@ Butterflylady: In January, you kicked serious @$$! BRAVA! You showed many how it is done! I was impressed by how well you handled a challenging situation many experienced grown women would've found difficult.
I scraped the sides of my brain & came up with more thoughts that I hope you find semi-useful. If not, feel free to tell me it is cockamamie & disregard it completely! Being a girlfriend is not the same as being a wife which is not the same as being a mother. Years ago (when the dinosaurs roamed the earth) when I was taking some psych courses at University, we looked at some fascinating studies on the subject. Guys in their 20s were asked to describe what a girlfriend was, what they expected her t be like, what activities/events etc. they expected to do with a girlfriend. They were then asked the same things about the term wife & the term mother. Now, common sense tells us that we are discussing the same person: the girlfriend gets married & becomes a wife who later becomes a mother. That is how the social text goes (modernity often dictates otherwise, though!). The differences between their descriptions were shocking! You would believe that girlfriend & mother were 2 entirely different human beings! These differences in expectations also go both ways, but the differences were not as striking as young women described 'boyfriend' and 'husband'.
Knowing what a potential spouse means when he or she talks marriage is vital. Some guys expect that free-wheeling fun & care-free girlfriend to morph into a 50s style housewife: servile, submissive, subservient with HIM firmly seated as the 'head of the household' or 'man of the house'. Some women expect their hapless semi-goofy boyfriend who is obsessed with watching football with hid buddies to instantly settle down & become much like a father figure in an old-time tv sitcom. Modern young women may expect this poor clueless guy to suddenly become a confidante, best-friend soul-mate figure! That is a tall order!
Planning a wedding is easy: consider your budget, buy or make or borrow a dress, he rents or buys a suit or tux or whatever, get a cake, blah blah blah. Any moron can get married! Being a wife or a husband is an entirely different matter! Not everyone can fulfill the duties (shifting & changing & often culturally/socially nuanced) these roles demand. It is the difference between making a baby & being a parent! Anyone with functioning equipment can make a baby. Parenting is an entirely different matter (thus the proliferation of crappy parents out there!). What do you expect a husband to do & be like? Can the guy you have in mind measure up? Are those expectations realistic & sensible? For instance, if you expect your husband to provide for you financially & you expect to live in a house in the suburbs where your kids play soccer in the park, can he do that? If the guy has a job that keeps him away for months on end, how will you cope? If he is broke, how will you cope? Excessive financial hardships can kill a marriage faster than the Ebola virus can. If he expects you to stay at home & cook, clean & have babies but you expect to work outside the home daily & have a stellar career, how will that effect the marriage: is he flexible enough to accommodate your career? Communicating with the other potential spouse candidate about these roles & expectations is as important as communicating with yourself about what you truly believe, hope for & expect.
@ Stellaeres: A very interesting post! I doubt anyone was offended by anything you said earlier: I didn't see anything wrong with it. As for Atheists having lower marriage rates, I wonder if that is universally true, a local phenomenon or what. Here in Catholic Qu?bec, marriage rates amongst Catholics are at an all-time low with most French Canadians choosing to live together 'common law'. In Canada, common law couples have the same rights as married ones do. Many here on QC, where the economy is also sagging, see a wedding as an unnecessary expense. Many also see marriage as an antiquated institution that is a relic from the past. The power the church had here in QC cannot be understated. The younger generation knows what their parents & grandparents lived through & do not want anything to do with religious oppression & control. Another French phenomenon is that, by law, married women retain their maiden names (since 1971). Most people have hyphenated names & in some couples, one child has the mother's last name, another a hyphenated combo & the third has the father's last name!
I can see how in the USA, things are so different to the way they are here. It is always interesting for me to hear from others living in different social/cultural contexts about what life is like where they reside.
There was a slight defensiveness in my post which was actually the unfortunate result of a a knee-jerk feeling of defensiveness about you not being from the USA and writing about things in the US.
