No desire to get married

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OK, so I am female, 28, and my extended family has been asking when I plan to get married. When I tell them that I have no desire to get married, they give me some really weird looks.

I am happy the way I am now and enjoy my life. I broke up with my long-distance ex-boyfriend and have several friends I like to go out with. Being married entails spending long periods of time with another person and I like my alone time a lot. Granted, I would not mind living with someone (and enjoying the sex) who would be OK with both of us leading independent lives for the most part.

What scares me most about marriage is that once you are in, there is very little you can do to escape immediately. At least co-habitation give you the option to run away if you are fed up.

I should also mention that I do not want to have children.

Is this a typically aspie thing or am I just really weird?

it's not an aspie thing, it's not an NT thing, it's just a thing

Marriage is a very personal decision, and depends entirely on who you're with. I was a firm believer in not getting married, until I met the right person. It made all the difference.

Tell the family to get lost. It's none of their business.

i totally agree with you.
it is an aspie thing.
don't like marriage.hate little child.

I'd say that the willingness to accept your individual preferences as more important than the wishes of your family or social convention seems like as Aspie thing.

I rejected marriage at 13, and have seen nothing since that changes my mind. Absolutely none of my friends have stayed married, and the divorces have caused them all tremendous harm.

Exactly! And I won't even mention what goes on in many of the couples that do stay together. As a single woman in her late 20s, I've had so many supposedly happily married men proposition me.
My own 78 year old granny recently admited that she was never in love with my grandfather even though they were married for some 50+ years, with lots of quarrels. She said that back then women didn't simply divorce and that they stayed together for the kids.

Maybe commitment phobia... maybe you have not found the person yet

you don't need to get married until you are ready once you've found the right person..

Like the above poster says even my parents and grandparents agree they have not been in love after that excitement of being together wore off.... It's made me more commitment phobic...
God only knows if people ever stay in love till the end.. sigh!

I personally would not probably stay in a relationship if my feelings change... unless I am still happy and don't feel suffocated by the relationship...

Last edited by pree10shun on 19 Jun 2011, 8:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It's strange to me. Sometimes people find great happiness in something, and then make the assumption everyone should want what they have. That you can't possibly feel fulfilled in life otherwise.

Anyway I'm not totally against marriage but I'm not aggressively pursuing it either.

You hit the nail on the head! This happens a lot and with many other things beside marriage, it can be extremely frustrating too

A preference to remain single may be more common among Aspies, but there are a growing number of people in the general population who are deciding against marriage to pursue a rich and rewarding life, unattached to anyone. There is nothing inherently wrong with marriage. It just isn't right for everyone.

Follow the path which brings you happiness. Let others follow their own.

You may be interested in this- Bella DePaulo is a huge advocate of exactly this sort of thinking:

Click here: Bella DePaulo

I get this from my family too. They always ask me if I have a boyfriend, if the answer is yes then they ask when we're getting married. Differing from you, I want to get married to a good guy and live happily ever after and all that s**t. The thing is that I don't think it'll ever happen to me. I wish I didn't have the desire so my failure to keep a relationship going wouldn't hurt so bad.

Varies from person to person. I don't care if I get married either.

Marriage is useless to me.

Oy! I find it frustrating when people use the examples of bad marriages/divorces to indict marriage in general. In a good marriage, two people are committed to each other. That means they're committed to meeting each other's needs, nurturing each other, growing together, etc. It's not just about hot sex (although IMO, hot sex should be a part of it). Most marriages I see around me are about power - getting it, keeping it, using it. That's not what marriage is supposed to be about; that's not what the vows say. Because people choose unworthy partners, or because people choose to marry someone who they only want to change, or because people don't mean the vows when they say them, isn't an indictment of marriage. It's an indictment of people who marry the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, under false pretenses - and then blame "marriage" when it doesn't work out as they'd planned.

I have respect for my friends' good intentions, intelligence, and compassion. I think some of them gave it their best effort, and I can't just dismiss the fact that none of them have succeeded.

Fair enough - but I don't understand how you can arrive at the conclusion that marriage is a concept that doesn't work. There's no more basis for you saying marriage is a deeply flawed construct doomed to fail than I can say that every marriage should be saved. IMO, marriage is the product of each partner's choices.