Via Franco Folini @ Flickr.
There has been lots of news–mostly bad–about the fight for marriage equality in the States.** Not only do I feel for my many friends who are prevented from legally wedding, I believe that institutionalizing same-sex marriage is crucial if we’re going to actually live our stated “and justice for all” values (the patriarchy-smashing aspect is good, too).
So why aren’t I married? I’m always on about that Dude I live with, right? We just celebrated our 12th Unniversary this weekend (if by “celebrated” you mean said “huh, twelve years…pretty crazy’”). If I’m down with commitment, and I think the right to marry is so all-fired important for queer couples, why don’t I make it legal already?
I could jabber all day about why, but for your reading convenience, I’ll boil it down into three main reasons. Walk down the aisle (of my thinking) with me.
1. I fucking hate weddings. I have always hated weddings, even before a undergraduate research project on the Wedding Industrial Complex revealed how far reaching and insidious it is. Even if you think marriage is nifty, weddings are insipid frippery; they have nothing to do with being in a relationship. I hate the froofed-up pretty princess aesthetic, I hate the Passing of the Woman from dad to dude, I hate all the things you “must” do, like have a guest book, and include your friends reading bad poetry, and make everyone do the Chicken Dance at the reception. I hate that everyone–no, really, everyone–thinks that their wedding was totally original and personalized and equalicious, even though you could set your watch by the lighting of Unity Candles, and virginity fetishism is in full effect and jeezusgawd if I ever hear Canon in D again I will destroy the universe with my explosive scorn. I may have just triggered one thousand defensive “you’re judging me!” comments, but so be it. I’m glad you found a loving companion, but I fucking hate weddings. Even yours.
2. Though I am no libertarian (perish the thought!), I don’t like the idea that government or society-at-large gets to decide that certain relationships count more than others. Even though I know there are all sorts of benefits to being married, I’m not interested in saying “well, before the twenteenth of Smarch our relationship wasn’t real enough, but now the state of Missitucky says it’s okay for you to visit me in the hospital.” That’s straight-up bullshit, and I’m grateful that more and more people are recognizing it as such. Pilgrim Soul has written before about the privileging of hetero love-matches over all other relationships, and certainly we’ve heard from a number of our readers who, like me, are in permanent-but-not-licensed relationships (we are among the 12 million co-habiters in the US), as well as many who would welcome a “non-traditional” living arrangement, like our oft-mentioned Harpy House. Just as [dad + mom + 2.3 kids + golden retriever] is no guarantee of “family,” a marriage license is no guarantee of a mutuality or partnership. (Neither is living together, of course.)
3. And last of all, I don’t want to be married. I really never have. Despite cultural messages overwhelmingly to the contrary, I never daydreamed while growing up about a big rock, a white dress, or being whisked away by Mr. HisLastName. I didn’t dream about finding my Other Half. Hell, I didn’t even dream about being monogamous; I thought a small group of kind/hot/reliable boyfriends, none of whom lived with me, was the best option. (The idea is still has its appeal.) I didn’t–and don’t–want to be a wife, with all of the emotional baggage of that term. I want to be a friend and a lover and a partner.
4. (I lied. There are four.) I’m not religious, so the idea of asking for cosmic approval of my household arrangements is even more absurd than registering with my state. I believe in the existence of the state, at least. The fact is that most religious objection to both same-sex marriage and cohabitation is based on a serious case of obsessive panty-sniffing: somewhere, someone is getting it on, and IT MUST BE STOPPED. My reactionary streak makes me wanna go jump the Dude’s bones whenever I hear that.
* * *
I don’t ever intend to marry, and that puts me in the minority of cohabitors. Although I do get tired of answering The Question (I’ve stopped saying anything about my personal life to students, who, while surprisingly queer-friendly, are invariably shocked, if not scandalized, to think that marriage is not the goal of a relationship). I don’t believe it would deepen my feelings for the Dude or enrich our life together. To the contrary, it would make me feel like my relationship was no longer my own. And if what benefits government and society is “stable committed relationships,” government and society might consider getting the hell out of my–and my queer friends’–way.
