Arriving back home from our trip to Dublin the doormat was littered with Christmas cards and to my surprise, this year a couple were addressed to Mr and Mrs. C.
I rolled my eyes in the same way I do when people ask me what my husband does, or whether or not my husband is working from home today. I often correct them even if it seemingly isn’t relevant to the conversation.
“On no,” I’ll say. “My partner and I - we are not married.”
There are reasons for this and I would say it is a decision we have made, although it isn’t one we have talked much about.
The truth is I have said I don’t want to get married and therefore he has never asked me.
Before I outline my reasons for not wanting to get married, I want to say that this is my personal opinion and that is not to say that I in anyway judge anyone else’s decisions or opinions on marriage. I know too that living in a progressive western culture with apathetic family, I am lucky to be able to have open opinions on the subject. So here goes…
I don’t want to be owned
Marriage for me is about ownership and I don’t want to be owned. When I think of marriage, scenes from Pride and Prejudice go through my head. The women waiting around with their needle work for a man to come along on his horse and whisk them away. It was different then they needed a man to give them the security in their adult life because British law didn’t protect women or give them independence as it does now. I think of the passing of ownership of a woman from the father, to the husband. Poor them, I think. But we don’t need to live like that any more. We don’t need to wait around for men to save us from spinsterhood, from being left penniless and alone. We don’t need that Prince Charming that we are told about in Disney films - or the knight in shining armour - women are independent now.
A scene from Pride and Prejudice, BBC (1995)
Women are independent but in terms of British law, there are legal perks to being married that a couple would have to organise themselves if they aren’t married. For example, my partner and I have organised our finances and assets, such that they pass down to each other via a Will to ensure each other’s and our children’s financial security should the worse happen. There has been paperwork signed and we have to nominate each other for pensions, for example. So whilst I am conscious that it would have probably been easier in this sense to get married, it doesn’t feel like the right reason to do it. It isn’t necessary any more. It isn’t the only way.
Socially too, it is acceptable. Mostly, in western culture we can live with partners and have children out of wed-lock; we can “co-habit” all without shame. There are lots of other options, yet marriage still seems incredibly popular and annoyingly, it is still an assumption people make. It is still the norm.
The idea of ownership is being challenged by couples willing to break tradition and double-barrel their surnames or better still, the husbands who have taken on the woman’s surname, or created a new surname altogether. This is really symbolic of throwing out those ideas of men owning women, but people don’t always accept it and much like me being called Mrs, many of these names are forgotten when it comes to addressing Christmas cards and the “norm” will take its place.
I don’t want a wedding
I don’t want to get married because I don’t want the Big Day. I don’t want to perform in front of family and friends to articulate my love for my partner and my commitment to him and my children. That is for me and them and nobody else. I don’t want the fuss. I am not religious in any way and would feel that any religious ceremony would be insincere and hypocritical.
Even the word Mrs seems unnecessary. Men don’t need to change their title when they marry. They can go through their entire adult life with the same title and surname and not have to change it in tune with their supposed success at the milestones of life.
I often see my name next to Miss despite me picking Ms, whatever that is meant to mean, and seeing the fifteen year old me there. It is a title loaded with innocence and youth, inexperience and immaturity. In a way I have been conditioned to see it as a failure that I haven’t managed to make it into a Mrs yet, that my ring finger is still bare. This is something I am conscious of but to me Mrs is worse, because when people call me Mrs or assume I am married I feel frustrated because it takes away a choice that I have made.
Perhaps years ago being a Miss was failure to have met someone, failure to have convinced someone you are worth spending their lives with or committing to but these days it doesn’t have to mean that and actually, where is the logic of having these titles at all?
I can’t afford to get married
The cost of marriage is also off putting. I am not one to throw money around and I would much rather spend the money for a wedding on something more literally concrete (the mortgage for example). The average cost of a wedding in 2022 was £18,4001, which according to Hitched, 59% of people paid for using savings and 11% took out a loan. I know people often say the family will help out with the cost, but that is unlikely to be the case for us. It is a huge financial cost we would have to fulfil ourselves and even if we wanted to get married, we likely wouldn’t be able to right now.
I know that there are tax breaks for married couples, “deliberate Government social-engineering to reward marriage through the tax system,”2 according to Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert. But is saving £2523 a year really worth the significant cost that people pay out on what is essentially one big party? Financially, it doesn’t make sense to me.
Now, I love a wedding. I love going to them and the opportunity to celebrate a couple with their family is a wonderful experience and is always one I feel so privileged to be involved in, but, selfishly perhaps, it isn’t one I’d want to host. I’d rather run off and elope to avoid the stress of having to organise multiple vendors, organise colour palettes and liaise with two vast families across two countries. It’s a big job.
Doing it for the kids
Now my children may be confused by the decision. The trouble with marriage being the norm is that in school and pre-school it will be how the teachers talk about families and they will call their teacher Mrs, they will likely expect I will be a Mrs too, and that is okay. I already tell them about the different surnames we have and I know it goes straight over their head. One day, though, I am sure they will understand.
I want my children to know that they don’t have to get married. Sure, it would probably have had a greater effect if I had had daughters, but maybe that’s my point. My sons likely won’t feel the pressure to get married. They won’t feel that intense failure when they see others flashing their ring fingers about - that they haven’t found someone that “loves them enough”, society won’t pin that on them because they are male. But perhaps my niece may benefit from it or even my sons girlfriends’ if they have them one day. They say you should be the change you want to see.
