WHAT IS THIS UNMARRIED BUSINESS?

Many of you are curious about what this whole being unmarried thing means. I told Michael last night that there were several comments on the blog about it. His answer was "pretend we're gay". I liked his answer. The thing is, I have never wanted to be married. Not even to Chris. I didn't see the point. I didn't think it really mattered all that much. Marriage did not change our relationship, but Chris thought it was important and someone told us we'd get more money for graduate school if we were married. Chris and I signed legal wedding documents, but did not receive any "extra" financial aid for grad school. Instead I merged my nonexistent credit to Chris's poor poor credit. Not that being married was a bad thing. I have no regrets, but really, marriage is just a non issue for me. If you look around at arguments for "traditional" marriage you find that often times one of the arguments listed is that marriage exists for procreational purposes, meaning that only people who can procreate or intend to procreate should be allowed to marry. I've never wanted to have children of my own. Maybe I fit into that "can procreate" category, but I definitely fail on the "intend to" category. Obviously this isn't a rule that they enforce when filing for a marriage license. Actually, if I remember correctly, I only had to show two forms of identification to get a marriage license. I also never really shook of the feeling that marriage is for the religious. Marriage, for someone like me who doesn't ever intend to have children and is not religious, seems like an act of hypocrisy and blatantly unfair to my friends who cannot legally marry their significant other.

Michael mostly feels the same way about marriage as I do. He never really wanted to get married but agreed to it because that's the thing you did. Though of the two of us, he is more likely to push for an actual legal marriage one day. He just thinks it may be important financially one day to do that. I see that. There are some good financial reasons for legally getting married. Car insurance. Home loans. Taxes. According to this article, marriage benefits like those save a woman about a million dollars in her lifetime as opposed to her single counter part. "Marital privileging marginalizes the 50 percent of Americans who are single." This is true for ALL single people straight or homosexual. This doesn't seem right or fair to me. So, early in our relationship, when I looked at Michael and said "I never want to get married again" these where the reasons roaming around in my head. I want to live a fair and honest life. We've made a verbal agreement to spend the rest of our lives together. Unmarried. The rings we wear are our promise rings to each other. We are together. Partners. It's like Michael said. "Pretend we're gay."