numerous real life gatherings and noone can give an answer

Bigted: On the whole, quite a lot of men want to get married (when they do want to get married) because at some level - which may be quite deep down - they think that 'wife' equals 'all the housework done and sex whenever I want it'.
The phrase 'conjugal rights' may not have much if any legal validity now, but it sums up a mindset of men being entitled to have sex with women and the women's opinion of this being irrelevatn.
There is also a long history of men's financial exploitation of women through marriage - in the past, any property/money/valuables a woman might have (if, for instance, she inherited a house or jewellery or indeed money) became her husband's property the minute they got married.
Having said all that, I am actually in favour of 'marriage' in the sense of people (not necessarily just het couples) wanting to make a public commitment to each other and have a big party to celebrate that.

Because they will run away!

SGB I don't think you got my point.
I specifically mean when women give as a reason for marriage so they will be better off if they split up.

Do they have to HIDE that reason from their intended?Because that same thing is a reason for the man NOT to marry.

The same is true in the case of a man with no assets/income. He may well want to marry to ensure greater security if they split, in which case why would the woman want to?

This second scenario is the one I am in, by the way.

bigted,

While it is true that the financial and legal implications of marriage may be a sensible reason to be aware of (to protect inheritance), the main reason should be because of a couple's love for one another.

If the main reason is for financial/legal gain, the marriage can be deemed a sham. Such people are most probably black widows/widowers/gold-diggers. If one party has a lot of assets in comparison to the other, s/he should be aware that this could happen to her/him and take steps to avoid it, i.e. get a pre-nup drawn up.

Perhaps the people you have spoken to have given very good explanations, but you didn't want to listen to them.

But why does love equate to marriage?

Marriage is actually nothing more than a legal thing, as those people who do it for love find out if they are unfortunate enough to split up

I assure you the people I have spoken to have not given a good explanation and how odd for you to suggest I did not want to listen.

Please reread what I said.I said nothing about protecting inheritance.

You have still not given an answer.

Agree clwc. Most people don't marry thinking "oh, I'll be ok if it goes tits up because my other half is loaded". I'd hazard a guess that most people get married thinking they will be together forever and hoping that they don't become a divorce statistic.

I'm not surprised some people are disgusted by the idea of marriage - I mean, you could be legally raped within it till the early 1990s, even if separated; you couldn't own anything if married until less than 150 years ago; and only a little further back, the law actually laid down that you could be reasonably chastised as long as the stick was no thicker than your husband's thumb. And then there was the cheering fact that you had no legal status at all. Blackston said in the 16th century that, "'Man and wife are one person under the law, and that person is the man.' Nice.

But... I wouldn't buy a house with dh, knowing we both wanted kids, without getting married. That's not because I don't trust him, it's because I studied law. Every woman in every case had a guy she thought she could trust, and then when they split up - oops. Suddenly she couldn't. And marriage was the best protection against exploitative, deadbeat arses.

Seeker, not only do most people not plan their lives out that way (cohabitation, unlike marriage, requires no definite decision; you can drift into it), it also doesn't cover every eventuality. You get half the house, great, but if you have a tiny baby all you're entitled to is child support, if unmarried. If you have a small baby and you're married, you're entitled, as a rule, to occupy the family home while they're small if that is financially feasible, and to spousal maintenance until it's reasonable to expect you to return to paid employment.

There's also the fact that most people in this country think there's such a thing as common-law marriage, and just don't know the gulf between rights for an ex-wife, as opposed to ex-girlfriend. Rebecca Bailey-Harris did some research showing it was 60 odd percent, I think. That means they don't sort paperwork out, because they don't know they need to. On top of which, marriage is a flexible contract, that adjusts with circumstances. Property shares, wills, etc. are rigid; they don't change as your lives do.

Australia has what they call "de facto" marriage, which gives certain rights after a certain length of time. Until we have something like that over here, I'd never have kids without marrying... unless I were the richer party! Because marriage these days protects the poorer party, usually a woman, when historically it obliterated women's identity/rights almost completely.

Catz - the way it was explained to us was that the common law held that it was a crime to have unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman against her will. "Unlawful" had always been interpreted as "outside lawful wedlock." The HoL just said, oops, we disagree with that interpretation, what that REALLY means is that it's unlawful because it's nonconsensual. Basically, we were told, it's judge-made law, and retrospectively applied at that, only who was about to argue with it - Parliament could hardly kick off, under the circumstances. Didn't the men in question even try to get the ECHR to overturn it as being applied retroactively, but the ECHR held that some things are so intriniscally unlawful that you cannot appeal to a human rights court to argue their legality in your jurisdiction?

One of the academics at my university told us that another had argued, before that decision, that it was legal, and would require Parliamentary intervention. He said a marital rapist was "a bounder and a cad... but not a rapist." The jaw-drops were universal.