[Whoa, hold the phone. Who said their can't be commitment without marriage? Legal commitment is only one type of commitment, y'know...

what type of commitment would that be ? something like " I love you but I am not going to marry you and as soon as I please, nothing really bounds me to you" ? that is just poetry, reality requires commitment and excuse me if I am not impressed by the poetic one, "I love you" without regularisation doesn't tell me anything, I would tell the guy that if he really loved me he would marry me.

Some can pull off the "virginity 'til marriage" thing (I know I can, and still am),

I've found that most who claim this are really just too fat and/or ugly to get laid.  

By the time I was 8, I had vowed to never marry and definitely never have kids.  I figured there was no such thing as a forever marriage and I was not going to put my kids through what I had been through.

I held this viewpoint right up until Oct 29, 1989.  That's the day I met my husband.  I agree with HM completely.  When you meet the right one, you're not scared.  Next month we'll celebrate 15 years.

Having said that, there have been times that the ONLY thing that has kept us together is our vows.  Has it been worth it?  Absolutely!  Being in love with my husband is really the icing on the cake.  There is so much more to a good marriage than love.  Companionship, friendship, respect, trust, honesty, commitment and so on.  And, yes, part of that commitment is "I commit to give you my earthly possessions.  I am willing to tell the world - to shout from the rooftops - that you are the only one for me."

It is sad how Disney has distorted what real love is.  Love is a choice.  It is a decision, an act of the will.  Real love is loving the person especially when they aren't "worthy" of it.

I heard of a couple in marriage counseling.  During one of the man's private sessions, he told the therapist he was going to leave his wife because he wasn't in love her anymore.  The therapist told him to go home and love his wife.  He insisted he couldn't as that would be emotionally dishonest.  This went back and forth for a bit.  Finally, the therapist said, "Did your mom love you?"  The man said, "Of course."  The therapist, "Well, when you were three months old, woke her up at 4:00 am with a crappy diaper, I have a feeling she wasn't feeling very loving toward you.  This same mom who taught you to be honest was  emotionally dishonest with you.  Now, go home and love your wife."  The couple is still together and happier than ever.

Quote from: howlingmeteore

what type of commitment would that be ? something like " I love you but I am not going to marry you and as soon as I please, nothing really bounds me to you" ? that is just poetry, reality requires commitment and excuse me if I am not impressed by the poetic one, "I love you" without regularisation doesn't tell me anything, I would tell the guy that if he really loved me he would marry me.

Ah, but that's the fun part. The false commitment you're talking about here is the same kind of false commitment an insincere marriage is, minus legal obligations. I'm talking emotional commitment, friend. It's that decision you internally make when you get married with sincere feelings for a person, minus the getting married part. Same emotions, same decisions, same emotional commitment.

Now I note that what you say is what "YOU" would do. What about a couple who happen to share the belief that marriage is unessential? What about a couple who sees no reason to marry beyond having children and reaping economic benefits? What then? "If you really love me, you'll join me in taking advantage of tax cuts." How touchingly romantic.

It depends on the individuals involved. I don't care how another couple's differently-arranged relationship works, so long as it works. And as I don't particularly hold what is essentially just another way of SAYING "I love you" to be of any special value by itself, I wouldn't have any qualms about participating an unmarried romantic relationship as long as that relationship was based in that strong emotional connection we've been talking about. On the other hand, I would prefer to marry, and would probably propose the moment I was sure of things (give that two or three years, maybe...). I'm just saying, if my girlfriend didn't particularly like marriage, I wouldn't make a big deal of it. Cohabitation isn't that far off.

the days when people marry when they don't love are over, we're not living in monarchy where nobles have to marry nobles, so it doesn't make any sense to me, if you marry, you mean it.
furthermore, there are times, just like justlize said it's your vows holding the couple togheter, there have been a lot of times I would have walked straight out of my house and said farewell but I remembered that if I married him I must have not been insane when I did it, I began pondering more and more which brought me back to his qualities that, back than made me say "yes " to his proposal, cohabitation can't give you that for the whole world and I'm sorry, I still don't see where the commitment is  

Quote from: Deep Thought

Quote from: howlingmeteore

what type of commitment would that be ? something like " I love you but I am not going to marry you and as soon as I please, nothing really bounds me to you" ? that is just poetry, reality requires commitment and excuse me if I am not impressed by the poetic one, "I love you" without regularisation doesn't tell me anything, I would tell the guy that if he really loved me he would marry me.

Ah, but that's the fun part. The false commitment you're talking about here is the same kind of false commitment an insincere marriage is, minus legal obligations. I'm talking emotional commitment, friend. It's that decision you internally make when you get married with sincere feelings for a person, minus the getting married part. Same emotions, same decisions, same emotional commitment.

Now I note that what you say is what "YOU" would do. What about a couple who happen to share the belief that marriage is unessential? What about a couple who sees no reason to marry beyond having children and reaping economic benefits? What then? "If you really love me, you'll join me in taking advantage of tax cuts." How touchingly romantic.