I leave you with some of the lyrics to a song that the Dude dug up for me a few years ago: “Darling Annie,” by the still ass-kicking Peggy Seeger (who typically performed it with her longtime love Ewan MacColl):
EM: If you marry me, I’ll give you everything I have;
You won’t ever need to earn a penny
I will be your man and the ring upon your hand
Will show the world that you’re my darling Annie.
PS: Dearest love, I’ll be glad to add your wages onto mine
I can work and keep myself so handy;
You can be my man without a golden wedding band
For I’ll tell the world that I’m your Annie.
Chorus:
For it’s love, love will hold us, love is everything
Who could dream of anything that’s better?
Not the vow, not the string, not the golden wedding ring
Just you, love, you and me together.
Damn, I’m such a softie.
*Title stolen from Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller. The companion site to their book is here.
**I’m hoping that New Jersey Senate gets this issue right before the repugnant Chris Christie takes over as governor next month.
That’s a really lovely song excerpt. I think the only thing that’s a bit of a shame here is that you have to explain so fully and so frankly your reasons for being unmarried to each other instead of being married, and that’s reflective of our whole society’s lack of getting what is and is not their fucking business.
Oh, and I have no doubt you’d have hated my wedding with the fury of a thousand suns. Seriously. I mean, it was in the big Church and everything.
The first feminist aphorism I learnt was my mother’s frequent caterwaul: ‘Brides are Miss World, dressed as the Virgin Mary’.
“I don’t like the idea that government or society-at-large gets to decide that certain relationships count more than others.”
That whole section is a gross misrepresentation of what’s going on. The reason it is a government institution is that you make a social contract with the government and society at large, that is theoretically beneficial to “them,” and in return you are afforded extra rights relating to said contract.
(hit post before I meant to)
That being said, I can agree with most of the rest of that. But there are reasons that the government would like you to make a contract with them in return for these other rights.
Ugg! The no sex guy. I loathe him. He claims to be a messenger from god, but I think he just likes calling all women whores. End aside…
As for the subject at hand, yay for living and loving in ways that make sense to you!
I am speechless, Dork, because apparently you have taken the words right out of my mouth.
I am so conflicted on this issue. I do think I want to be married but I fully realize that the desire is coming from external forces, but…I can’t deny that I still want it. I know you’re not saying that I’m “wrong” for wanting it but this post just brings up how I go back and forth on the whole thing.
I do agree though about how everyone thinks their wedding is so unique and its not. This summer friends of ours got married and made this HUGE deal about how the wedding was going to be so nontraditional and wacky and…I mean it was really fucking stupid and nonsensical (the wedding party conga’d in /eye roll) but they still made their guests drag their asses up to northern MI, get a hotel etc etc gifts so…It just annoys me about how people want to have it both ways, ie talking endlessly about how “subversive” their wedding is while at the same time, basically having a wedding just like any other.
I know this is from Sex and the City but the only thing I resent about not having a wedding is that the thousands of dollars I have spent on friends’ weddings (gifts, travel, etc.). Now I flat out refuse to attend weddings bc I HATE them.
re: point 2: right with you. (and other stuff too). I’ve had three wedding ceremonies to one person for various reasons.
The last was performed by Elvis in Las Vegas. That was the most valid one.
My boyfriend and I have been together for five years, co-habiting for three, technically engaged for two. Not a phone call from family members goes by without either one of us being asked if we have set a date yet. Both of us are still pretty conflicted about it.
Like you, I despise weddings. In university I worked as a banquet server for three years and the monotony of the wedding reception cured me of any desire I may have had to put one on myself. They are all exactly the same: gigantic wastes of money. (This lack of money is the reason we keep giving to put people off, and it is true, we aren’t exactly rolling in wealth.)
But there are other reasons that I couldn’t quite name until now. I think you’ve put it perfectly. My boyfriend and I have been committed from day one and having governmental approval, approval which is denied to many of those I care about, won’t change anything. In fact, I may almost resent needing this in order to present my relationship to the world as legitimate.
I do want to be married but in most ways I feel like I already am. He is my husband in all the ways that count to me.
@theorchidthief
Oh, I know it has been said before, but I too am growing resentful of all the wedding and baby gifts I’ve shelled out for over the years. The worst is when you are invited to the bridal shower and the wedding, and are expected to bring a gift to each. An otherwise dear friend of mine registered for a shit-ton of fancy cookware, then confessed to me a year later that they never even cooked. They just registered for it because they thought they were supposed to.
