the wedding march-- do you feel the pressure of love and marriage as a deadline?

Women I take it?

But this thread will only depress me, so I'd rather not think about it right now.

x-post...

No indeed. I look around at my friends near my age -- some are single, some in a relationship, some married, some with kids. None of them strike me as having found some sort of 'proper' path or not, they are who they are. And I admit I'm simply not sure if I ever want kids, though I've been told more than once I'd be a great father. Very flattering, but I dunno! There's a lot to this question I won't go into here, but I'll say I do sometimes fret a bit over the passage of time -- intimations of mortality, if you will -- but I try not to get crushed by that.

Yes, I want to get married. But I don't think that marriage implies "For Ever And Ever" any more, that's unrealistic. The reason that I would still want to get *married*, even though I know it might not be permanent, is because the legal act of Marriage is like a protection for *both* partners when/if the relationship breaks up!

If all relationships *were* permanent, there would be no need for even the concept of marriage as a legal notion.

What I want is a legal bit of paper that states "when we *stop* feeling lovey-dovey towards each other, this is where we agree what our responsibilities will be, and this is how we will handle things if we *do* break up."

After my last experience of a long-term relationship, I'd insist on a pre-nup before I even MOVED IN with someone.

I'm more concerned about the time I've already lost - I've said before that there's a couple of years of my life I feel like I've wasted completely, so maybe I should actually be acting like a 23-year old to compensate.

Also the fact that in the last couple of years I've spent much more time with people around the 30 mark who live almost exactly the same lifestyle to me has stopped me from viewing 30 as such a terrifying milestone, if indeed I ever did.

The emotional stuff is par for the course as far as relationships go, but the other stuff was me being dumb and naive and actually thinking that boys would be honourable after their lust died. I'm not going through that again.

(I'm trying very hard here not to be a smug married, hopefully it's working but if not, sorry)

But, I think, really, it comes down to the basic idea of wanting children or not wanting children. If you don't want kids, ever, then you're not going to perceive a deadline of any sort.

I've never been good with deadlines, but this is one I really can't surf. A long time ago, I said that if I wasn't married by 35, I'd have a kid by artificial insemination, or with a friend or something. Now that deadline is getting closer than I dreamed, I'm not sure that I have the guts to do it. Which makes me think that I will *never* be able to have kids, which makes me unfeasibly sad in a way that I really can't justify or defend.

but i'll never get married.

x-post Well, my future self just showed up and confirmed it all for me (j/k again).

The problem was, by the time my priorities had changed... well, the pool of available partners had vastly shrunk. So maybe it's my fault that I keep getting stuck with the jerks and the serial stringers, because I left it so late.

But 22 is very early to start worrying about it. So I wouldn't.

I flip flop quite a bit. Some days I practically crave this idea of settling down. It can mean a different thing depending on the day. Maybe I want to buy a house and/or get married and/or have babies. Then another day I'll be totally off all of it. I figure, I love the relationship I'm in, I'm having fun, I like living in apartments because I like a bit of change of scenary every year or two...

Also, the women I work with make the married with kids route look like Hell. In fact, one woman said yesterday, when she learned I'd be turning 27 soon - "Sarah, I did it all. I did everything I was supposed to do. I got married when I was supposed to. I had kids when I was supposed to. I did it all by the book. And it was horrible."

yeah, that's what i've been wondering. i don't feel the pressure, resist boys that pressure me into being more serious, etc, and have a different attitude to most of my friends, guys and girls. it's probably the kids thing, but i was just wondering if that was really it or if that was my imagination...

That's when you point out that their children are magic, and you could never hope to bear anything as wonderful as theirs.

Re the question: I really really need to start... drinking.

But the kids, yeah... there IS a deadline, physically, whether I want one or not. I definitely don't want them now (at 26) but what if I (and M) keep on feeling 'not quite ready' for the next ten years? When is Too Late? What if we start trying and we can't? I'd want to find out sooner rather than later. Like Sarah I hate feeling like I can't choose exactly when I want them.