Is that it?
Whilst writing this article, I thought that these are probably valid reasons for not wanting to get married, but are they actually the reasons I don’t want to get married?
Am I really that bothered that I might be ‘owned’ by someone? As a mostly stay-at-home mum I am already financially dependent on my partner, much like the ladies in Pride and Prejudice would have been albeit for different reasons and temporarily. Religion is again a valid reason, but a civil partnership, which opposite-sex couples can now do4, doesn’t have to involve a religious ceremony at all and no one is going to force me inside a church. Similarly, no one is going to force me into the big white princess dress and drag me down the aisle in front of my family and friends. There doesn’t have to be a performance, or a big day; these are all optional elements of what is essentially tying yourselves together legally, which as I have mentioned, we kind have already done. Then there’s money, and I can already hear you: I’m sure there are plenty of ways to do it on the cheap, if that is what we wanted to do. So what is the real reason, then?
The truth is my aversion to marriage is more complicated than reasons of ownership, finances or performance.
Once upon a time, I did want to get married. I spent many years waiting for someone to propose to me. They knew I wanted to get married and they hung the idea of marriage like a carrot in front of me for years. The promise, if you like, of happiness in our relationship. It was a utopia on the horizon that we never arrived at.
Every birthday and holiday, every Valentine’s day and random romantic event for eight years, I waited poised and ready to say yes (even when I knew the relationship was beyond fixing). I wanted to get married. It was the next milestone, it was what everyone else did and I hoped, that it would make us happy. But I waited and it never happened, and I hate myself for it. I hate myself for waiting in expectation like the girls in Pride and Prejudice. I hated myself for wanting something that only a man could give me, and for putting the value of myself on it. I hate that I gave him that control over me. Each time it didn’t happen I saw it as a failure. My bare ring finger a reminder that he didn’t love me that much and that I wasn’t good enough.
Of course, it would have been a disaster if we had gotten married and had children and I am so grateful that we didn’t have those complications to deal with at the end of the relationship. We would almost certainly have divorced by now if the way things turned out are anything to go by. That relationship ended ten years ago this year. It was one of those life-changing ends where is all went bang - everything changed, I cut ties with the person in question and I had to rebuild my life from scratch. That year and the one after I saw a new job, a new house, new friends all on a new side of London. Everything started again and with it I decided I didn’t want to get married. I don’t want to assign my value and self-esteem to whether or not someone wanted to marry me. I wasn’t waiting any longer.
I know now that I can commit to someone and start a family with them without the big day or the diamond ring, without having that moment where he gets down on one knee and tells me I’m the best thing that ever happened to him.
I am lucky that I live in a culture where I have that choice. That life can be lived without marriage, if that is what we choose. In making that choice, I didn’t sit waiting for happiness to come find me, I went to find it myself.
So whilst it may not actually be about not wanting to get married any more, it is more that I don’t feel I need to. I already have everything I need.
If this post resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please do join me in the comments.
How do you feel about marriage?
Do you think it is important for children that their parents are married?
Did you feel pressured to get married?
Did you elope and avoid having the big day? Tell me everything!
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed Distracted please do share this post with a friend.
Source: Hitched The average wedding in the UK in 2022 cost £18,400, based on a survey of 2,457 couples who married in 2022.
Martin Lewis quoted in Money Saving Expert article: Is there any point in getting married?
Source: Martin Lewis - Is there any point in getting married? (2018)
The non-taxpayer can apply to have 10% (£1,190) of their tax-free allowance shifted to the taxpayer. This means £1,190 of income they would have been taxed on at 20% is now tax-free - a £238 gain this year, done via altering your tax code.
and have been able to do since 2019.
All of your reasons for not getting married were mine!! And then, last year, I married my partner of 20 years. I still don’t quite understand our decision to do it - it definitely was not because I felt the need to. One reason was definitely that we could finally afford to without going into debt. One reason was that we are terrible at admin, do not have wills, and both of us live with a deep abiding anxiety about the complications of death when you’re not married... extreme, but true. One reason was that after the collective horrors of 2020 my now-husband (still wild!) felt a need to mark and celebrate the life we’ve built together.
I really couldn’t be arsed to plan a wedding, but we divided it up between us and got it done, and it pains me to admit it was one of the best days of my life (THE best day? Possibly. I hate myself lol). I totally underestimated the power of having all of our friends and family together in one place, and also because we’re in our 40s there hasn’t been a wedding in a while so everyone was UP FOR IT! I have wondered since about the nature and importance of ritual - especially in our western ritual-starved society. And none of this is to try to convince you to get married. Nothing has changed (certainly not my name). I think writing this might just be an excuse to think about that day 😆 When he asked me I realised that I did want to get married, something I’ve reflected on a lot since but am no closer to an answer about. I really didn’t feel like I needed to get married, but when he asked, I wanted to. I wonder if that’s reason enough?
Ohhhh! I love this conversation but I’m the only person in my friend/mom group that did not do a big wedding. We live in the US and we got married when I got pregnant with our son because my husband had a job with good health insurance, which I did not have. I usually tell people we would have ended up getting married eventually, but I’m not sure we would have...I know we were going to be together and have kids but the way it all went down made me realize I did not need to want to get married. We signed papers, that was it. I have no regrets about not having a wedding. And I don’t wear a wedding ring, my partner doesn’t either. I always thought I’d want the whole big wedding, but turns out I was wrong.