Do you find marriage devastating socially and romantically?

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I try to tell myself there need not be a rush to marry. Others tell me this too. And yet every time a friend or someone I know marries, it makes me anxious, and I've realized that other people's marriages are for me traumatic and terribly alienating.

It's not that I'm angry over other people's good fortune and happiness. Rather, it's because of what marriage represents for the connection I have with that person. And my experience has been that marriage leads to loss, whether real or emotional.

The loss is real in the sense that I've lost many friends to marriage. They, necessarily, have a higher priority, to their spouse, and the demands of that relationship. I subsequently see less of that friend, and even less when they have a kid. A friend of mine with whom I'd meet regularly to run, got married, and moved miles away to the suburbs. Now I see him perhaps once a month. His wife is now pregnant, and I fear I will see him even less when the baby comes. I've already lost my best friend from high school in this way. After we graduated and went to different schools, we still saw each other summers and holidays. Then he got married, and stopped answering my emails or phone calls, even though I photographed his wedding. And when he had a baby, that was it. I contact him to see if he would be in town for Christmas. Never heard back, though I later learned he was in town a whole week. Every friend who gets married I lose, in that I become less and less important. Because who needs me when they've got someone to be with all the time?

Marriage is also an emotional loss, and a terrible rejection of the self. There have been quite a few girls I was desperately attracted to. I shouldn't say I loved them, but I feel I was in love. I wanted to be with them, and wanted them to give me a chance. And so when I hear they are engaged or have already married, that is the ultimate rejection. They have found (presumably) happiness and a lifelong companion. And that person was not me. Not only that, they did not even need to date me to know that it was not me.

It is so hard, that inverse relationship. To feel such intense emotion for someone, and for the reciprocal to be such incredible apathy. They mattered so much to me, and I nothing to them.

And so I feel faced with this increasing sense of loss. I lose the people I care about to marriage, and I am then excluded because I am not in a couple. Just today at work, coworkers were talking about meeting up. One is engaged, the other isn't, and the former asked the latter if they were bringing their BF. No room for a single person like me.

And so who can blame me, or anyone for being so anxious to find someone, and soon. Because I fear an encroaching lonliness as others find their partner, and their circles grow tighter, while I have still failed to find anyone, and wonder if there is anyone. I have trouble imaging how anyone could like me, given how up to now no one has offered anything to me in the way I have offered myself to others. So odd. I have such intense feelings of longing and desire to love others, yet I increasingly have trouble imagining there is anyone who could possibly feel the same way about me.

And so with every marriage I see, I feel deeper and deeper in a hole, trying to climb out, crying for help, and no one will offer their hand.

Everyone old and single as to go through with friends being picked off as they marry and get into relationships. Its just what people tend to do. Singles and couples don't usually remain people who do stuff together, unless it's with a big group.

I hardly see head nor hide of my friends because they are all in relationships. I just shrug and move on.

If I had a boyfriend I wouldn't also hang out with singles, it just seems weird. I don't see why you care either, doing stuff with couples is a bore.

I laugh at the married men I know since I know what suckers they are.

Yes Brian. I feel exactly the same way.

If it makes you feel any better: hmm how should I put what I mean to say... people don't mean to be apathetic towards anyone else. If people could love two people at once they might. But they can't usually. Probably related to the fact that people can only hold one thought in their head at a time... yeah you know what I'm trying to say hopefully.

Don't worry, don't worry, have hope, have hope. Someone will find the world in you and you will find the world in them. I have no authority to be saying this but when I say it to another person (like you) it seems true, and I think it is true.

Sorry. Maybe hobby/interest groups will focus more on the activity and not care about the status of who's in the groups.

song on an old minstrel record:
Not a soul out on the corner
That's a pretty certain sign
That wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine
All the boys are singing love songs
They forgot Sweet Adeline
Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine
There goes Jack, there goes Jim, down True Lover's Lane
Now and then, we meet again, but they don't seem the same
Do you get a lonesome feeling when you hear those churchbells chime?
Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.