Socially though I don't feel any need to do any of it. All my friends are at different stages and happy or sad without much reference to when they have passed the milestones.

hello andrew, it was so lovely to see you last week! come visit more and dance!

It really hurts because my last partner told me that the ultimate reason that he broke up with me was because he thought I would be a bad parent. Yeah, that really fucked me up.

But then again, I think of the people who manage to get to adulthood and survive just fine, despite being functionally raised by wolves. And I think I wouldn't do half as bad a job as some.

x-post...

my parents' relationship has probably made me the way i am, as well. they're still together, still madly in love. i don't think i'll ever be in a situation where i love someone that much, and can't imagine getting married unless it was going to be at least as good as theirs...

funny matt i kind of did the same and it had the opposite effect on me!

The whole marriage concept is particularly tough for me. I have only been in 2 relationships that lasted a year or longer (the last was about 5 years ago, the other 10), and at the time I was very serious about them, and did briefly consider getting married. Then the feeling just went away. In the end, 1 broke my heart, and the other - I broke hers.

Since then I've noticed a rather worrisome trend: a constant string of short term (2-3 months or less) relationships. In almost all these cases, I end things because I'm just not interested any more. I swear this has nothing to do with a lack of commitment. I just figure that if I'm not feeling into it, why lead the other person along any further if I know it won't last? I accept a degree of arrogance on my part here for assuming that the other person wants a long-term relationship with me, but for the most part this has proven to be the case.

I don't end these short relationships because I feel I'm running out of time. It's more that I want to be honest about my feelings when I feel them - I think this is fair to both of us. Of course this does present problems for me:
-I see a lot of tears and get called a lot of bad things (which I always find hard to accept when I'm trying to be open and honest)
-Getting set up with friends becomes difficult when everyone knows I'm not a 'safe bet' (unless someone is specifically looking for a quick fling)

The thing is, I REALLY DO want to get married and have kids... some day. I just (warning: cliché time) haven't met the right person. I'm not waiting for lightning bolts or some sort of 'perfect' movie-style match-up - believe me, my mind is wide open to pretty much any possibility. But for whatever reason, nothing has made me want to, um, 'settle down' yet. This is depressing not because of my age, but more because I'm getting used to my pattern, and I fear that I may walk away from something good because I'm feeling bored (which I'm sure happens in wonderful happy long-term relationships too). Plus I like being on my own (I'm an only child), and the whole partner/kids thing seems to be a novelty to me, rather than something that will actually happen to me.

The other problem is that now I've got the travel bug since leaving Canada, and I'm just not sure how long I'll be in London, where I'll go next and for how long. This of course poses a bit of a problem for me and long-term relationships.

I dunno - I try not to think about this stuff too much, because it can get me down. At the end of the day though, I do think that there's not a hell of a lot I can do about this. All I can do is be myself, enjoy life and see what happens...

Sarah, you are me. And probably lots of other people too.

(xpost)

And to this day they like to tell stories of when they were newlyweds living in Washington State together in a small house with a cute garden. Their eyes get all dreamy, and it makes me sad. Something can seem so right and go so wrong. And the worst part is that kids were involved. I wouldn't want to put any kids through what I saw with my parents- watching them fall out of love. God, I'm so melodramatic today.

I'm not explaining this very well, and I'll probably be shouted at or told off by someone or told that I'm "depressing" or whatever for feeling this way.

This thread is pissing me off and making me depressed, like I suspected that it would, though. :-(

I wanna partake in bake sales for the classroom
I wanna hear the sweet tune
of Sally's little vroom-vroom
as she zooms around my broom
as I exhume the gloom
of my shallow life
I wanna be simple and honest and dimpled
'cause I am your wife
I will never tarry
I'm not even torn
I wanna get married
that's why I was born

I actually looked forward to turning 30, because, as I kept thinking, I could put certain assumptions about who I was and was supposed to be behind me. And I did, to some degree. I had leave to act like a grown-up, and that allowed me to not get freaked out and put on the brakes when the right person came along. I think my wife had a similar experience. And while I don't have the same kind of biological clock to mind that women might, the idea of kids became more present, even desirable, once I reached a certain stage and could think about myself as a person stable and responsible enough to handle it.

