Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Marriage

Now this is a word that girls will happily sit and talk about for hours and will have guys rushing out the door faster than lightening.

It is a word that can reduce me to tears...
I am not married, I would love to be married and this is the biggest thing that can put me in a mood/sulk and drive me up the wall.
Now the reason I am not married is not that I don't want to be, it just hasn't happened yet.
The biggest reason is because Steve doesn't want to get married, he has been married before, but I don't understand why I should be punished for a past mistake of his.
To be honest nothing is going to change in our day to day living if we did get married, we have a house, a car, 2 children, joint bank accounts, it would only be a piece of official paper but I still want to get married.

The thing is I can't come up with a good enough reason to argue why I want to get married.
I am a very traditional person, oh yea I can hear you all say, why have you got 2 kids and you are not married, well the reason for that may be very selfish, but I knew I was getting to a stage in life that if I didn't have children soon then I would have been too old. So I took the biggest risk of my life and decided that if Steve was happy to have kids (took some persuasion) then I was having the boys (both our boys were planned not accidents) and I decided that if Steve and I ever broke up then at least I got 2 gorgeous children out of it that I really wanted.
I did say it was a selfish reason, but I had always wanted children and life was not exactly going my way in the dating field, but don't worry Steve and I had been together 4 years by the time we had children, so it wasn't a rushed into thing.

I have asked loads of people why they got married and I can give you every answer under the sun......
  1. Religous reasons
  2. Only way I could move out of home
  3. We wanted to live together
  4. Society
  5. If we didn't get married we probably wouldn't be together
  6. That is what you do

Funny thing is, everyone refers to Steve as my husband, they just presume we are married. That is what society thinks and I get the impression that this is the norm for society.

So where on earth did this 'we don't want to get married, but are going to live together like married people and do this for the rest of our life thing come in?' I don't actually understand what people have against getting married, what does it change? There would be no difference to how we live life today to how we would live if we were married.

And that is Steve's arguement.

What bugs me about not being married is that I think people and my family all presume that I am happy with my current living arrangements, that is must be what I want, how I want to live me life.

Well with tears rolling down my cheeks I can tell you in no uncertain terms....This is not what I want. I want to do what everyone else does at this stage of life, be married. Why me, what is wrong with me that I am not married? I look at other people and wonder what I have done wrong to not be married, what am I not doing? I have asked Steve why he got married the first time, his answer was "it was what you did" well I want the " it is what you do"

My baby brother is married, my cousin is getting married in 4 weeks, my parents are still married after 43 years. It is what everyone does, so why not me? I can hear you all say, well life is different now, you could always ask him? NO, even though I am a very independant stubborn person there are somethings in life that the man does, and proposing and buying an engagement ring is theirs to do and keep, ok apart from leap years when I have no problem with girls asking their guys on Feb 29, but that is not me. With how I have lived life I have always done what I want to get what I want, for once I want someone to want to do something for me rather than me having to make this happen.

Believe me Steve knows all this, he knows I want to get married, has done for several years now but because he is not that bothered by it, then it is no big deal to him. Don't get me wrong I love him and I am not going anywhere, well apart from to Hamilton to join him with his new job. Unfortunately it is now such a thing that if I bring it up again then if he did propose I won't know if he was sick of listening to me talk about it or whether it was what he wanted to do. I am not pressuring him into it, but after almost 8 years together I am beginning to wonder why not me?

So for now I will go on answering the phone to telemarketers and saying "No I am not Mrs......." and correcting people when they comment about my husband, telling them that I will let my husband know when I get one. And when Ben is a little older and comes home from school and asks if we are married? I will say "No" and if he asks "why not?" or asks "why do you have a different surname to me, Alex and daddy?" then my simple answer will be "ask you father!"

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