The entire custom of stocking a household via wedding gifts seems so antiquated now that most people live on their own for quite a while before marrying, and usually merge their households before marriage anyway. For some reason, because I am unmarried, I shouldn’t have nice matching dishes and things? (I do have nice matching dishes, but that’s because at the age of 30 I refuse to live like I did at 21, and have slowly stocked my own cupboard. Also, my mom is Martha Stewart incarnate, and usually gives me kitchenware for Christmas.)
Meanwhile, I’ve contributed countless items of random cookware to the households of friends, who first had to purge lots of things when moving in with their boyfriends (because who needs two toaster ovens?) and then purged all of that stuff when they got married, just to get newer, shinier stuff.
A newlywed friend of mine once visited my apartment and commented “Your dishes all match, and you aren’t even married!”. It was all I could do to restrain myself from smacking her.
On a side note, it’s funny how much we attach the idea of wedding gifts to the female. My boyfriend is divorced, and still using the plates he and his ex-wife were given as wedding gifts. I don’t care for them – partly because they are a funky pattern and kind of chipped now, but primarily because I’ve somehow been socialized to view any wedding gifts for the home as the property of the woman and symbolic of the marriage. So I’m occasionally kind of annoyed about eating off of “her” plates, even though she relinquished them when she left 3 and a half years ago.
@bluebears I totally hear you on the “wanting to, knowing it’s because society tells me to want it, but wanting it anyway” thing. I’m working with that right now. As I mentioned above, my boyfriend is divorced, and he says that he is totally committed to our relationship, but very wary of the idea of marriage again. Because of everything I’ve learned my entire life, I wonder if this means he views me as less worthy of commitment than his first wife, even though he tells me that he trusts me more than he ever did her. So I have to ask myself – am I going to turn into one of those ultimatum-giving women (who I’ve scoffed at forever)? Or am I going to accept his definition of commitment for now?
Add to the mix that I have a super traditional family from the small-town South, and that I don’t think it would be a good idea for us to cohabit without an engagement because he has a young daughter who needs a stable living situation (and for that matter, so do I).
Thank goodness I have a standing therapy appointment.
Dork, once again I resort to Miss Manners. When someone asks you an intrusive question, the best answer is “What makes you ask?”. If they’re not embarrassed into silence, they’ll stutter out some inadequate reason or other, after which you just look at them and say, “I see”. Then change the subject.
I agree with you that this whole idea of having to have an “original” wedding is just ridiculous and consumerist in the extreme. Why does it have to be original? It’s like people who have a theme for a bar or bat mitzvah. Hello-the theme is that your child is becoming a bar or bat mitzvah, not that they ski or love some band or something like that. I think weddings can be beautiful and meaningful, but the more we load them with stuff, the less chance they have to achieve either.
We’ve talked about this before, but, Dork, I’m curious about how you feel about ritual generally.
As others have said, the only problem here is that society forces you and the Dude to defend your decision not to marry.
Personally, I can see myself getting married. I’m religious, and I’ve definitely absorbed its pro-marriage message; all things being equal, if I were in a committed relationship and had children, I’d probably default to being married. On the plus side, my religion (or at least, the denomination I belong to) allows divorce, accords full equality to women and marriage equality to gay couples. So I don’t feel that it has a lot of the feminist problems/pitfalls that come along with marriage in other religions.
Regarding the gift issue, y’all have some asshole friends and acquaintances, it seems to me. Who asks for a gift at the bridal shower??? I don’t think any of my friends have had “real” bridal showers – once we went out drinking and another time we had a dessert-tasting. And that was it.
Perhaps this is because my good friends who have gotten married over the years tend to be PhDork-ish in natural inclination – often they have married for family pressure/tax reasons. I also come from a jurisdiction (Québec) where it is increasingly the norm among young people not to be married because domestic partnership rights are quite developed without the added formality. And there are other things that go with that – it is, in fact, illegal in Québec to take one’s spouse’s last name. You can change yours to anything but your spouse’s last name, in fact. There is a weird spirit of rebellion-against-authoritarian-Catholicism that’s animating those choices, but it’s funny, because of them I really don’t understand why people get upset by the prospect of not having marriage. “For the children,” or for any other purpose.
