Sweetleaf wrote:
AngelRho wrote:
I LOVE being married!
That said, married life is NOT easy. It's hard work. Totally worth it, but difficult.
Back in ye olden days, families formed a support system that ensured marriage and family success, and often divorce was institutionally not an option. Marriage was in part a business transaction that united families, so it more/less HAD to work.
I have no issue with marrying for love. But I also think two people in love need to get down to the nitty-gritty of marriage and objectively, non-emotionally, realistically look at whether they really have a future together.
Can you agree to put all your combined income into one bank account and share it? We didn't--until we were BOTH out of a job and ended up homeless. She ended up the breadwinner, which had formerly been my position in the home. Are you prepared to share each other's debts, pay off credit cards you don't own? Student loans? Medical bills?
What about religion? How far away from the in-laws do you want to live? Sexual intimacy? Children? How do your families feel about the two of you and each other?
Set romantic love aside and be HONEST about these things. Romantic love means NOTHING if you have no future.
I wonder how many divorces started out with couples "in love."
REAL love is something you put in action. It takes a hard look into the future and says "We can do this...we WILL do this." It sets aside all emotional whims and keeps everyone on the same page. It works, and it works HARD every single day. It's not just a funny feeling in your tummy. It's what you DO. There are lifelong couples out there, and this is reason they make it. Romantic "love" that's merely touchy-feely stuff just ain't enough.
If you can't wake up each day and make the conscious choice to love your partner through your words and actions, not merely just what you feel "in your heart," by all means don't get married. If you can't get on the same page about finance, in-laws, religion, intimacy, children, DON'T GET MARRIED.
What is wrong with having separate bank accounts? I am in a LTR but not married...and me and my boyfriend still have seperate accounts. We do pool money and resources together, but it seems like it would get confusing if we used the same bank account for everything. I could see having like a mutual account for bills or whatever but aside from that not sure why it would be necessary to put all our income in the same account in order to share. If he gets short or I get short than we can just simply help each other out.
As for religion we aren't religious, As for in laws...I've met his parents and he's met mine we probably would not seek out living close to his parents or mine but not like there has to be a specified physical distance, not like I hate his parents or he hates mine. We enjoy sex, are on the same page of not wanting kids....and though our families seem just fine with us being a couple that's not really a factor if they hadn't we still would be together just likely having less contact with our respective parents.
IDK I think we'd be just fine if we got married, of course no church ceremony as we're actively 'not' Christians, hell I'd be fine with if we just go get it documented and don't even have a ceremony. But could be fun to find some kind of Pagan ceremony or something.
I disagree about setting aside all feelings and whims, you want to keep the feelings alive not just have the relationship turn into a business agreement and nothing more if a couple gets married.
I think I've overemphasized the business side in the past. My position hasn't changed, I think I just need to be more clear.
The problem is married couples sometimes let the business side get in the way. Or, more likely, they can't let the business side of their single lives go after they get married. Marriage was always supposed to take a loving relationship to the next level. I own a mid-priced digital piano for gigging. I set aside money earned from gigs to buy it, and now I can play more and better gigs because I have better equipment. BUT...because I'm married, the money I set aside from gigs could have gone towards paying bills, or buying food, or paying tuition for our kids, or home improvement. It's OUR money. I explained to my wife what I was doing, and she agreed that I could actually do more with it and that the extra gig money would help. The piano paid for itself within 3 months, and the money keeps coming in. It was a good investment, and by the end of this month I will have paid off an emergency room bill just from gigs alone, all within 2 months of my youngest child breaking his face on the playground.
And all I did was buy a piano. It is not MY piano, even though I'm really the only one who uses it. It is OUR piano. Paid for with OUR money.
In order to continue teaching, I have to reinstate my teaching license. To do that, I have to finish another college course by this summer. If I don't I'll get fired. So WE took a look at how much money I'd saved up from gigs, how much we could spare from tax refund, and WE purchased a new, fully loaded MacBook Pro, plus some high quality sample libraries and other software I will need to get the best success from taking this course. I took a class last year with cheaper libraries on a vastly outdated and underperforming machine, kept my wife up all hours of the night cursing and restarting my computer, and struggled to complete projects on time and get the best grades I could. So WE agreed that taking this step would keep me employed, give me something positive and motivational to do, and possibly open up a new revenue stream if I can break into the licensing industry. It's risky, but risks/benefit analysis shows if nothing else at least I still get to keep my teaching job. And with a secure teaching license, I could be open to other, better paying options down the road.
