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Old 05-13-2011, 03:40 AM
  # 30 (permalink)  
stilllearning
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Join Date: Feb 2010
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A new male coworker made a "your husband" comment last week, I laughed and said "I don't have one." He's happily married and he wasn't fishing - he simply assumed that I was married and was genuinely taken aback. He apologised immediately and then said "you just seem like a person who would be married." I thanked him for what I'm sure was meant as a compliment, and chuckled.

I suppose I do seem like "the sort" of person who would be married. But I think he meant, even if he didn't realise it, that I'm the sort of person who by now should have had the opportunity to be married. I have.

But what I didn't realise until recently is ... I have actually chosen not to be. Not out of fear, or shame or being broken - or even because I haven't met someone I can imagine being married to.

I simply don't "get" marriage. I take my promises seriously - and I can't imagine promising to spend the entire rest of my days waking up with the same person no matter what. I know, for sure, that there are circumstances in which I would divorce a spouse - so what try to make a promise I know ahead of time I'm not sure I can keep? Also - I've seen friends gallop down the aisle with their future spouses without having had any kind of discussion about what marriage means to each of them and then gallop to divorce court when they realize too late that in fact it meant very, very different things to each of them.

I would love to find a companion. But I know for sure that I don't want kids - and marriage just doesn't (totally personal opinion) make any sense to me. It seems to me to be about the only legal agreement where you sign on the dotted line first, then work out the terms and conditions afterwards.

Someone once joked to me that I must be afraid of commitment because I'd hit 35 and never been married. Actually, I take commitment really, really seriously - that's why I've never been married.

I could feel differently about this in a year, five years, 10 years - who knows. But up until now I haven't married - and it's been a choice. I'm profoundly grateful that I have that choice and it doesn't matter to me at all what anyone thinks of it.

Great topic,

SL.
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