Now this is making me nostalgic for Montréal.
I was reading this post, getting all conflicted *again* about how I feel about marriage, and then I remembered-
oh yeah, I’ll have to so I can get insurance. (freelance illustrator.)
So yeah, that’s that. Thanks, shitty health reform!
@Becky – I’m with you. I mean, my big reason for being observant is not that I believe in any god but that I love feeling included in the tradition — I want to be included in that tradition, too.
I don’t know — until I started dating my boyfriend, I was pretty emo about it and figured that I’d never get married and now I’d like to but I also don’t think that I’ll feel like I’ve failed if I end my life without getting married. And the super overdone weddings are…not appealing, but a really small one with close friends/family seems romantic to me.
But the gift thing is pretty ridic. I plan to have a working household long before I get married, thank you very much. What I would hope to do is to suggest charities for donations.
@Pilgrim Soul- The complete norm for wedding gift giving among my acquaintances has spiraled out of all control lately. For every wedding I went to / was a part of in the last three years, the most common procession of gift-grubbing was as follows:
Bridal shower: either Around The Clock (things you need at different times of day) or Around The Kitchen (all kinds of kitchen supplies) themes; Bachelorette party: always starts with a lingerie party, some friends even requested a “classy” piece of lingerie as well as a “fun” (slutty) piece of lingerie (yeah from each guest); Wedding: complete registry; Reception: some kind of contraption requesting monetary donations (clear box with a note about the honeymoon, bird cage, you name it. This isn’t the dollar dance, this is separate).
This doesn’t even take into account the fact that I live far away, and so have to fly back for the ceremony and often for the other parties (if I was in the shower). So, even though I wouldn’t call them assholes in the abstract, they certainly did take the wedding as an excuse to be a gift-grubbing asshole and run with it.
It’s so true what you say about everything thinking their wedding is super original, and reflective only of their unique partnership, and not any social pressures. I have a friend who’s marriage-crazy; has talked about wanting to be married basically since I met her in our freshman year of college. She was telling me how original and different her wedding will be!! But when I asked her whether her wedding dress would be white, she acted like it was the silliest question she’d ever heard. Of *course* it would be white. It’s worth nothing the number of brides that plan their own “unique” wedding, complete with a dress that always, always seems to be the same socially acceptable color.
I hope I can find a guy who doesn’t want to get married again as much as I do..or don’t?? Anyway, the thing I don’t understand is getting REmarried after divorce. I was married, had kids, marriage ended, I don’t need the financial input so I can’t imagine getting married again, what’s the point again?? This is for me personally, of course. It seems like second marriages happen so much more quickly, almost like, OK we did this all before, let’s just get on with it.
Of course, with anything in life, you just never know. Wow, there was no point to my comment!
@PilgrimSoul: This summer my cousin got married and was pregnant at the same time. First I went to the bridal shower (gift) then I went to the wedding (wrote a check) then 2 weeks after the wedding I got invited to the baby shower. I was so fucking pissed. I mean it just seemed so over the top and unnecessary when she had JUST, like the month before, got tons of gifts and money (she had more than 1 bridal shower!)I rsvp’d no and didn’t send a gift. It was enough already.
@daisen-in: Oh the “subversive” wedding I went to this summer? yeah, white dress. Sure it wasn’t big and frou-frou but it was still a white dress.
Yes on every count. No party can possibly make me love my man as much as I do right now. No piece of jewelry could make us happier.
One day he said to me, “I guess, that, technically, you’re my fiancee, because if I didn’t get to spend the rest of my life with you, it wouldn’t be worth living.” That’s all I need.
If we decide to get married, it’ll be just the two of us: no guests, no dress-up, no religion.
We did register as domestic partners for health insurance purposes, but it was pop over to town hall and sign something. Sweetly, he turned to me afterwards and said he gets why gays want real marriage, because that was the least romantic process ever.
(Incidentally, my sister’s wedding DJ played a set taken straight off of her DO NOT PLAY list, Chicken Dance foremost among. No thanks.)
