Why is "forever" always supposed to be the goal?

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Also, most couples get married (yeah, I am counting the whole world, not just your country) and often children will be involved eventually.

I have the same view as you, OP, and it's the main reason I will never marry. People change over time, and what was once an amazing relationship can later become not so great (no matter how much you *thought* you were going to want to stay together forever).

I think some are misinterpreting what you mean. I don't think you are saying you would deliberately set up a relationship to be short term, but that you wouldn't expect it to last forever and that's fine. Would that be right? Personally I'd love to spend the rest of my life with one person, but I'm not going to commit to doing that no matter what (i.e. get married).

I was married for 6 years and have a 5 year old son from that marriage.

I don't necessarily enter into a relationship with a "goal" of "short-term or forever" black and white thinking, I'm just saying that I am okay with just seeing where things go if I am interested in someone enough to want to be with them at the time, even though I might not see myself with that person in the long run, but I don't shut out the possibility.

Don't think I will marry again-- already been there done that and don't see the point of getting the state involved in my romantic life, kwim?

Wonderfully worded. As someone with limited energy I do not want to spend it on situations where I expect the 'returns' to end - I want to invest that time and effort wisely. I am not looking for a short-term playmate; I'm looking for someone who wants to grow with me, who I can gradually understand and bond with at an unparalleled level; to become fixtures of comfort and love in each other's lives while we navigate through a world full of people who seem to treat everything, including each other, in an increasingly disposable manner. It's not that there is a defined correct way to live, but living with expectations for short-term commitments isn't remotely appealing to me.

I think the whole notion of staying together till 'death do us apart' is a relic of times when the average lifespan was ~45.

even if you marry and have kids, the kids will leave the nest after a couple of decades while you'll still be only halfway through your life (in theory), so that invalidates kids as a reason to stay together forever.

realistically, there is no reason to stay together forever if either party doesn't feel like staying together anymore. monogamy is a fairy tale. if you're anti-social introverts with matching libidos who are also very good friends then you could perhaps make it together till the end, but otherwise, why set the bar so high?

@anna-banana: If you feel libido is one of the only things keeping marriages together, then it's no wonder you don't like marriage. Your wording makes you sound incapable of marriage, but it doesn't validate projecting that inability across the entire population and suggesting that everyone married is deluding themselves into a "fairy tale".

Love is one of the biggest axes of many people's lives, often the biggest - why even live if you're going to 'set the bar low' on the things that are most important to you? Why have goals and ambitions at all, in that case?

Why set the bar so low, that its not sufficient to make you happy? ^^ And maybe kids leave the house, but houses and house credits hardly wont leave the house. And if you did not do completely sharing of work and housework, but had one partner focusing on either of it, then you are again in the "But as we agreed on each other, I stayed at home and did not focus on carriere, so that you can fully focus on carrier and pay our shared bills. So how do you want to keep your promise now..." *gnagnagna*

As said...everything is easy, as long as you dont really have shared ownage and debts and each simply does his part of housework/loanwork. But the moment you decide to do otherwise it gets complicated. And I dont see the benefit about making my life needlessly complicated, only to exchange a man I love with another man I love.

I explicitly said I didn't think it was the only thing keeping marriages together, it's on the list of those things though. traditionally, marriage has everything to do with sex. that said, I'm not opposed to open marriages. I am opposed to emotional sabotage that some husbands/wives who refuse to be intimate with their spouses *and* refuse to open their marriages perform.



what do you mean? I can legally get married.



it's exactly because love is the most important to me. you can't truly appreciate life without pondering your own mortality from time to time. same goes for love.

For sex you simply need a person of the gender you like to have sex with. Marriage is not needed for it. ^^ I have tested that.

of course but marriage by definition is a socially sanctioned way to have sex & procreate. an old-school definition, for sure. just like the idea of being married for ever and ever

I don't like the notion of breaking up/divorcing because of another person as being some universal case. in my case, I hate dating so much and am so apathetic to meeting new people that I'm realistically only likely to break up with my partner to pursue more solitude. which is unlikely because he's just as introverted as me.

