Sandeep wrote:
Give it more time, maybe he will come around and see things your way, but don't wait too long, or you won't be being true to yourself if you really know in your heart that you want to actually live a married life, and that it is not just some enchantment with the pageant of a wedding event.
Don't let this be your future: Fast forward to when you are 33 and still "living together happily ever after" without the benefit of a binding legal agreement securing you as his "legal significant other" empowered to make decisions on his behalf if necessary, etc. etc. etc., and your clock is ticking to have children (but, turns out, he doesn't want THOSE either) and you find you're ashamed of the fact that everyone you know has been hounding you for years asking you when you are finally going to get married and for some reason you find yourself feeling you are not "good enough" for this joker to do the honorable thing and marry you, and all of your options seem like they're gone because you have wasted the best years of your life "just living with" the man of your dreams.
I have seen this thing from ALL POSSIBLE SIDES, and it is ugly no matter how you look at it. When my mother died, I attended a support group for a while to get me through the rough parts of the grieving process of my first year. It was a place where people would gather and meet to talk through some of their grieving issues with gentle folks who had similar needs. Everyone grieves differently, and maybe I am harping on too long about this, but, can you guess who went to these groups? Number one: other folks who had lost their mothers, or who had lost someone they were the primary care-giver for, and hands down, WOMEN WHO WERE "just living with their significant others" NOT MARRIED and their significant other died leaving them with friends and family members who seemed somehow to NOT VALUE their loss as much because, you know, "Charlie wasn't actually Mary's husband, they just lived together in sin for 15 years..." Sadly, even within our group there were women (the few women who lost ACTUAL HUSBANDS) who also harbored this hostility toward the women who "only lost their longterm boyfriends." The #1 regret of the women who "only lost" their longterm significant others? Right. They wished they had gone through the trouble to get married.
Everyxthing,
Sandeep's evaluation is completely based on culture, and is not an absolute. For the record, in other countries like Norway, long-term cohabitation of faithful unmarried couples is very common. If you're in the US, yes it's less common, but you know going into a relationship with an Aspie that the relationship is never going to be common.
Also the last example about unmarried women going to support groups because their long-term significant others died is, from an AS perspective, a very poor support in favor of marriage. Those "friends" turned their back on the woman who lost the person she loved, that's the bottom line, and I think that says considerably more about the people that woman had around her, than it does about marriage as an institution. If you had those kinds of "friends," do you really think they'd accept your AS man even if you did get married to him? Let's not kid ourselves. Don't let "shame" dictate what you want to do, otherwise why even be with an Aspie in the first place?
It's best to get married because of good things, because it can offer benefits -- exactly as Butterflair described. Getting married to avoid bad things -- as Sandeep is basically describing -- is never going to be as healthy as getting married for positive reasons. Everyxthing, I think it's awesome that you've found love in an Aspie. I'm sure you know from being with him and the various ASD resources out there that this relationship is not going to be like being with an NT. Of course you know yourself best, and you know what is most important to you. Whether you choose to get married to him, to stay unmarried with him, or to leave him, I wish you and your man lots of luck and happiness!
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Won't you help a poor little puppy?
26 Mar 2009, 4:48 pm
