(no subject)

[nonethefewer]

A series of questions for you:

- If you are married &c, or engaged &c, or possessing of intimate friends who've done either, I ask you, like others have asked others for ever and ever, but you're my social circle dammit: how do you (parse as necessary) know you've reached tipping-point yessitude on getting married?

As in, I'm not stupid enough to think that marriage is a lifetime of certainty that marriage was a good idea, but clearly it was one at some point, so.

- What does relaxing, or being relaxed, feel like?

As in, I have "bored and restless", I have "hanging with friends", I have "sucked into this project omg", and I have "shut up I'm trying to sleep" (with the matching "shut up I'm trying to stay in bed"), but I am uncertain as to what relaxing is.  I think it has something to do with contentment, which may be why I've no clue.

- Why does MS CRM hate all life?

As in, why?

Comments

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

Marriage: I am married.

How did I know we had reached the point of being married making sense? Because it turned a 12+ month immigration process into a 3 month process, and we were young and madly in love and very impatient and the idea of waiting 9 more months was intolerable.

(The relationship was genuine and long term, but the marriage was not - without an immigration issue there would not have been a marriage.)

Without immigration factors, I think there is no point at which being married makes sense. 8-) For mixed-sex couples, with some care and attention to legal issues, most of the benefits of marriage can be had without marriage. Some of them take longer to acquire; most of them take a lot more effort. Some can't be acquired by any means, but I won't be bribed by my government while they deny these benefits completely to same-sex couples or to groups of more than two.

If I reinterpret your question as "at which point does it make sense to start behaving differently due to a presumption of enduring and ongoing relationship", well, living together for five years is a bit of a magic number for me. I figure by that point it's probably working and will probably continue to work, all else being equal. All else is not always equal; people change, but in my long terms relationships there's been a shared declaration of intent to change in ways that made us people who still wanted to be with each other. Sometimes those changes have meant we didn't want to be with each other, and that's happened at 3.5 years, 9 years and 13.5 years.

I'm not sure I've ever really understood why anyone wants to get married for the sake of being married, without regard to the rather massive set of bribes and incentives our government and society hands out. Ceremonies, sure, but from the POV of a ceremony or public declaration of commitment, what does legal marriage do that a public ceremony doesn't? Clearly something failed to be installed with me; this is rather strikingly alien to me.

If I try to give you a good faith attempt at helpfully answering you - I want lives to be entangled for a non-trivial amount of time. That's living together and sharing finances for at least a couple of years at the absolute minimum. But the real key is when all parties can't currently imagine ever becoming someone who didn't want to still be with the other person, *and* that's backed up by having jointly dealt with some non-trivial stresses or problems.

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I've ever really understood why anyone wants to get married for the sake of being married, without regard to the rather massive set of bribes and incentives our government and society hands out.

I got married for the government bribes, too. We got married when it made more fiscal sense for us to be so than not. We'd already committed to a life partnership, and didn't need a certificate from the state to prove it. But the certificate is nice, sure.

Personally, I'd say, get married when you're convinced this relationship will be around for a good long while, and get married when you're thinking more about marriage and less about "the wedding." I think a lot of people decide to get married when they're tied up in a teary-eyed notion of how beautiful the ceremony is going to be, and while there's nothing wrong with romanticism, it's not the best thing to base life decisions on. Finally, though, and most importantly... get married when you've realized that getting married won't change a whole heck of a lot about your relationship; if it feels like "getting married" is going to do something earth-shattering to the dynamic, for good or for bad, then it's probably not a good time.

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

Relaxation: I find the body a useful metaphor here, in that the difference between being physically relaxed vs. not relaxed is fairly similar to mentally relaxed vs. not relaxed.

It's all about clenching, and actively maintaining a clench (even if without realising it).

That clenched actively consumes resources. Your muscles burn energy to contract and to remain contracted. It's not a passive state. And if they contract too much or for too long or in the wrong way, there are flow-on effects on other areas. A clenched neck brings on headaches for many people. A clenched back or shoulders pulls bones out of alignment (which in turn can cause other muscles to clench, and so on...)

