Opinions on marriage , long term relationships

Opinions on marriage & long term relationships

Question Posted Tuesday April 10 2007, 1:03 am

Okay, so I've been wondering about something & I wanted to hear you guys opinions.

My boyfriend & I have been together for five years & we are both twenty one. I love him, I'm in love with him & there is no one else I'd rather be with. We're still young so we don't really talk about marriage but here & there we do say things like "when we get married..." & stuff like that. The other day when we were together we were talking about weddings & how my culture's weddings differ from his & he said he'd want to get married at a court house because it doesn't cost a lot. Then he said or he'd want to get married on an island & only our close relatives would be invited, like his mom & my mom. I know I want to marry him in the future & I've never straight up asked him "do you wanna marry me" but I think, well, if he's been in a relationship this long with me doesn't that obviously mean something? Like apparently he wants a future with me if he's been by my side for five years now? But then again I think, just because we've been together for so long doesn't mean marriage is definite, you know?

So my question is, do you guys think that when a couple has been together for so long that it means marriage is in the future? Are people in long relationships because they want to get married eventually? Ugh, in my head I know what I'm trying to ask but I can't seem to get it out the way I want it to but I guess these questions will do. Haha. Thanks for reading this & all opinions are appreciated!

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Xenolan answered Friday April 13 2007, 11:23 pm:
I can give you Sabine's story from the other side. See, I'm the guy she married.

In my case, the reason why I needed a nudge to ask her to marry me (and it really was more a mutual decision) was because it simply didn't occur to me on its own. I felt like I was still a very young guy (I've always felt younger than I am) and that marriage just wasn't in my immediate future. I was also pretty comfortable with our relationship as it was, and didn't feel a great push to change things.

When she said "I won't be your girlfriend forever" it got me thinking seriously about whether I WANTED it to be forever, and the more I thought about it the more I came to realize that I did. This was someone I loved very much, who I would be pleased and proud to call my wife, who I shared much in common with. We shared a common morality and ideals. I knew she would be a wonderful mother. We appreciated each others' sense of humor. We had great sex. We had problems, but we could deal with them. I married her and have never regretted it.

These are the kinds of things a guy will start thinking about when the idea of marriage becomes a reality instead of an abstraction. It seems to me that the two of you have been talking about WEDDINGS, which is very, very different from talking about MARRIAGE. In order to find out whether the two of you really will make it for the long term, you need to think about how you'll be after the honeymoon. You'll need to talk about how you'll support yourselves and live independently, how many children you want and how you'll raise them, where you will live and work and go to church, and what's really important to you in the long run. You'll need to think about the joys that come during all of your lives yet to come, and whether you can live with this guy for sixty-plus years without wanting to kill him.

When you're talking about THAT stuff, then you're talking about marriage. Until then, you're just in a long-term relationship. If you can't sit down and discuss what will really happen when you share your lives together, then one or both of you isn't ready for marriage - and if that's the case after five years, you probably never will be.

Labels: long term relationships, Opinions on marriage

posted by Robert Heard at 8:12 AM