I'm realistic about marriage not necessarily being forever, but that doesn't mean I see myself with different partners in the future. it just means I don't like being told what to do.

That isn't everyone's goal. It's my personal goal. I wanted a wonderful friendship and relationship where I can always have fun with the person. I'm not sure why others want a "forever" kind of thing.

I disagree with the most couples get married thing, because on average everyone has between 9 and 14 relationships so clearly "most" is a gross overestimation. However The reasoning I agree with. A lot of girls between puberty and 35 think about relationships in terms of having and raising kids, rather than fun diversions. They generally take breaks from that philosophy for one-offs in college etc. After age 35 it starts to get muddled because children are no longer as much a part of the equation. Still, many people hate dating and trying to find a good match, so when they find someone they like they want to hold on to them.

I can very much understand the logic of not wanting short term relationships with someone you truly enjoy, because breakups normally end the relationship altogether, and even if it doesn't they will make future S.O.'s uncomfortable.

The main problem with a short term relationship is the loneliness that will follow it, and the fact that during that short term relationship you might be forced to turn down other or even better relationship prospects.

Anyone who complains about traditional marriage being obsolete, is just jealous that the nerds they work for are married happily, and that people who consider sex to be more of a big deal were actually the nerds the whole time, and precisely why they didn't want to f**k it up with the right person, for that matter f**k the wrong one.

People need to pay heed to the saying "People keep close and care for deeply what they don't want taken away." more seriously.

On that note that sex is so important, if it was enough with one person, you wouldn't want anyone else. You don't throw away a good thing, ooohp, there the saying is again...

Because the ideal is to have a love that lasts. The ideal is to have a love that you love so much that you WANT to stay with them forever, that you won't have the pain of break up, that you don't have to search again, etc.
Staying with them forever is merely a secondary factor, not the primary one.

Then again, there are the people who only have one-night preferences who meet someone who only has forever preferences, and they both clearly want each other and get along well enough, but the one thing is that their relationship preference doesn't match. If the forever person gives in to the one-night person, the forever person has just been betrayed, but if the one-night person gives in, there is the very high probability of cheating and divorce.

Of course it's not that black and white. There are several possible connections between brain chemistry and genetics to relationship duration preference as well. Then there are the people who were brainwashed into wanting a forever relationship who aren't emotionally stable enough to keep a one-week or one-month relationship who may forever be in denial about their biological preferences. There are also many one-night people who feel their hearts ripped out with every one-night relationship they have, they may biologically have the forever preference, but they're brainwashed into only having one-night relationships.

Then there are the people who have had a lot of really bad encounters, and it doesn't matter what type they had or if it's their biological preference, they won't be fulfilling their relationship dreams. They poison the pot for everyone else, but it's good to have cautionary tales so that people will be more careful with such things.

I'm not actually traditional at all, my reason for wanting a forever relationship is because I plan on living until all support for life in the universe runs out. Maybe that's immature or unrealistic, but that's how I am. I also crush and love really really hard, so I'm not going to take any chances, I'm going to test and analyze a potential partner for months, maybe years, before getting physically or emotionally attached.

Also, there's the problem with marriage being seen as a prize. Sure, love is great, and finding someone you are compatible with is great, but humans are wired with the reward seeking behavior, and that is different from behavior after the reward is reached. There is a long standing and well supported theory out there that this behavior is what causes short term marriages. People pay attention to their "prize" and do all sorts of crazy things they wouldn't do if they weren't seeking a prize, then they get married and think the test is over. It isn't. The situation is actually the same as before the marriage. Both are the same person, but now you get to see what they're like when they don't see each other as a prize. Once you have that trophy, you put it on your wall and ignore it mostly, maybe shine it up from time to time and put it back up on the shelf.