I find often I don't realise just how much effort and energy my body was putting into remaining in its clenched state until I (by design or by accident) let it go. It's almost like moving into a whole new body. It's a very significant upgrade in quality of life and how much resources I have to spend on doing other things with my body.

You could pretty much replace-all "body" -> "mind" in all that for me. It's exactly the same. Mental tension is not a natural rest state - it must be actively maintained, and that consumes resources which have to be taken from somewhere else. There are flow-on effects - say, if I am feeling overwhelmed by how much I have to do, my ability to actually make inroads on that set of obligations is greatly diminished; I probably start feeling anxious; everything starts costing me more; I sleep less well; which in turn means I have fewer resources.

While it's easy to focus on whatever seems the most *urgent* rather than what is the most *important*, it's also worth remembering that for some types of injury, treating the pain is actually an essential stage without which there cannot be any useful healing. It's not just a "it's more pleasant with less pain", but if my back hurts because my muscles are in spasm, I'm not going to be able to move the bones back into the right place while my muscles are still tensed, and I'm probably not going to be able to untense those muscles while I'm still in pain. It's almost pointless doing anything else without first treating that pain.

Actually it's more complicated than that. My recipe for serious back pain is effective painkiller plus effective anti-inflammatory, wait 20-30 mins, then a long hot shower, *then* active relaxation/stretching.

It kinda works that way for many mental things for me, too.

That bit about active relaxation is an important point here. Tension requires active maintenance, and that's occurring over a long term it fades into the background. Just as we stop noticing a regular sound or smell, we stop noticing regular tension. It is often not enough to just address all the tensions we notice, since the odds are good that the ones we *don't* notice are actually the biggest problems. Many guided/active relaxation techniques are actually ways of tricking the "I got used to it and therefore don't notice it anymore", either by giving you a new perspective with which to notice it, or by trying to relax you even where you didn't know you had to be relaxed.

I don't know how much more specific you want me to get here. It may sound like I'm saying "it's 100% in your mind and it's up to you to do something about it, so it's your fault if you don't." That is not what I'm trying to say. 8-)

What does it feel like? There are stages of relaxation just as there are stages of tension. I can be moderately relaxed, which to me usually feels like I am a well of *potential* - I could be doing things, and would be totally able to, but right now I happen not to be. (This might be once I am fully woken up, no longer sleepy or dopey, I've had my shower, I'm dressed, eaten, well rested and ready to get up to stuff, whether or not I choose to.)

Deep relaxation is almost a mild disassociation - I have drifted away from the world, I am slightly disconnected from it and it is further away. I may stop noticing it, or it doesn't matter to me whether or not I notice it. It's not an *effort* per se to get back into being actively engaged with the world, but it would require conscious direction of will. Rather than feeling like I *have* potential, I feel like I *am* potential.

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

MS CRM: I'm sure you're expecting sarcastic or snarky comments about MS here.

Actually I'm not sure MS does this any worse than anyone else. CRM is *hard*. I have seen a company spend 3 years and $10M on trying to get all of its divisions and departments to even just agree on something as simple as what is a product and how do they describe their customers... and fail. Twice in a row. I have seen a government department spend 18 months and be unable to find agreement on how to format an address.

CRM is insanely difficult because it is an attempt to bring together information from a lot of difference places where it is used in a lot of different ways. Even in your own workplace, small as it is, do you think you could reach consensus on the definition of a bug? Or of a tech support contact? Inevitably the things that are important to one person/area/department are not quite as important, or not in quite the same ways, to all the others.

My other general experience of most attempts at CRM is that it is usually technology lead - the tech people/vendors are trying to push a model of how to think about and do things on the people who are in the business of thinking about and doing those things. This is perhaps understandable because the tools one needs to do this right are very technology heavy, so it seems obvious that it should be technology driven.

I'll go so far as to say I've never known a technology-driven CRM approach to succeed. Nor have any one-size-fits-all off-the-shelf commercial product ever seemed to do much good. It has to be driven by the business (or people who are closest to the ground in terms of using & producing this information). It's pretty much exactly the difference between a data entry screen designed by looking at the existing paper forms vs. written from scratch by developers who never used the paper.