And as far as I can tell, the next step after wedding is “when are you going to give me grandbabies?” and DO NOT WANT.
xxc
*sigh*
I feel like such a bad person now. I’m getting hitched next year and I think I need to just stop reading anti-marriage posts, because they make me feel awful. My beyonce’s mother died very suddenly last summer and scared the crap out of us. If anything happened to me I would want him to be listed as my next of kin, and likewise. Oh, and I’ve been unemployed for-fucking-ever so I could really use some health insurance. I wish there was an amazing Canadian-like civil union option here that bestowed all the legal rights as marriage does, but that’s just not the case.
So our option is to head down to the courthouse. Of course we’ll be having a big reception/party to celebrate with friends and family afterward, so I know that means I’m a colluder. I could tell y’all that there will be no ceremony – only eating, drinking and dancing, or that I’m wearing a purple dress and keeping my name, or that I’ve forbidden anyone to throw me a fucking bridal shower, but I realize that’s not going to change anyone’s mind.
I just hope my friends who hate weddings will reserve their judgment and join us for an open bar and booty-shakin’ til the break of dawn!
@HistoricUpstart: I know this was probably a typo but calling your fiance your beyonce is making me crack up.
@bluebears: What was “subversive” about the wedding? I’m very curious. I have a cousin who had what I considered to be a non-standard wedding- their emphasis was on sustainable living practices (eg- no imported live flowers, table runners made from reworked paper bags, etc). Yet, even her dress was a regular white wedding dress, though she briefly considered some alternatives. The white dress interests me the most of all wedding traditions, because it seems to be the one constant across all weddings- “traditional” or “unique.” There really must be a remarkable social force behind that symbol. I don’t know a single bride who hasn’t worn one.
Bluebears, I dealt with the same sitch with one of my cousins this year/last year. She and her boyfriend got pregnant (unplanned), so there was a big baby shower. Then they decided to get married, so a few months after the baby’s birth in December, there was a wedding shower. Then a few weeks after that was the wedding. They only sent Thank You cards for the wedding gifts.
Boyf and I have managed to not get pregnant over the course of the past seven years. Where’s our gifts?
As the record shows, I do not like the Wedding Industrial Complex, heterosexism, or anything “traditional.” But I like the idea of throwing a party for ourselves and our loved ones to celebrate our relationship.
Navy, no offense, but I hate your friends. What you have just described is repulsive.
HistoricUpstart: You don’t have to feel the pressure to change anyone’s minds about marriage. Nor was Dork’s post meant to make you personally feel awful. I think she was just describing for us her feelings on the WIC and marriage, not trying to make you regret, cancel or defend your purple-dress, no-shower wedding. Or even your big church, foofy-dress wedding. There are a ton of reasons that you personally might want to get married, like taxes or family, and a ton of reasons why she doesn’t. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m in the same position as you. I had the same no shower, no bridesmaid, no gifts, no rings, no cake, no ceremony ,courthouse wedding. I don’t regret it or defend it. I did what I had to do. Mostly I’m glad that I did it when I was young and poor and I’m not doing it now when I’m 30 and there might be pressure to bankrupt myself and my beloved for some patriarchal spectacle.
I like weddings because they’re pretty much the only time I see my whole (huge) family all together. Or, let me rephrase: I like receptions for that reason. The wedding itself is usually a drag.
But I HATE the consumerism they entail nowadays, and the fact that they seem to be a source of stress to most of the couples more than anything else. I always think that if I were to get married, I would just go down to the courthouse and get it over with (seeing as I don’t believe in God anyway, the church is totally unnecessary), and then have a great big party (minus white dress) with an open bar for my friends and family at some point afterwards.
Oh, and I’m keeping my name.
@SarahMC: omg. the thank you card issue would have enraged me. jesus.
@daisen-in: nothing really except that the bridal party conga-d in and the ceremony was their own vows (they got officially married at the courthouse earlier in the day)which were…I think they were going for funny? But were dumb like, “I promise to fold the laundry if you do the dishes” I was just thinking, really? I really had to drive 5 hours to hear them divide up household chores?
@sarahMC: oh also, I totally agree with the whole party thing. It just seems nice, if I can make it chill and invite only people I’m really close to. I think it would be a nice memory.
