Reply to If you are in a long-term partnership and not marrying, what are your reasons?

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Reply to "If you are in a long-term partnership and not marrying, what are your reasons?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I married and divorced in my 20s, walking away with one child and a lot of personal trauma. Getting out of a bad marriage intact was really hard, and I have zero interest in ever allowing another person that kind of legal or emotional control in my life again.

I've been in a committed long term relationship with my non-husband for the last 17 years. We have raised my son from my first marriage, and had two additional children together. We're happy and well. I have zero doubts about our commitment to each other, but I have no desire to get married. What would it add to my life? I adore him, he likes me, we share kids and resources. We're well off but not crazy loaded so it's not like we have insane estate planning needs. We're not religious so I don't need to ask for anyone's blessing on our relationship. Our families are fine and life is good and uncomplicated. He would have tied the knot years ago, but is fine staying as-is for my sake. Maybe it's just stupid emotional baggage, but I feel happy and strong and am totally at peace with our situation. If anything, it makes me happy to have found a way around an institution that nearly kicked my @(#*.

[b]I'll add that most of our friends and colleagues assume we're married. I don't advertise our situation, but I'm sure not ashamed of it in any way and enjoy "dating" the man I love. [/quote][/b]

My MIL refers to my BIL’s partner as DIL. Weird and even the partner thinks it’s weird. I think it’s bc MIL wishes it were true and wants to normalize it in her mind.[/quote]

NP/unmarried long-term partner here. I call my partner's mother my MIL. She lives with us and there's less lengthy explanation required to just say "MIL" since a lot of people I mention this to are already blown away by the fact that I "let" her live with us. It just gets into a conversation I don't feel like having, and explanations I don't owe, about things that aren't people's business. I think she calls me her DIL, probably more because she doesn't love that her son and I aren't actually married.

We did originally plan on getting married but it took a long time to arrive at that point. Then, after 5 years together, I got pregnant (on a fluke, I was on BC) and had the baby, and I did not think there was a chance we were going to survive that insanely difficult first year as parents together, so I refused to plan a wedding. Then he became resentful of my refusal so he decided HE didn't want to get married, even after we did indeed survive the first year and those after. We are still together...mostly by a thread. I don't know if we are going to make it. I don't know if I want to. For now I just take it one day at a time because a) who wants to separate in the middle of a pandemic, b) we'd like to provide an intact family for our child, and c) I think we both know splitting would be trading one set of problems for another. Will it get to the point where I'd rather have the other problems, the custody battle, the missing my child 50% of the time, the single income, the likely loneliness? Probably. But that point isn't today. So we're still together, unmarried.

But like another poster said, I don't think I'll ever get married. If and when we do split, I will hold onto my freedom and emotional agency like my life depends on it. When people ask me why we don't get married, I just say, "do you know how much a divorce costs?" In reality, of course, remaining unmarried has cost me much more in the long run, but it usually shuts people up.[/quote]

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