CRM is hard. It's almost impossible to do it right when you have really smart people customising a solution with a huge budget and ample time to do it in. A commercial off-the-shelf product from a vendor who knows nothing about how you produce and use information? Almost certainly doomed. 8-) At best you'll get a certain amount of canned reporting and office workflow automation.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're expecting sarcastic or snarky comments about MS here.

Actually, I wasn't expecting anything at all.

To be fair, MS CRM is very smart in a lot of ways.  It's highly customisable, I like how it does its relationships and merging, and I hear the SDK tools are awesome.  (I haven't seen them yet.)  Plus the back-end db is so organised, which is a huge difference from GoldMine, where I hear even the monkeys were underpaid.

I think the part I was mostly lamenting was (a) the total new language involved and (b) the dearth of walk-throughs for some things (like how to add a new type of activity).  The former I should just suck it up and deal, but the latter annoys me - you'd think SOMEwhere on the internet, SOMEone has dealt with what I'm dealing with.  I am always annoyed when Google fails me.

- You format an address the way that Wikipedia or USPS say to.  It's probably helpful that we're underusing our CRM, which means I kind of have limited rein to go in and make things consistent.

- A bug is where the product should do A, but instead it does B.  So this is anything from "It crashed when I tried to use it!" to "It changed all instances of 'é' to 'e'", with the occasional "Can't anybody end a sentence with a period anymore?", depending on how cranky I am that day.

- A tech support contact is one who contacts us for tech support.  ??

The contact management software most often used by our customers is ACT!, actually.  More often 6.0 than anything 2005+; since Sage acquired the company, the product has kind of gone down the shitter.

/random

It's pretty much exactly the difference between a data entry screen designed by looking at the existing paper forms vs. written from scratch by developers who never used the paper.

Oo, that's a good comparison.

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

I'd better stop commenting now.

[veek.livejournal.com]

Our actual tipping point, externally imposed, was health insurance. But that was just the impetus; the way I knew was that the idea of being married seemed like a "duh, of course."

We still, separately and less often together, get the pangs of "maybe this wasn't a good idea." I suspect most people do. In our partic.case the ratio of that feeling to the good kind is so small that the decision is more affirmed than undermined by it.

The thing that surprised the hell out of me with regard to marriage is that it's not just a public affirmation of etc. It feels different. There's almost a finality about it: we could still split up, but it would be a lot of work and headaches and bureaucratic nightmares. It's easier to work out whatever problem we're having, so it's easier to be motivated to stay together.

This is different from the trapped feeling. It's more like a self-imposed external pressure in order to help me do what I want to do anyway. I could find a job that catered to my morning-person tendencies of necessity, and then I'd "have" to get up at 5 every morning. But that would be cool. Or whatever.


Relaxed for me is in large part in the moment. Not expending cycles on an hour from now, tomorrow, next week, next year. It's difficult for me not to plan continuously, and a respite from that is a pre-requisite to relaxation.

[regyt.livejournal.com]

Marriage/engagement/whatever: Well, I've had a lifetime of thinking of marriage as something I'd like to someday be in a position to do, in that it is a symbol in my head of lasting commitment. As for when the tipping point comes for deciding it is right to do with the particular other person, well, living together for at least a year was definitely one of the requirements. Beyond that, well... a sense of certainty. (Caveat: who knows? But the sensation.)

Relaxation: I'm not really very good with that.

[rosefox]

Marriage: We were talking about general stuff 'n' things, and we started saying things like "I really want this relationship to last" and "I'll be there for you whenever you need me" and "I'll take care of you when you're sick" and then we blinked a bit and realized we'd more or less been paraphrasing wedding vows. At that point it was clear that the commitment was already in place, so we decided it would be nice to have a party and go on vacation.

So that's a useful litmus test: if you can take a non-sexist reasonably modern set of wedding vows and speak them with utter seriousness and intent, and you can see yourself doing that in front of bunches of other people, then that's what a wedding is and you might be gearing up for wanting one. And if you can't see yourself doing it in front of other people but it's easy to do with just your SO, elope. *) And if it never feels right, then you may end up living in sin forever, but I know a lot of people that's worked out very well for, so no problem there either. Just be aware of your state's laws about common-law marriage.

