Hot Topic: I Don't Want to Get Married

You know right when I saw this board listed in hot topics, it caught my eye and I had to come check it out.

My SO and I have talked about never "getting married" because, simply, we already feel married. Really getting married would only tie up our finances legally and things like that. We tell our neighbors we're married...I mean when we meet new neighbors, etc. we refer to each other as husband/wife. Is that bad? We live together in a somewhat traditional neighborhood... We feel comfortable just saying husband/wife. We wouldn't get the same respect from people here to refer to each other as girlfriend/boyfriend or significant other. You know? Our love is official and so we call each other husband/wife. I don't know if we really want to get married legally. I want to feel free to be in love with him with no "obligatory" feeling. We want to spend the rest of our lives together but I think there is a mental trick that happens where resentment builds when a person focuses on that "we're stuck together" mentality, and even the way you treat each other can change based on that attitude.  Sure there is social pressure from family and such but WHY? They don't believe we love each other and want to be together forever? Don't they see that? :-)  My SO and I might not get married. Sure the ceremony would be very special, but honestly it would be so hard to get everyone together for it. His parents live in Pakistan and my dad lives in china.. other family and friends are scattered all over the world too. We joked we might go to the courthouse some day. But then WHY? So our finances can be all tied up legally? No point in that. We're happy just as we are :-)  The only benefit is really with these random people we don't know very well just simply seeing us as married like in our neighborhood and such. Also for people (other men) to leave me alone... he said he wants to get me a ring. We're not following those scripts like "will you marry me?" all that stuff. Honestly I think those scripts are really weird! LOL We feel more authentic letting it unfold our way.

And then you know what on top of all that... what if something happened between us...It's easier to tell people "we broke up" than to deal with saying "We're divorced"

Thanks for reading my post... I just wanted to comment on my SO and I's, I mean my husband and I's view of marriage... :-)