I think the important thing is to be sensitive to differences. People who decide to marry/not marry, have children/not have children, fuck/not fuck, etc. should certainly not be loked down upon for their choice. At the same time, when explaining their choice, they need to be careful not to sound santimonious. I know I have this problem with my Mom and Dad - I have to explain my lifestyle choice to not drink bottled water without making them sound like ignorant or "bad" people for drinking bottled water. :)

EJ, I'm sorry if I'm being absurdly dense, but do you really have set-tos with your parents over bottled water? Or am I missing a joke (which always pains me)? In any case, I agree with what you said: no sanctimony is always better than some sanctimony.

I have been with my boyfriend for alomost a year and a half and he and I have been thinking about whether we want to get married. We are both leaning towards NO due to some of the reasons mentioned. He is divorced and he hated that his ex was so needy and wanted to spend all her spare time with him. We are not like that at all - we do things independently. And as much cash as we would save living together, we are hesitant about moving in together also...

Wow, I sure am glad someone's talking about this. I am a 27-year old guy and so far, have been totally oblivious to the falling dominoes all around. My parents have a pretty unhappy marriage, which kinda puts me off the idea. It's good to see that there are people who wouldn't consider me a total freak.

Warning: highly opinionated personal beliefs follow.

Marriage, like any other landmark one can choose to set in a relationship, is what you make of it.

On the personal level, it involves an exchange of oaths intended to endure. If you're not ready to make those oaths, don't, and that's a good reason not to get married. If you have already made those oaths, then the only requirement is to repeat them in front of witnesses — and even that is negotiable.

On the legal level it involves certain assumptions by the state on where legal rights and responsibilities are demarcated. If you don't trust your partner well enough to be considered a single team by the government, your issue is with trust, not with marriage. It doesn't require that you personally blur the distinction between yourself and your partner; it only requires that you let the government simplify the paperwork.

On the cultural level, the meanings are what you let them be. If you don't like its history, make new history. If women can reclaim "bitch" and reforge it into something positive, they can reclaim "wife".

On the decorative level, the required trappings are only those that you fancy. Don't like rings? Don't use them. Don't like flowers? Find some other way to express your affection. I remember a marriage where the engagement gifts were a pair of his and hers engraved crème brûlée torches. I attended a wedding where wine was swapped out in favor of orange juice in cups that the bride had crafted, fired, and glazed herself.

I've been with my partner for over nine years now. We still aren't married, for a variety of reasons. They're sufficiently personal that I don't feel like discussing them right now, but I'll note that none of them are permanent.

What I can talk about is what we want marriage to be. We don't want the lines between us to be erased; we are different people. We want us to be the best team it's possible for two people to be. We want for each of us to be there to offer help when it is needed, and not be too proud to accept it when it is needed. Speaking metaphorically, we want to dance so well together that you could change the music and the tempo on a regular basis and we'd just instinctively change the steps without having to spend much time thinking about where to step next. We want to be able to advance back to back through hostile territory and never feel the need to look over our shoulders; we'll know the other side is covered, and if it can't be, we'll know we'll be told ahead of time.

We want to be able to live apart for an extended period without falling apart. We want to be able to live together for an extended period without driving each other crazy. We want to make love without either side fearing coming away disappointed. We want to know that as long as the other person is able, each side will be pulling its own weight, and when one side can't, it's not for lack of trying and will be working on fixing the problem.

We want to be able to talk about any topic. We want to be able to sit together in silence without insecurity.

We want to be good at this. We want to be able to do things that you can't do when you're not this well teamed.

We've got most of it down. We might have almost all of it, but we want to be sure.

When are we going to get married? When we know we're good enough. Other things, such as the social issues, have come up, but we've talked them over, and decided that it's not logical for them to be obstacles.

Nine years and we're still not married, but I'll never understand people who don't even want to experience this, or that if they do, don't want to do the paperwork to get the legal advantages — because there are distinct legal advantages. Even socially, a marriage is a useful weapon and tool. Avoiding it because of the predominance of social baggage, or because you can get the advantages when others are treated unfairly, is much like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Take all the advantages that are offered you. Use them to cut your way to a better future for as many as you can. Life is hard enough without taking unnecessary handicaps.