I'd say that relaxation feels like just before you fall asleep, but I'm famous for being tense while asleep. I will say, instead, that for me it is the feeling of not having anything else to do--or anything nearly as important to do--than what I'm doing. It's the absence of nagging, external or internal. That does sound rather like contentment, too.

[trista.livejournal.com]

I like what you said about marriage. That sums up very nicely what I wanted to say but wasn't able to make clear.

[methanopyrus.livejournal.com]

I like what Australian_Joe said about realizing you want to endeavor on indefinitely and continually developing yourself to match the other person. People whose marraiges follow these ideals with respect to trying new things are those who I most admire. And it's true marraige is practical financially.

Relaxing for me is flowing, letting go, whether of a tense muscle or of a quick conclusion to a thought. Thus, expanding my awareness to my body, or a greater situation, other points of view, other ways to hold the knitting needles so my arms are un-bunched. Usually when I do any of these things, I also notice I breathe and was not before.

[methanopyrus.livejournal.com]

maybe "match" is too strong of a word? maybe I mean to paraphrase by saying "complement." compelement the other person.

[trista.livejournal.com]

For me, relaxation is the absence of stress, either physical or emotional.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

yep, like the first day of vacation on a beach or something where you realize you have absolutely nothing to do except exactly what you want. Unfortunately, I too get bored and restless after a day of this.

[frauhedgehog.livejournal.com]

I'll just say that the whole process is (for some, like me) a lot more ambiguous and a lot more of feeling your way in the dark to a commitment than what I imagined it would be. Through all the murkiness of difficult communication was a vision we shared of being old together, walking on the beach.

[phaedra-lari.livejournal.com]

For me, it was not only realizing that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with lumiere and support and love each other and have kids together and all that fabulous long-term stuff, it was also realizing that certain things with him are often pleasant/easy rather than constant and massive amounts of work. We enjoy doing chores and errands together often, for instance, and other nesting things; we have our disagreements, but our individual communication misfires usually pass like blips on the radar rather than sinking teeth into the argument and pulling on every loose thread or mysteriously adding on top of each other and magnifying the misccomunication. I don't deceive myself into thinking that marriage will be easy. Relationships are work. But there's a difference between the kind of work that feels constantly effortful and often unpleasant if necessary, and the kind of work where you smile and hum a lot of the time and gaily glide through getting stuff done. In our relationshp, I feel like much of the day-to-day work is and will be the latter sort, and it was that more than any other single thing that made me realize we were ready to make committments to each other in sacred space and in front of witnesses.

[sarahwilder.livejournal.com]

But there's a difference between the kind of work that feels constantly effortful and often unpleasant if necessary, and the kind of work where you smile and hum a lot of the time and gaily glide through getting stuff done.

Beautiful and YES.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

tipping point on marrying at all, or marrying a particular person? i thik i always bought into the idea of marriage as a thing i would eventually do, so if there was a tipping poit for that it perhaps came in early childhood. as for a particular person, i became convinced that i would never meet anyone niftier than moominmolly and so needn't keep waiting.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

♥

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

For me, being relaxed means I'm not moving and I don't feel the urge or need to move.

[alchemi.livejournal.com]

For me there was no real tipping point; I pretty much knew from the beginning. We were engaged after about a year together, but started talking about it three months in. It just sort of felt inevitable (in a good way).

[roadriverrail.livejournal.com]

nancyblue and I were together a whopping five and a half years before we married, and we had been living together roughly five years. I can't speak for her, but I knew I'd marry her one day when the nature of our relationship changed. We started out as two headstrong individuals with careers and we promised each other we'd never let the relationship get in the way of those careers. We even promised not to follow one another if it would sacrifice our careers.

We kept moving together. The relationship was just too valuable to not. She followed me to Gainesville and graduate school, which was a bit of a sacrifice for her. What the relationship had become was of a wholly different nature, and we'd become people who put our togetherness and mutual wellbeing first.