It depends on the individuals involved. I don't care how another couple's differently-arranged relationship works, so long as it works. And as I don't particularly hold what is essentially just another way of SAYING "I love you" to be of any special value by itself, I wouldn't have any qualms about participating an unmarried romantic relationship as long as that relationship was based in that strong emotional connection we've been talking about. On the other hand, I would prefer to marry, and would probably propose the moment I was sure of things (give that two or three years, maybe...). I'm just saying, if my girlfriend didn't particularly like marriage, I wouldn't make a big deal of it. Cohabitation isn't that far off.

the days when people marry when they don't love are over, we're not living in monarchy where nobles have to marry nobles, so it doesn't make any sense to me, if you marry, you mean it.
furthermore, there are times, just like justlize said it's your vows holding the couple togheter, there have been a lot of times I would have walked straight out of my house and said farewell but I remembered that if I married him I must have not been insane when I did it, I began pondering more and more which brought me back to his qualities that, back than made me say "yes " to his proposal, cohabitation can't give you that for the whole world and I'm sorry, I still don't see where the commitment is  

The days when people marry because their parents arranged it or because they have to marry a member of a certain social class are over, but not the days when people marry for social mobility, money, or misunderstood lust. Let's not forget that there are still reasons to marry other than love.

True, cohabitation doesn't offer a firm "shackle" (as it were) to hold you to your partner long enough to come around (if you indeed come around, which isn't a definite thing). So it has one disadvantage. That does not negate it.

My entire point here is that marriage is not entirely necessary for a relationship to work. If you can prove there aren't any couples out there who have been together, sincerely in committed love, for a long period of time, then you would have a serious upper hand in this discussion. Thus far, however, all you've managed to prove is that marriage has its benefits as opposed to cohabitation. I have never disputed that (though I did not mention it myself, either).

Marriage is only as much as the people involved in it make it. There are plenty of problem couples out there who don't really love each other, their are marriages of convenience, and there are marriages that just died out at some point. Those are empty marriages. What really gives marriage meaning is that those involved in it mean it. And that, by the way, is why I relegate marriage to the backburner. If a couple truly loves each other, and their relationship works, but neither of them particularly likes the idea of marriage, then why should they be nagged by everyone they know to tie the knot? Marriage is not the important point; 'tis only a public, outward affirmation of that which is inward. That affirmation is good, but not necessary. If the couple shows each other how they feel, there's no need for the ceremony. A meaningful marriage is beautiful, but it's not the marriage that makes it mean something. It's the love.[/quote]

It is not love that makes a marriage work, it is loyalty.  There are days in every marriage when, if one's spouse fell into a deep hole, the proclivity would be to say, "Stay there".  On those days, loyalty is what prompts one to the rescue.  If one does not have an innate sense of loyalty then any marriage will not be successful, because however gorgeous or handsome, or sexually attractive one's spouse is, familiarity eventually causes boredom or disinterest, and the eye starts roving, looking for new excitement.  Only the loyal will restrain themselves.

About nudity and other stages of undress, an English noblewoman said in the Seventeeth Century, "People can do anything they want so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses".   One way to translate that is to say that women can dress any way they want, or not dress at all, in private. Publicly, they should not dress in a way that causes every man they encounter in the street to try to get them into bed, because many of the men are not going to accept "no" when all a woman's charms are revealed and enhanced, and begging for attention.   We know exactly what we are doing when we display our bodies, and the reaction we are looking for is not, "Isn't she/he  beautiful/handsome?".  It's "Isn't she/he sexy?".   It's very doubtful that anyone who puts on a show for all and sundry could ever commit themselves to just one person.  These people should never marry and have children because they cause too much heartbreak when they are disloyal to their families.

Um, I said what makes it "mean something." Not what makes it "work."[/quote]

Marriage came about because it took a man and a woman together to make a living, that is, the man raised the food and the woman cooked it.  He raised the sheep for their wool and she spun it.  She had the babies and he protected them all.  He had his work and she had hers, and they were a team.  I doubt if either ever asked what the meaning of it was, they just did what had to be done to stay alive in some degree of comfort.  They married with the thought in mind that each had a job to do and they needed the other to do that job successfully.  If there were love, it was a bonus.  

A man without a wife could provide a living for himself, but he was not trained to make a home.  A woman without a husband could make a home, but she could not provide the living and often lived on the charity of relatives.  Bachelors and spinsters were looked on as unfinished products.

In our industrialized world, marriage is not really necessary, because industry provides all the things to make a home and a living for both sexes without either having to depend on the other to do the things each was not trained to do.  So we marry, we think, for love, but the divorce rate shows that love is not very long lasting in too many cases.  Some marry because they want to raise children, but there seem to be more children growing up in single parent homes or with a step-parent than  with two biological parents.  There is no meaningful reason to marry other than deciding that that is what we want to do with our lives.   Once we make that decision, though, loyalty is the most important ingredient, because we have made a contract to be responsible for the well-being of another person.