It's sad to me though that Courtney thinks the act of marriage means losing her identity. That's more of a measure of her relationship, not her relationship's public or legal status. Marriage counselors will be the first to say that marriage really changes very little. You don't gain or lose independence or identity that you weren't in danger of gaining or losing otherwise. Marriage isn't the problem. It's how people use it that is ignorant. They give it too much legal and social power and Courtney demonizing it gives it even more.

Marriage isn't right for her. Perfect. Beautiful. People around her should really leave her alone and stop asking. They are being extemely egocentric by wanting her to be "normal". Their experiences should not automatically apply to everyone. Nor should Courtney's experiences apply to everyone either.

P.S. Courtney's a really good writer. Check our her work for Alternet.

I recently told someone who I love very much that he was the first person with whom I's been romantically involved who hadn't tried to change me. Why does "I love you" so often mean "I want something from you"?

Sorry to be so cynical. But I crave the kind of relationship where I don't get lost, and neither does the other person.

I think I should read that book.

My married friends will be shocked to learn that by marrying they have effectively "erased" the distinction between themselves and their partners. Boy, will they want their money back.

I think this argument sounds like hooey, and amazingly judgmental to boot. Giving over one's identity can happen with or without marriage, and in no good marriage--as in no good relationship, period--will an individual's identity be subsumed. What a paper tiger.

Honestly, this post really pissed me off as yet another attempt to pass off mean-girl politics as "feminism." How utterly anti-feminist to judge another person's choice of relationship on such logically indefendible grounds.

I'm a married heterosexual parent and I don't feel threatened or insulted by anything Courtney wrote.

Yeesh, some people are so sensitive.

Being married does change things. It doesn't change everything. It's not the ending of all that is spontaneous and exiciting. But it can be if you don't watch yourself.

I'm all for erotic intelligence, and I think my partner and I have quite a bit of it -- but not when the baby is crying. I just wonder whether it's possible to reconcile a need for a little healthy hedonism with a need for a deep, committed, long-term relationship, whether you call it marriage or something else. I have such a relationship and I'm very thankful that I do. And I hope I do not sound too much like a wingnut, I will just say it is easier for two people to raise a child than one, especially around 4 a.m.

p.s. my spouse and I are both feminists, and in college we both swore off marriage completely. do forgive us!

Zed, you said "If women can reclaim "bitch" and reforge it into something positive, they can reclaim "wife"."

I'm not sure that we've reclaimed "bitch," to be honest. I'm in favor of reclaiming words but this requires power, and I don't know that we have it yet.

As for marriage, frankly, the real and tangible legal benefits piss me off, as someone who's single and intends to remain so for the foreseeable future. There's a serious bias in society toward couples and I think it's perfectly legitimate for people not to want to enter into marriage for that reason. I don't think this is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face -- rather, it is a rejection of unfair treatment that just happens to come from the side it favors. Would anyone think a white man who actively recruits blacks and women is cutting off his nose to spite his face?

I can see Courtney's point -- I don't think marriage has to make two people lose their individuality, or even that it does. But legally speaking, it does blur the lines. And I think it is absolutely a legitimate and defensible choice not to buy into this legal paradigm.

I've been in my relationship 13 years. Although we did have a "wedding" three years ago (mostly to get the families together and have them observe firsthand how we think about our relationship), we've never gotten a license and don't plan on getting one. Our reasons are personal (we have feelings about marriage along the lines of Jessica's), political (only heterosexuals can marry), and a combination of the two (my wife's sister is a lesbian, one of my brother's longtime girlfriend has a lesbian sister as well--both are in long-term committed relationships and neither are permitted to marry).

To be honest, I really don't think having that license would change our relationship at all. Neither of us really aspire to that "status," so it's pretty meaningless to us. The relationships Perel talks about are more natural. Marriage just seems so damned artificial. It doesn't make sense to me that having a piece of paper with our names on it will somehow make us feel differently about each other.

With the caveat that I haven't read the book...

This phrase from the post jumped out at me: "the conditions necessary to create domestic bliss are actually in opposition to those that turn us on."

I'm always very leery of generalizations about what turns "us" on. I'm not convinced that this opposition holds true for everybody, or even most people. What turns me on tends to be different from what common cultural wisdom claims is supposed to, and the conditions that do seem to me to be pretty harmonious with domestic bliss (although, it's been a little while since I've put that to the test! More or less my decision, I hasten to add...). Are everybody's erotic desires and domestic needs so uniform as to make this argument tenable?