The only reason I didn't propose right away was because I was a pauper student, and I still have some old-fashioned ideas about marriage...things like it's not proper for a man to propose unless he's in a position to prove that he can truly take care of his spouse should hard times fall. I couldn't afford even a modest engagement ring, so I felt it wasn't right. We put it off. I got her an "unofficial engagement ring" to show her my promise to make good one day. About 8 months after I landed my job, we started planning the wedding.

A lot of people here have given really good perspectives on when it's time to think about marriage. Unfortunately, mine isn't going to really help you much. The truth is that I knew I'd marry nancyblue not based on things we said or did, but because I knew the inner logic of our relationship and its inner logic concluded this. Given a whiteboard and a pen, and a language sufficient for describing our relationship, I could prove it was an inevitability. And that made me happy beyond words, so I made sure that inevitability happened.

[datan0de.livejournal.com]

Nicely put, and quite similar to my own experience with femetal. We both knew that we were going to get married long before I proposed, because I'd made a promise to myself long before that I wouldn't get engaged while still a student. Kim was fine with that and understood the logic, but there was no suspense involved.

Shortly after we got engaged a friend of mine was considering proposing to his girlfriend. His rationale was simply "I could picture spending the rest of my life with her." I cautioned him that a better sign that he should propose is when he could no longer picture not spending the rest of his life with her. (It turned out to be good advice.) I wouldn't use that as the sole guideline for marriage, but I would recommend it as a factor to consider.

Side note: Like you, Kim and I also dated for 5 1/2 years before getting engaged, though we'd been friends for over a year before we started dating.

[figmentj.livejournal.com]

Marriage: I don't think there will ever be a point for me where I'm totally 100% certain all the time. There was a point, though, where I began to feel like, "hey, I want this one. We fit good." When that feeling showed itself to be backed up by a general commitment we both have to evolving together and not insisting the other remain static and still wanting to be together for the long-term, I felt about as certain about the yes as I'll ever be. I still have doubts, and I will likely always have doubts. Certainty is a rare luxury for me.

[rosefox]

In comments on a locked post elsewhere, someone said "I think all marriages have those bags-packed moments". I generally believe that anyone who claims to be 100% certain of something 100% of the time is lying or a damn fool. I'm deliriously happy in my marriage, and I still think about how we would handle breaking up, what it would be like to live on my own (I've always had roommates or lived with SOs), how it would feel to make decisions without taking sinboy's needs and feelings into consideration, what it would be like to say "I" instead of "we". I don't mind these thoughts. I think they help to keep me from becoming too complacent. Every question is an opportunity for renewed commitment and consent.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I got a job offer half a globe away and when I learned I couldn't take dilletante unless he was my husband, I began to think -- and then I realized that I wanted to keep him with me on my adventures forever.

[sarahwilder.livejournal.com]

I guess for me, and keep in mind that I was 25 when we got engaged, it was a combination of things. I had been offered (and was taking) a job several hours away from M. I knew that I loved M and that we could make a good life together. I knew that *I* knew it and thought that if he DIDN'T know it, I needed to be on the exit train (because hello, futile?) Most importantly, marriage was important to both of us. Both sets of our parents had been married 20+ years, with good marriages. I didn't want to be married until I wanted to be married to M.

I'm not sure if that's going to help at all.

[sarahwilder.livejournal.com]

I should probably add that our views on divorce contributed to our getting married. Neither of us "believes" in divorce, and when I say that I mean we both believe in making considered decisions. We came into the marriage with the plan that it will last the rest of our lives and divorce isn't really an option (barring any extreme circumstances which we talked about pre-marriage). The convention is something that helps hold us together - not bind us - and is a reminder in tough times that we want to do this, that we can do this.

Are there practical reasons for doing it? Probably. God knows it doesn't help you from a taxation standpoint.

I kind of think of it as a more permanent 'blood brother' ceremony, because it involves the rest of your family too. ;)

[kenshi.livejournal.com]

In order...