Would I be freaking out, at 40, if I were still single? It's hard to say. I have a job I love and good friends and a house I dig, but I can't assume I would have the same life if I weren't married. The key difference, I think, between being in your 20s and being in your 30s and/or 40s is that hopefully you've built some kind of life to be content with, maybe even proud of. And it's nice to be able to share it. In fact, sharing it makes everything better. That said, you don't have to be married and/or have kids to share your life, but it is a particularly intimate and rewarding kind of sharing--or it can be.

I love being a husband and a dad, but at the same time I realize it's not for everyone. The stuff that makes me happy would make others miserable. And the absolute last reason you should get married or, especially, have a kid is just because you feel you have to, your time has come, cause then you have the potential to screw up lives not your own.

Then I have a cup of tea and a lie-down, and I feel fine.

But also, I think some people just want me to get married because that's what they did and they don't want to be alone in it...??

and also if someone is willing to share a bedroom with me we can both pay a lot less rent for accomodation.

Incidentally, I'm still kind of amazed when you say how old you are because you both look and act ten years younger (that's a compliment, btw).

hey ken, can we sit down and have a little talk? you see, i've been thinking...

(That's supposed to be a joke. I think.)

i dont get the outside pressure point of view. doesn't compute. maybe people get bored or lonely sometimes and they blame other people for making them feel like they should be married with kids?

But the (personal) pressure of getting some kind of book deal before I die could break my bones.

Dude, Jeanne, you and I are SO in the same boat. How about we swear that if one of us gets an agent we try and make sure said agent reads the other's work? ;-)

I think it also helps that a lot of my closest friends are the same age as me or older and also still single - if I was surrounded by happy couples I can imagine feeling pretty terrible and "why don't I get that?"

Agreed. My friends as noted are a mix of differing situations and I am glad of that, because it helps to see that there is no 'correct' way. If I can tell a story without naming names (it's not an ILXor but still) -- a guy who I consider a good enough friend around here has been married for many years, to his high school girlfriend. My sense of their relationship is that it is solid but tense nonetheless -- once we were talking and he said he wouldn't have minded some period of independence in his life post-high school. He's always hated the idea of having kids while his wife has wanted them, and they've well known about this (and apparently argued a bit about it) for a long while but a few months ago his wife got pregnant and it has really, really impacted him in a bad way. Apparently he literally said nothing to his wife for about a day or so after he heard about this, then got around to saying "I would rather have CANCER than have a kid." As he puts it, biologically everything is coming along fine for kid and wife, mentally he has refused to accept that he's going to be a dad. And I have no idea how he's going to handle when the kid comes along but honestly, I don't think we're going to be seeing anything like we do with Alex in NYC -- at least not immediately.

Now personally I like this guy and his wife both very much, I trust them in many things, he's got my sense of humor and looking at the world, and so forth. But I am sad at how things have come to pass and though I would never feel qualified or close enough to give him any sort of advice (after all, what could I say?), I'm going to try and be there as I can. Sure the cliche is that actually being a parent changes everything but DOES it? I think we've all known examples where kids were had in circumstances where they shouldn't have been, and what this means for the marriage, I just don't know.

It's things like this, though, that remind me that ultimately I have problems I *want* to have.

haha kephm that's what i do to people who are always telling me "why haven't you got a mobile phone yet?"

I'm going to keep that in mind!

that's interesting, ned. while there's no obvious 'marriage track' among my friends here in london, i know that's not the case with past social groups.

My past social groups as such I don't have any real contact with -- none from high school outside of the ten year reunion back in 1998, only two or three from UCLA and that on an irregular basis. I think in ways this was good, though, in that one doesn't have to measure oneself against that standard, while it's also an illustration that I've truly found my closest friends in later years -- which is no bad thing.