This scared me:

Perel explains that our cultural penchant for [...]absolute candor is antithetical to erotic desire for both men and women.

As if lies found out later are better??

This book sounds like an interesting read. I think I'm in one of those "open but sexless" relationships the author talks about. Our sexual relationship was great...until we moved in together in a marriage like relationship and I got pregnant. Now I can't even think about being physical with my partner even though we have a very open, close relationship.

As far as marriage, I can completely understand people who don't desire to get married. Sure, some people can get over the sexist history of marriage and all of the other negitives. But, for some people I think being in a more open and more independent relationship is for them. Not everyone wants to live together and share everything and I don't think thats a negitive thing or that it makes the relationship any less valid.

Yet, some of us have to live in the real, anti-feminist world and go along with it just to get by. My decision to get married or not get married, is currently riding on my boyfriend's income level. We would love to get married next September, but if we get married I won't be able to get finanical aid for college because of his income. Yet, if we get married I could be put on his health insurance plan which would be a definate plus. I hate how society assumes that just because two people are married, that they have two joined incomes. Sure, my boyfriend pays for alot of our stuff. But I could never ask him (even in a marriage) to pay for MY education. Yet our government expects and insists that if we are married that he do so. Ugh.

“Yet our government expects and insists that if we are married that he do so. Ugh.� Ok. So you want to be able to use his health insurance but you don’t want his income to be counted against your financial aid. You want the legal benefits that come with the contract (of marriage) but not its disadvantages. I don’t think that is any way the government’s fault!

This has been an interesting post and discussion for me personally. This summer, my boyfriend and I decided to get engaged after three years of dating. I know it's the right path for the two of us, and I feel like we're both really prepared and open enough to make this commitment. However, the whole process has been pretty hard for me because I keep reading posts like this that make me feel like a bad feminist for even wanting to be married!

I know that marraige and feminism are both very personal concepts that each individual creates for him or herself, so I try not to get my panties in too much of a twist. But, just as it sucks for the writer to have feminist mentors constantly asking her when she's getting married, it also sucks to have feminist mentors constantly trashing marraige when it's a choice that you think is right for yourself.

I'm not about to say that marraige is right for everyone. I know that part of our decision to get married is a result of how relationships are recognized within our families. But I'm also tired of feeling like I'm a second-class feminist because I want to have a *gasp* pretty wedding and a marraige.

For years I had resisted the idea of marriage. I didn’t welcome the idea of sublimating ‘me’ into someone who wasn’t me, someone I couldn’t identify with. After meeting my current partner who challenges traditional clichés just as much as I do I started to acknowledge that my problem with marriage was the stereotype of marriage. When I realised that really, marriage could be what *I* wanted to make of it, then only I realised that I was availing of the heady potential of the freedom, that choice, that so many feminists had fought for. I veer now, between extreme broodiness and deeply felt fear of losing my independence, my freedom, to the having of children, but yet again realise that it really doesn’t have to be that way. Men and women all over the world are sharing the burdens and the joys of having children and striving to bring them up to be happy, well adjusted individuals. And when I realise that I have that choice, I am grateful - and when I realise that many women all over the world still don’t, I know we still have to keep fighting.

TLF:

I don't think this is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face -- rather, it is a rejection of unfair treatment that just happens to come from the side it favors. Would anyone think a white man who actively recruits blacks and women is cutting off his nose to spite his face?

The roughly equivalent metaphor in my mind is that you get discounts on all the things you were going to buy anyway and get to stand in shorter lines in a grocery store — benefits not available to gays, and since this is a federally enforced discount, there are no stores in town where this feature doesn't apply. You've got a couple of options here: you can stay in the slow lane and deliberately overpay, leaving your money on the counter, or you can take your discount and extra time and go do something useful with them — up to and including campaigning against the laws that set the stage the way it is.

People choosing to do the former are making a serious tactical error that seems to me in the category of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

dhsredhead points out that it doesn't always work out in your favor, tactically, and when that's the case, it's obviously a good idea not to go that route.

But I remain in complete incomprehension about why it is preferable to sacrifice an advantage, leaving the remains to machinery that has a vested interest in not changing, rather than taking the advantage and using it for reform or whatever is considered a higher priority.

You don't have to buy into a legal paradigm to use a legal paradigm. A hammer is a hammer whether you use it to build a wall or tear it down.