1) I am married (and will be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary in two weeks). Very little time elapsed between when K8 and I first met and when we reached the conclusion that we wanted to get married...about two-and-a-half months, actually. It was clear from the beginning that we were not only very into each other, but also highly compatible. It was very much like discovering the perfectly-shaped puzzle piece to fill the gigantic hole in your soul that you'd never suspected was there. Once the fit was made, it was difficult to even imagine opening the hole back up. Yet, that's exactly what we did to some extent. Although we'd both decided that we wanted to spend our lives together by the end of one summer, we still had obligations to attend to first and had to go our separate ways for a year, carrying on a long-distance relationship across 500 miles. If anything, this only served to strengthen our desire to be together and emphasize how right it was for both of us. Being apart was agony. After the end of that year,

The funny thing is, we never had a "big conversation" about getting married. Technically, neither one of us ever "popped the question." We just reached a quiet consensus that it couldn't be any other way and made plans on that shared understanding. When I finally did raise the issue semi-formally (i.e. "I suppose we'd better get serious about planning the wedding" and giving her a ring), we were both surprised that we'd never had a more formal conversation about it up to that point. It was kind of funny...like we could both remember the Big Decision and making it with the other person, but the actual conversation never happened prior to that point. When we announced our formal engagement to friends and family, they were just as surprised. They'd all be operating under the same assumption...that we'd already been engaged for awhile.

So all that, plus the fact that we couldn't keep our hands off one another (and still can't after 17 years) was a good sign that we were meant to be married. It was a lot like we already were married, but just hadn't got around to meeting each other yet.

2) Relaxation for me is a general feeling of well-being or happiness combined with an absence of demands for my attention or immediate obligations to be met.

3) Surely this is a rhetorical question. It is tautologically true that the hatred of life is an inherent property of all MS products, programmed in at the machine-code level.

[kenshi.livejournal.com]

I'll also add one more comment regarding the marriage question while I'm thinking about it.

One key aspect of knowing that K8 and I were right together was this: when we are together we bring out the best version of ourselves, reinforcing all the positives.

So, not only do we identify the other person very strongly with our own sense of self (she is a part of me and vice versa--that "soul-complement" thing I mentioned above), for each of us our self is better just for knowing that the other exists and is connected to us by love. We're separate, but in some ways now different aspects of the same multi-dimensional N-space super-person.

This positive reinforcement and strong identification with the other has been a major strength of our marriage.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Can't help you on the marriage question; in 57 years, I haven't managed to get to "yes" on that one.

But I know what relaxing feels like, and at the risk of sounding trite, it's a sense of being in the moment, as comfortably as sitting in an old chair, without my brain darting off toward the future or past.

I won't tell you how many of those years it took me to learn how to do that; it would only depress you. But I can say that when I'm feeling bored or restless, doing meditative handiwork like knitting can return me to the relaxed zone.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I have asked my married friends how they knew it was time to pop the question. One said he just knew, one that he wanted to call her his fiancee not his girlfriend, and the last that it hurt too much to NOT be married to her. I have other friends who see no need to get married and simply know that they're as committed as most married couples would be.

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

Marriage: Health insurance. That was our tipping point. That, and knowing that we might have to move out of the country in a year and wanting to be able to do that together. If there were state health insurance it's significantly less likely that we would have gotten married, for example.

In other words, as far as I can tell, the only good reason to get married involves legal bullshit. If you have your own health insurance, don't plan on moving out of the country and aren't having kids there really is no reason. Some people might say "love." I don't think marriage is a requirement for love, or vise versa. In fact, marriage is usually what people do when they fear losing a relationship and want to find some way to keep it alive. The interpersonal equivalent of an iron lung. When that fails, they buy a house together. Then have kids. Usually in that order.

Relaxing: It's different for everyone. I would define it as "the temporary removal of concerns about present or future issues unrelated to the activity at hand." For some people, that involves a hammock and a beer. For me, driving. Watching TV. Sometimes sex. Things that remove anxiety, however briefly. That's relaxing.

MS CRM: Your wording there is important. Bill Gates secretly wants to replace all human life with robots, all of whom run MS products. That's where his African donations are going. Very soon a whole country in Africa, one that doesn't make the news very often, like Swaziland, will be fully "upgraded." Once he has a foothold on every continent, he will force through legislation that makes it illegal to run the "human operating software" without the official "Microsoft Humanity" hardware, and we will all have to get upgrades. He's clearly already replaced Melinda with his Android 1.0 hardware.

