Some cultures have belief in marriage and it is not related to religion.
We live in a society with rules and laws. When we marry, it give us certain rights under the law, besides having it be a public display of commitment to your partner.
I know some people say : " I don't care what other people think about my relationship", but everyone cares about what happens when that relationship goes sour and there are children and property involved.
I will never live with a man again or engage in any financial transactions unless we are married.
If we lived in Siberia in a hut, maybe it wouldn't matter, I can just go and build another hut if we couldn't stand each other anymore.
I m really sorry your marriage is on the rocks. Sometimes spending a few months apart can really make a difference and improve things.
3 years after I divorced my husband, we became really good friends and if I could forgive him for what he did, I would remarry him. Being apart made us closer, as strange as it sounds.
I hope things will work out for you!

That's commendable. My wife and I were close friends in high school and she was there for me when my girlfriend became pregnant. I was 17 when I became a parent. 2 years later, my close friend became my wife and lovingly accepted my kid as her own. Life has thoroughly whipped our butts in the last 17 years and slowly we've become roommates, we communicated less and less. Eventually, we had our own 3 kids, and buried 2 of them. Despite all these hardships we grinded it out, only to find resentment and bitterness. We are great together when we don't discuss our issues.

People expect the fairy tale
They dont understand that life will heap shit thier way
They "blame" the other for life's hurdles

They really don't think about what the pretty words in the marriage vows mean

"Before all others "
Means just that, no bitching to friends about marriage troubles that they won't put on table with the person they are married to


I could go on about what each of the pretty words really mean but people are pretty fucking shallow and don't want to know what words of thier own that they choose not to honor

Me, I very much doubt that I'll ever marry again
I'm in a relationship, committed and true but vows?
No, wifey pooh severing hers, severing ours, whilst fucking around on the side
Really fucked with my head as I trusted her more than myself , as I presumed she did same with I after a few decades of been no together

For you? I can only imagine to imagine the difficulties introduced by losing a child, two - only more so

Losing children either makes or breaks couples from what I ve seen. The grief is just too much to bear and it leaves such a painful wound. When you and your wife met, you didn't have the memories of those days, months, years of grief.
I don't know if it applies to you or your wife but sometimes someone can hurt so much that they don't want keep talking about these feelings to their partner who is also heartbroken. Eventually, people just keep it inside and then stop talking about ALL emotion-causing things , not just about grief. This is when the gap starts to widen.

I think marriage takes a lot of work and a lot of maturity.... I wasn't very good at it I'm afraid.... I think all relationships are going to go through difficult times and this is when effort and commitment are really needed and often when we tend to turn away
When marriage is good it's easy.... It's during the hardships that we really need to lean into it and figure out or seek help in order to make it work
I don't think it is for everyone....... However if I was going to have a family I agree that I would want to be in a marriage
I think it's far more than a piece of paper or religious ..... For me it was a commitment before God as well as a legal document .... The day was a celebration and it afforded both of us some legal protections
I made some big mistakes but I wouldn't live together either without this protection.... I won't marry again however I think it's the best system we have for families

I'm so sorry for your losses Chem..... Gentle hug......xo

Your argument seems to assume that had you not gotten married, you would still be the closest of friends. That you would not have drifted apart.

But who's to say that wouldn't have happen if you had not"signed a marriage certificate". People grow and change, especially during the young adult years. I gather from your post that you were quite young when you married. The inevitable growth that occurs during those years (18-25) can have the affect of completely changing a person - mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

For some couples, the marriage certificates creates a more tangible bond between the two individuals. Tangible evidence and reminder of the commitment to each other. Not only a commitment to each other, but also a commitment to a third party. A written contract. A binding contract that can only be broken after intense consideration. That contract motivates some people to "maintain" the marriage - to repair the small cracks in the marriage before normal "too busy with life" neglect and indifference creates large holes in the marital unity. Maybe the marriage certificate elevates the priority and importance of maintaining the marriage - it becomes more important to attend to the run of the mill "normal wear and tear" of the relationship. It becomes more difficult to ignore the small things that grow into the big things that lead the marital demise. I think by plan, marriage makes it more difficult to walk away from a relationship and puts more value in working together to fix things before they get unfixable. That is how a healthy marriage works.

And for those who do not feel compelled to properly maintain the marriage, maybe they don't value the relationship. People tend to take care of things they value.

I don't think marriage creates hardship. I believe it creates a foundation to work through the hardship. Life is a hardship; marriage creates someone to work through the hardships to a brighter future.

I'm so sorry for the loss of your children. I do agree with Cora_Belle, that life is a hardship, but also beautiful. Nothing is one thing or the other. It's everything. Marriage can be hard because people are messy and complicated, not all bad and not all good, but like life, people are a little bit of everything. Stay with someone long enough and you witness a person go through what every person goes through... changes. Overtime, a person evolves, changes, grows, etc, whether they're married or not. If two people aren't evolving and moving in the same direction and at the same exact time, it causes tension and stress. You just hold on, white knuckling it, hoping you eventually catch up to each other and reconnect again. When you do, it's the greatest thing to be invested so deeply in another person and in your commitment to each other.

I got married for non romantic reasons. Didn't plan on ever marrying. We were together for 5 years, and at some point, we just said, why not. I was in my early 40s; I didn't want either of us to have to worry about not being able to make medical decisions for each other if one of us couldn't make our own decision. I wanted to be sure my partner had the rights of a married person. He wanted the same for me. And what I found was that it just makes it harder to give up, having that commitment. Because I gotta say, there are days when I'm like, eff this. But it's not easy to throw in the towel when you've got a contract with another person, when you've made vows to each other. I take those vows really seriously. I think about them all the time, even though we've been married for 11 years.

I do not have a perfect marriage. We do a lot of things wrong. But we do a lot of things right too. We are not always great people. We fight, we are hard headed, we are not always fair. We are fierce when we are expressing ourselves, but I think for me, I'd rather have that then resignation, or indifference. At least if I'm annoyed, angry, upset, I know I still give a crap. I'm fighting for "something." And as long as I give a crap, I'm going to just keep at it, even when it's hard, knowing it's not always hard. It's really not a mystery. There's no magic. I just try to love my husband, even when I don't want to. He does the same with me. I hope it's enough. So far it has been.

I'm sorry to hear how much you are hurting in your marriage. I must commend you though for seeking healing for your marriage instead of just calling it quits.

The challenges of marriage is that we have 2 very imperfect people attempting to love one another. B/c marriage is so intimate, it exposes all our imperfections and can bring much hurt and even shame. At the same time we see our spouse's flaws and it may lead to anger and frustration. If these feelings are not communicated in a healthy way, I think we wind up shutting ourselves down and distancing from one another. For many years my husband and I had difficulty communicating in a healthy way. Although my husband loved me and was committed to me, I felt he didn't understand me and I wound up shutting down and distancing myself from him. I was got depressed and wondered if there was any hope for our marriage.

I read a few very good books and articles on marriage which helped me to better understand my husband and my responses to him. I also had stumbled across youtube videos on developing healthy marriage that helped me to see myself a little better.

It sounds also like the two of you have been through a lot. I cannot imagine losing children. That alone is a huge stress on your marriage. I wonder how she processed her grief? How have you? You can't just shake something like that off and pretend things are okay. Maybe you can seek out a marriage counselor who can help you learn your communication style and point you in the right direction towards healthier marriage?