Once more thing! Like you, Dork, in the last years I’ve developed really strong feelings about gay marriage in a way that I never thought I would. My position used to be, I don’t like legal marraige or really see a reason for it, so why expend energy trying to get others to sign up for it? The noxious actions of orgs like NOMNOMNOM however, have made me quite ferociously keen to extend legal marraige to anyone who wants it. I suspect it’s their actions that have made a lot of feminists advocates for the cause who otherwise would not be. If the nation was just happy to let gay people live their lives peaceably there might even be less of a gay marraige movement.
I think about the situation in Australia (where I’m from), where there is no ‘gay marraige’ per se, but both gay and straight couples can become recognized as ‘a de facto married couple’ after living as such for two years or more. Being ‘de facto’ has all the rights and privileges of being married. I see this as the reason why there is not a big gay marriage advocacy movement and not a big anti gay marraige movement. Just a big old ‘meh’.
Hi, I’m delurking to stand up and applaud this whole post. With only a couple of small exceptions, I could’ve written this myself, only probably less eloquently.
I would only add that marriage, as an institution, makes women economically vulnerable. I realize this doesn’t apply in every case, etc, etc, etc (is it obvious that I’ve had this argument more than a few times too?), but it’s still true that, systemically, marriage makes women economically vulnerable. And that’s reason enough for me to abstain. Hey, maybe we should start a new abstinence movement!
I feel the exact same way! Though I would marry someone if they needed my American citizenship. Or my health insurance.
Otherwise, I would never. Especially because Israel (where I live) has great common-law marriage status so there’s no reason to get married.
I’ve struggled with this myself. I want to be married, but don’t want a wedding.
@PilgrimSoul: I’ve always wondered what cuased the Quebec no name change upon marriage rules. Is it a separatist thing or is there another reason?
@Becky, baraqiel: Of course you want to get married. They’ll lift you up on a chair! It’s all worth it.
@Spark: That is definitely an incentive, although every Jewish bride and groom I know has worried about falling/sliding off the chair during the hora.
Hell YES to the whole post.
Sing it sister, we’re in harmony.
Anyone who invites people to any celebration and EXPECTS a gift is a jerk, IMO.
People who get gifts and don’t acknowledge the gifts are rude, IMO.
I wore red for my wedding.
Thanks for this, Dork. Even though I am officially engaged now, I am still struggling with this. Marriage, however, is important to my SO, and we have immigration issues to deal with, too, so… I’m ok with getting married, it’s just the hoopla I hate, and even if you veto the hoopla (which I have) you have to deal with all the fall-out of vetoing the hoopla. And there is fall-out.
I think the thing that’s bothering me most is all of the “family” stuff: You’re joining a new family! You’re officially creating a new family! Family ties! Family, family, family!!!! Well, you know what? Family (the kind created by blood and marriage) is a hugely loaded concept for me, and not in a good way. Family, to me, is a commitment I make in my head and heart, it has nothing to do with laws or blood or a social contracts. I’m sick of hearing how marriage will change my community and family. No. It won’t. I’m sick of hearing about my obligation to have some formal marriage ritual that includes, you guessed it, FAMILY!!!1! And I’m dreading Christmas because his parents will be in the U.S. and we’re already being grilled about weddings and babies (don’t even fucking get me started). I actually feel dread, you guys.
(Thankfully, I think my family finally gets it, and have come to the point of, do whatever makes you happy. Although getting to that point has been exhausting.)
Once again I come a little late to the discussion.
I too would sit in the corner of “do not want” wedding. For the most part, there has been one wedding I’ve attended that the bride wore a white dress, and for the rest, the brides wore colours other than white.
In all the weddings I’ve attended, there was no expectations for gifts, the atmosphere was more about a public witnessing of the couple deciding that they wanted to spend their lives together. The couples were interested in having their friends and family with them when they took those vows, and then having a big party.
I thought those weddings were kind of cool. But I still fall on the side of do not want!
