Marriage is not easy, but I don't think it is the death of love, either. On the contrary, marriage offers you the opportunity of getting to know someone else better and better all the time. Knowing someone well is, at least in my opinion, a pre-requisite (spelling?) for loving them, for you can't really love a person whom you don't know well.

Kids are the continuation of life. I know, I know, many kids look like tyrants, but I don't think it is basically their fault. As a parent, you could try to do better than the great majority.

Papers - no, strictly speaking, we don't need papers, but that's how it works currently.

Well, this was a post about dream interpretation, but just look at how quickly it has developed into something else. :) Probably it was my fault, too.

No,that's ok. I brought the subject up. As I said in the other post, I was exagerrating somewhat, but honestly, I just have no desire to be married. I don't think any of the stuff you said about knowing someone else better, etc is something you have to be married to do.

IMO, marriage just makes it harder to get out of a relationship. In that way, it probably does save some good relationships by making divorce unpleasant enough that it keeps some couples together through the bad times and then later they're happy that they stayed together, whereas if they hadn't been mariied maybe they would have just broken up and regretted it. So in that way, I think it can be a good thing.

But on the other hand, how many bad relationships that should be ended does it keep together b/c of fear of losing money or custody of your children? Being single is better than being in a terrible relationship, and raising mentally healthy children in that kind of environment is very difficult if not impossible.

To me, marriage just seems to be kind of a custom or traditional handed down from earlier times when the only socially acceptable (or maybe even legal) way to be in a sexual relationship with someone was to marry them. And this was especially true of women.

But that is no longer the case. So what purpose does marriage serve now? If you're religious, then ok, I can understand why you'd think it necessary, and although I'm an atheist, in general I have no problem with anyone who has religious faith and wants to live within whatever their religious law tells them they have to do.

But in this day and age (in the western world at least) fewer and fewer pepole are religious. And society no longer requires that people be married to have sex or live together.

So I just don't see the point of it for me. I've had several long term relationships and lived with women for years and been very happy. In fact, 2 long term relationships I had had for years, ended up with us breaking up within a few months of us deciding to get married. In neither case did I want marriage, but I gave in b/c both girlfriend's wanted it so much. It just seemed to change the whole dynamic of the relationship in a subtle and negative way. I still can't really put my finger on why, and maybe it was just coincidence in both cases, but I'm not totally convinced of that.

Anyway, I'm just saying what's best for me. Everyone is different and what works for one couple might be a terrible idea for another. But in the end, it just seems to me if you're in a committed relationship, why do you need to make a legal contract to prove it?

My prediction is that in 50 years, marriages will be much rarer than today b/c the custom will eventually start to fade out as people realize that it is no longer necesary or even helpful to the relationship in many cases.