It depends. One of my friends is married, and another is a mother. I have only one single friend. Perhaps just accept that you may not see them as much, but it is nice to keep the friendship going.

Ideally, marriage shouldn't change a thing. The operative word here is IDEALLY.

What happens when a lot of people get married is that their priorities change. It shouldn't for most things, but it just happens that way. That's why you can always tell when a man has just gotten married because he acts like a chump. Why? Because he IS a chump.

Before my wife and I got married, I carefully and at length explained to her that I'm not going to change. EVER. What you see is what you get, genital warts and all. OK... Just kidding about the genital warts. I'm clean.

But seriously, if she expected me to give up my music and career aspirations just because I married her, or if she expected me to carve out big chunks of time devoted just to her, then she didn't need to be with me and make a foolish lifelong commitment.

When we DID get married, nothing changed except we moved in together. The problem that I initially ran into is that even though she understood what a relationship with me meant, she hadn't really prepared herself for that reality. My particular job at the time didn't always afford me the time to call her and reveal my whereabouts at all times. So our first big fight was because I couldn't convince her why I had no choice but to work late on that particular night. She is STILL not convinced to this day that she grossly overreacted. And to this day I have stood my ground on the issue.

Another point of contention: I play in a band. That means there will be AT LEAST one night a week I will not see her or the children, and don't even bother waiting up if I have a gig because I won't be home until at least 3 a.m. It's frustrating. But that's life.

The only thing that is genuinely disruptive to your lifestyle as a married man is children. Don't get me wrong, I love my children. But when they are very young they demand attention that you simply can't ignore. You have to play with them, discipline them, change the babies and feed the diapers, potty train them, and so on because it's just too much for one person. When they are older and more independent, you can get out more and even involve them in what you do to a greater degree. I could, for example, take my kids with me to late-night rehearsals in an emergency and they'd be fine. I've had to do that before. I just can't make a habit of it because of the risk of hearing loss from 3 hours of heavy metal. I myself wear earplugs, though I'm the only one.

So, yeah, children do take a lot of work when they're little. But I have a different view of spouses. Your spouse is first and foremost your best friend, and friends understand that you cannot be expected to spend EVERY SINGLE WAKING MOMENT with them. And I think this is a lot of the problem with many marriages--lack of perspective. I would never give up my friends nor would I ask my wife to give up her friends UNLESS being with friends posed a direct threat to our relationship. My rule is I will not woman-bash. I will not discuss things that might embarrass my wife if anyone else knew about it. As far as anyone else is concerned, my wife is perfect. I will only stop being your friend if you attack her character. I also expect my wife to stand by me and defend me the same way I'd defend her.

But any guy who allows his woman to make him a chump--or any woman who allows her husband to be domineering--is asking for trouble. Marriage entails mutual respect, and out of that is your right to keep your friends (note that I already mentioned this rule has a perfectly valid exception).

Marriage is something that was created by religion. Marriage to me is like owning a car. Do you want someone to own you? Do you want someone to say they belong to you? Or do you want to be your own person and say you belong to no one?

Anyways, I've had more to drink tonight than should be legal so whatever I say.............well is probably the truth in my mind, but you should follow your passion. Do what you believe in not what someone else expects you to.

According to my Psych textbook, the social groups of people aged 20+ tend to be made up of 'loosely-associated groups of couples'. This matches my experience, that couples really only socialise with other couples. I don't follow this rule when I organise gatherings, but I don't have 'girls nights' or dinner parties only composed of couples -- I tend to invite groups of people I think will have something to talk about, regardless of gender, age, marital status, or whether they've previously met, but I've noticed not many others do.

My mother is currently going through the reverse of this. When she and my father separated, most of her former friends shunned her because their husbands were still close to my dad and his new wife. Now, ten years later, all the ex-wives of dad's friends are calling her again.

You could try being friends with your friends' spouses.

I'd feel weird if one of my husband's friends thought I'd stolen him away. If they want to see him, they can come over. What's the big deal?