Date: 2012-01-30 04:45 am (UTC)
ext_13495: (thoughtful)
Interesting things to think about.

On the one hand, decisions like whether or not to live together, whether or not to merge finances and belongings, and whether or not to be monogamous are independent of whether or not you get married. If you live together long enough, splitting up your things is likely going to be complicated, married or no. Bill and I were living together and sharing bank accounts long before we were married. When we got married, of course we acquired more possessions, but generally speaking those weren't the ones it was hard to split up when we divorced.

The big exception was the house, which points to something you haven't mentioned at all: marriage gives you a legal footing with regard to shared property you wouldn't otherwise have - in some ways that makes things more difficult, but in others that protects you from being taken advantage of in a split-up process. The state of Michigan said I owned half the house, and the basis of that is a recognition, I think, that the spouse who is not the primary money earner may contribute things to the marriage it is difficult to quantify. For instance, I and my family did almost all the maintenance of the house and the grounds, I did all dishes and most of our laundry, and I managed all our bills and finances. Is that worth something? Yes. Did we dicker over it? No, it was included in the notion that we jointly owned our joint belongings. We did bicker over the house, but not to that level of detail, at least once we decided I would buy his share from him (when we were discussing jointly owning it until it sold, that was horrible). It also makes that part of the process simpler: spouses can sign quit-claim deeds to one another and pay no taxes for the "sale".

On the other hand, I think you're right that getting married applies pressure. I mean, the things that ultimately led us to divorce were mostly present before we got married, but he pushed me for a decision on getting married because his dad was dying and he wanted to be able to plan on the rest of life or else get on with finding the person he would spend the rest of his life with, and that question was posed to me when I was in the middle of a master's degree, living in a foreign country, and financially dependent on him. (I had a student visa and couldn't work in canada, apart from RA and TA-type positions. He had a work visa.) Once we had gone through with it we had not only our own expectations and the expectations of the family, we also had hanging over us the thousands we'd spent on the wedding itself. Our honeymoon was not all blissful and relaxed. There were tensions already.

If we hadn't gotten married we might have come to a mutual understanding that we were not suited to stay together much earlier, with much less drama.

On the other other hand, when I look at my current marriage, it feels totally different. Of course, Brian and I didn't spend thousands getting married, and we didn't care much if our family approved though it was important to us that our core heartfamily did, and we were both independently functioning adults when we got together, which I don't think was true of my ex, really, nor me back then. Nor, I would guess, you and Rachel, when you got married.

Thanks for the thought-provocation.
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