The last bastions of humanity will be Steve Jobs and his "Apple Phreak Brigate," who will refuse the upgrades and go on the run. Also, three guys in Boston running Linux and living in their mothers' basements.

That's why MSCRM hates all life. Don't worry about it. Just relax and get married. ;-) (One benefit of the Gates Revolution is that no one will have to get married anymore. We'll all just have temporary peer-to-peer networks with other compatible users. Semi-perminant household networks will be a thing of the past.)

[roadriverrail.livejournal.com]

In fact, marriage is usually what people do when they fear losing a relationship and want to find some way to keep it alive.

I'm not so sure I'd say "usually". That takes an awfully cynical perspective on marriage and I'm not sure it's necessarily the case. If I had to peg the most common reason that people have for getting married, it's because they were following the pattern of dating->marriage->home->children that has been laid out. In fact, I suspect that, among those who want children, marriage is often done largely as a prequisite to starting a family, especially if my admittedly informal noticing of how soon a child follows after a wedding counts for anything.

But I also think that there are reasons beyond the legal ones. Sure, nancyblue was on my insurance under domestic partnership rules from my employer, and visas wouldn't have been a big deal if we weren't married, and we could have incorporated when we got ready to buy a home. There are social reasons, too, though. For example, my grandmother and her parents are both becoming quite ill, and they see marriage as a sign their child/grandchild will have someone to look after him/her. It brings them comfort and peace of mind to see us commit in a ceremony. And I'm certainly happy to bring the families together, let them meet, and show them all that we're "the real deal". We already know we are, but formalizing it is still special for many people.

maa-wwiage...

[ethernight.livejournal.com]

Relaxation: try some Xanax, then you will understand.

Marriage: The idea of marriage does not appeal to me, on many levels.

I don't find it appealing to have validation from an "authority" for my relationship.

In fact, I find the idea of government having anything to do at all with my relationship rather distasteful

Legal marriage does not support the various configurations that my relationship(s) may be arranged in, therefore I would prefer not to support the institution.

I find the aesthetic unappealing. The images that words like, "wife", "husband", "marriage" and "yes, dear" bring to mind is not the way I want my relationship to look.

In fact, the pedestrian, hum-drum, semi-adversarial dynamic that I think of as existing in the typical marriage seem an insult to the relationship I have. (Though, of course, I know that not all marriages are like that.)

I don't like the idea of "tying someone down" to me. I want my partner(s) to be with me because they want to be, not because they are legally entangled such that it's a pain in the ass to leave. I actually want it to be easy for my partner to leave at any time -- or at least as easy as it can be while still sharing our lives so closely.

Not only because I want to be confident that my partner(s) are with me because they really want to be, but also because I think that if the relationship is no longer making one or both of us happy, it should end. The idea of dragging on something that was once beautiful because it is more comfortable and convenient, until it becomes a tattered remnant of what it once was, I find quite offensive.

The only reason that makes any sense to me to get married is if you have children. (For the contractual reasons, regarding legal guardianship.) I do not want to have children.

Yes, I realize that that is entirely unhelpful and does not answer your question at all.

Re: maa-wwiage...

[ethernight.livejournal.com]

I will add that we retrospectively picked a date when we consider our relationship to have crossed the line that, if we believed in marriage, would have been the point at which we would have done so. This is primarily for the purpose of having an anniversary -- though we never remember to celebrate. I've decided though that we should do something to commemorate our 10 year, cuz that seems like maybe it is kind of a big deal.

Picking the date many years after the fact has the benefit of hind-sight of course. The best way I can describe our criteria for choosing that date is that that time signified crossing the line to where we considered one another life-partners.

[glib-dichotomy.livejournal.com]

1. marriage: i don't understand, but would like to understand, when marriage (with or without a license) makes sense. I've been dating the same girl for 6 years, but what does that mean? etc etc

2. relaxation: lying slightly drunk in a warm bath, like the proverbial oysters. alternately, full of at-ease potential, where connection is made without stress or fear, feeling that alive in a center of activity where you are apart and yet engaged.

3. ms crm: 1) snark. 2) crm's are a bitch. I built one once, and it was only the beginning; i left that job and it hasn't moved forward an inch.