WE agreed this would benefit US. So WE bought a new computer and $1k+ software and enrolled me in a college course because it will benefit US. Those things are OURS. Not mine. OURS.
See, it's that marrieds make a big romantic to-do of pretending to speak and think and talk "as one." Not many actually do it. The idea is to share everything in common. We can't let go of "mine" and "yours." They don't understand when you get married that owning everything in common is what you sign up for. Even the liabilities are shared. She likes to run up credit cards? You married it, buddy, so deal! You don't just marry the good parts of a person. You marry the not so good, too. If he has problems, she has problems. What you bring on yourself, you bring on your partner. I have a HUGE issue with debt. When I found out my wife put us $1.5k in the hole, I went ballistic. She knew it was coming. She let me say what I had to say and didn't say a word to me. She knew I needed the money for something and this would completely destroy something important I'd been working on for some time. But I couldn't keep that debt hanging around, so we had to sacrifice something to clear it up. The debt was gone in two months. We recovered, everything ended up just fine. [Note: what happened was purely accidental. Of course I would have freaked out, anyway. What REALLY hurt was that she hid it from me when it could have been quickly and easily resolved. We're at a new bank, different kind of checking account with EXTREMELY stringent rules. That kind of thing couldn't possibly happen again, and we're so much less stressed over money than we'd ever imagined we'd be. There are couples making over $100k who are constantly fighting over how to pay basic utilities. I can't understand these people.]
In marriage, you absolutely MUST be willing to share EVERYTHING. No exceptions. You can't go anything alone if your spouse can fix something for you. If you have a problem to deal with, ask for help and make whatever it is go away. Celebrate all the amazing stuff you accomplish as a married couple. Don't hold back money. Keep a single account. Share everything you make. Keep everything together and always check to make sure he or she is ok with a purchase just so you both can see that you're both being responsible. Don't cheat on your spouse financially.
If you are with someone who has certain problems, and this depends on the couple, whatever those problems are, you need to make sure either those problems will NOT be brought into the marriage OR if they can't be dealt with short term, that you are both prepared for long-term consequences. If you can't handle that, you need to break up. Don't get married. If you have a plan for dealing with things, you're in good shape. But for the sake of the marriage, you need to turn off the emotion chip just long enough to have an honest conversation. I can't stress enough BE HONEST, even if it means you won't like the outcome. Being "in love" doesn't mean you have a meaningful, bright future together. If that is what you want, you may find that it just won't work out. If you can agree on those things I mentioned in the earlier post, and HONESTLY agree, you probably can make a lifetime gig of it. Any one of those things can destroy a marriage. It's worth it just for a day to switch off the emotions and get real about what you have together. If you get those things together on the same page as a couple, you will be fine as marrieds.
Well I am also on disability so wouldn't even be able to share a bank account whilst on that, if I can get off disability then that would be possible. But still don't see how that is necessary to share, also I still think it would be confusing to try and keep track of how much each other has spent to know how much is in the account at any given time. Also we do discuss purchases before making them to decide if its responsible with our budget even though we have separate accounts. We live together so we have to cover our bills and food and all that together so we check to make sure how much money we both have and if its affordable.
Also I fairly recently got hacked on a game I play because I fell for a keylogger...if me and my boyfriend had a joint account we would have both been screwed...rather than him being able to help me out till I got it settled. So it might be a little safer to have separate accounts.
That aside we do have honest conversations and discuss things as far as remaining a couple, living together and how we can make that continue to work...topic of marriage has not really come up except one time we kind of laughed about it while drinking but it was by no means a serious conversation at that point.
22 Apr 2017, 2:42 pm
Still, I knew her family well and her sister was so excited when I told her I had the ring picked out: turns out they were looking at rings a week before. I certainly did do my homework first though before I made that plunge.