And as far as the actually act of marriage goes, I would like to do it, rather than just 'live together' or whatever. Yeah, partly for my family (and likely hers too), but mostly for the reason that Porkpie described way above - I really like the idea of having one helluva big-ass party where family and friends can really go nuts.

Talking about this stuff is so weird for me, since I can't picture who this mythical 'other person' will be...

I really like the idea of having one helluva big-ass party where family and friends can really go nuts.

I'm with that as well, should it happen, but it would be something where it would be for me and the other person first and foremost. There's a lot about a traditional wedding format that seems designed for everyone else -- I'd rather say, "No, hey, come to THIS party and enjoy!" And I have already sworn that I WILL be my own DJ if it comes to it.

I think he said something about you needing help with your grip.

Traditional weddings are kind of boring to me.

"Sarah, I did it all. I did everything I was supposed to do. I got married when I was supposed to. I had kids when I was supposed to. I did it all by the book. And it was horrible."

It wasn't horrible per se, and I wouldn't trade having Spencer for anything in the world, but the marriage part... well, let's say Snow White LIED TO ALL OF US, and it wasn't what I ever hoped it would be.

That said, I have no real opinion on getting married again - I'm sure if the right person came along, I'd do it, and I admit that I would like to have another baby, but because I'm already 32 and Spencer is nearly 7, it seems like maybe I should re-think that one.

(Wow, that answer looks like it would completely shut my mother up and for this I will court the possibility of a thankful world as a result)

eat wiener schnitzel ---- > breed ----- > dessert

eating feta is a goal-related urge?

What did you expect? Stop keeping count.

LOL

Quite happily from my folks, I have NO pressure of any sort -- never been told to avoid it, never been told I must do it, nada. At no point have they ever sat me down or ask me when I'll find someone or give them grandkids -- the most I've heard about was one time when my mom said as we were all up in Carmel for a holiday or the like that she said she and my dad had apparently talked and agreed that there was no point in forcing anything with myself and my sister in terms of our own lives, that it's much more natural to simply let us both find our own way and for them to be there as we need them. And I appreciate that very much. I think they are terribly flattered whenever I might ask them for some personal thoughts or advice on various matters -- a couple of years back I was prompted to ask more about their own relationship and how it came to be, and that helped greatly in understanding them more as people and not just my parents.

my parents are totally cool about the whole thing as well. the last time i was home, i told them (while driving at 90mph with the windows down and g n'r on the stereo) that they should only expect grandbabies from my brother, and that the only way i'd get married in the next 5 years (if ever) was for immigration reasons. they took it better than expected.

So while it's not so much a biological deadline, and maybe won't be the end of the world if I miss it, I think it's one I've chosen to set for myself, the same way people with other ambitions might set conceptual deadlines (if I wanted to be a world class achitect, I'd at least want to be working in the industry by the time I was 23, or whatever).

And yeah, it's only because I've been thinking this way that I've started thinking seriously about how to achieve it - ie looking for a partner. So it's only the last 2 or 3 years that I've been at all pro-active in the realm of relationships, and in fact have only had my first serious one during the last year (which has now ended). And it's not a fun or easy thing to try and be pro-active about, because I honestly believe that it's not something you can force, or look for, it just needs to happen. So yeah, that's where the heart of the problem is for me, currently.

I do have a back-up wife though. A relly close female friend who feels the same way as me about children. And we're agreed that if we're both still single at 35, we'll marry each other and start, um, sprogging. She's actually 3 years younger than me, so I guess that'd be 38 for me in reality, but hey, it's still a very reassuring idea. Except that...erm...she's the second back-up wife I've had. The first one got married last year.

Kate's cynicism is beyond my understanding capabilities.

More to the point I do not want kids and never have. The thought of babies, of pregnancy, giving birth, kids being toddlers and money sucking kids and ungrateful teens gives me a vomitous fear.