- RugbyMum
- 5 years ago
Hi there,
I recently came across this site (whilst researching feminist issues) and after reading some of the posts I felt compelled to ask some questions regarding women’s feelings towards marriage. My main motivation is to see if there is a difference in attitudes on either side of the Atlantic, but I also wanted to know what the main pressures were on ‘waiting’ women to cause them so much anxiety. My intention is not to offend, I am not trolling here, I’m just looking to educate myself.
A brief history of me/my relationship: I had my eldest child when I was nineteen, she was planned but it turned into a volatile relationship when he tried to control me and I ended it just after she was born. I met my current partner when my child was eleven months old and when my she was five I had another daughter. In the first few years of our relationship I very much wanted to get engaged, I brought it up several times and every Christmas and Birthday I would be filled with excitement over whether this would be the year that he proposed. He would joke around by saying ‘Why would I want to marry you?’, ‘You’re just my stop gap’, ‘I wouldn’t want a fat bride’, ‘It’s just a piece of paper’ and ‘I don’t believe in marriage.’ He is not capable of having a serious conversation so he says everything with a glint in his eye and shrugs if you ask him for his opinion on anything. His parents fought a lot when he was younger so I think perhaps this skewed his opinion on marriage, but I also strongly believe that men wait to see if something better is going to come along. I’ve also come to the conclusion that most men aren’t bothered about having kids, or progressing your relationship, as long as they are having their needs catered to by you whilst enjoying as much freedom as they can get.
Anyway, over time I stopped asking, then I stopped caring, and now I am very much anti-marriage (especially watching close friends go through prolonged divorces in which their ex husbands fleeced them). I told him not to bother asking me once we’d reached our thirties and all his friends had settled down, but of course I’m thirty-three and he’s almost thirty-five now and he asks me all the time, to which I tell him ‘I don’t want a fat groom’, ‘I’m out of here when the kids have flown the nest’, ‘Why would I want to marry you?’ I think he is now the insecure one, but unfortinately this ship has sailed.
I realise that my desperation to get married in the beginning was to make this single mum ‘respectable’ and because I thought that being legally bound to someone would stop them from leaving you. Also, I know that my boyfriend resented being harassed into proposing and dug his heels in. My feeling now is that I’m secure in myself, my life will go on with or without a man in it and therfore I don’t see a need to get married, even if I were loved up with someone. However, I understand that this is partly fuelled by my biterness and distrust of men (my dad didn’t want anything to do with me and we’ve never met).
Many women on here believe that not being married is standing in their way of starting a family. I do get this, especially if they are religious, but I wonder if it’s more that they feel that this is the right/traditional/moral way to live your life and are worried about how others will judge them?
I’m glad I had my children when I did, I’ve devoted my life to them, and that’s a big enough commitment for me.
So my question is this… Why exactly do you want to get married?
Thanks for sticking with it : )
S x