So many comments to respond to. Thanks for your input, y’all.
magpie: you should check out the whole song; there’s a verse where he offers his name and she kindly demurs, and another where he offers a home and children, and she says “I don’t need a house or anything to become a mother (or a granny)!”
jenga: I don’t see how your comment is in conflict with mine. My problem is that The Powers That Be give you a shiny gold star and shitloads of privileges if you jump through their hoops, regardless of how you live your life. If you don’t, your relationship is considered no more significant than a hook-up. Observing forms while ignoring content is idiocy.
bluebears/Kristin/flackette: Your comments remind me of another reason I’m anti-marriage–so that others who do, do so for the right (their right) reasons, not because “it’s what you do” or because you’ll think “otherwise, my relationship isn’t good enough.” Would a legal document, a party, the fear of a divorce, wearing matching jewelry, make you feel safer or more loved? Would you trust your beloved more? I feel like most of the agita around being married (or not) is not about what marriage does (grant rights and privileges), but what it represents (that you are loveable, that you’ll never be alone, that it’s Twoo Wuv Fowevver, etc.). I can get the rights and privileges I want without marrying, and I live on this planet, so I know that marriage is not a guarantee of anything.
MM: I am generally distrustful of ritual (and/or “tradition”.) Especially those that don’t have any direct connection with the people who observe them. “Do this: it was important for some other people and so shall it be for you.” I see coercion there, and it makes me uncomfortable, both personally and politically.
Gnomenon: I hear ya. Like chrisbean, the Dude and I registered as domestic partners a few years ago for the sole purpose of getting me on his health insurance.
@Tville – I have a special place of loathing for people who include their registry info on the invitations.
(just breaking it up)
Historic: Do your thing, girl. And big thanks to SkiptomyLou for your response; you’ve got it exactly.
SarahMC: re: the party thing. Even that feels…icky to me. Like, “YAY FOR US! WE ARE SPECIAL!” I love spending time with family and treating them to things, but that’s about my affection for them, not about my praise-worthy relationship.
RachelinWY: Hell yeah. I will join your marriage abstinence movement. The Dude and I keep separate accounts and split expenses as equitably as we can. This is another thing that makes people think that we’re barely tolerating each other, but whatever: we’re together because we choose to be, not because we have to be.
Tall: The hoopla–egad. My best wishes to you and your feller for your lives together (and for a swift and relatively painless wade through the swamp of buttinsky expectations). I am totally in agreement regarding your definition of “family.”
Phdork: I definitely don’t want to do it because I think it represents an end to the idea of being alone. I have to admit I do find it to be romantic, but fully admit that its not the be all end all of romance. I also feel that it safeguards certain rights that I could get without being married yes, but would do so at some trouble (preparing legal documents etc) and since I’m not particularly anti-marriage it doesn’t seem worth it to contract out for those rights in a different setting.
Thinking about it more, I would also say that personally, I just like ritual. While I’m not religious I do like the idea of marking some occasion with a party or whatever. For example I’m really into graduation ceremonies, I have always really enjoyed all of the ones I was involved in. Now, of course going to the ceremony is pretty meaningless, you get a diploma regardless but I just like walking. Like the excitement of being with your class and your friends with your family there. I just like it. I feel like a wedding is sort of comparable.
bb: That’s a legitimate comparison, so you’ll be unsurprised that I hate graduations, too. (And I’ve had/attended plenty.) “Let’s march around and tell ourselves how important we are! Now give me some money!” (I do love academic regalia, though. Those little puffy velvet pillow-berets are my weakness.)
PhDork, please get out of my head. Your reasons are exactly my reasons with the exception of number two. I am not asking the government for permission for anything. The fight against SSM is simply the latest fight, you also used to not be able marry someone of a different faith or race, and as we’ve all seen during the SSM fight, if you have to ask permission, you can be denied. Plus, when you marry you are contracting between 3 entities, you, your future spouse and the state yet the state gets to write the contract, a one-size-fits-all contract nonetheless. And contrary to popular belief, most courts frown on prenups and I have seen some judges gut them to the point that they are useless.
The unhub and I celebrate 25 years together this month, 18 1/2 of them cohabitating and people STILL ask when we are getting married (to which I variously reply, 1) soon as the kid leaves for good, or 2) the 12th of Never). I stopped going to weddings, bridal showers, etc. years ago. Will not attend, do not ask (and no, not buying a gift either). Good friends understand and do not invite me, plus its safer that way, I’m less likely to starting ranting or have explodey head during the wedding vows (I am unable to remain quiet if “obey” is in the vows).