Marriage - yea or nay?

Nay. Never been married, have no desire to get married. Marriage doesn't have the same meaning it did decades ago. Divorce is too easy to obtain, people don't communicate or work things out anymore.

Yes.

Good role models in parents and grandparents, still married for some ~40 and ~70 years respectively.

I was married for 17years with 3 beautiful children,we divorced after I found out he was having an affair with a stripper.looking back after 7 years and 2 failed engagements,I should have tried to work out the marital problems....

This was the most insightful post of all to me. You saying you would've been willing to accept his mistake due to his other good characteristics or just because you haven't had better luck since him? I'm genuinely intrigued because I know couple currently going through something similar and I have been trying to stay neutral because I'm friends with both of them.

Yeah stay out of it if you want to keep them. as friends, let a counsellor handle that.

Usually when people cheat it's cause stuff wasn't great before.

I love this.

Marriage is a vow, a commitment between two people and can be a beautiful thing. Being with your best friend, waking up with them, going to sleep with them, always having your best friend to enjoy the good part of lives with and having them there to help you through the bad parts, is all worth it! People do not take marriage vows for what they mean anymore and it is a sad thing. I can say that I used to be one of those people, but have finally woken up and realized what marriage should be and what it means. It is not just a piece of paper, it is the meaning and feelings between the vows that you speak during the ceremony. It is truly when two should become one, it means having a partner for life and to me that is awesome. I have been married and unfortunately it was not to the love of my life, which I also think many people now marry too quickly (I again was one of these people) and now that I have met my true love, I know that this is my time for happiness. So, I say don't do it if you don't mean it and for those who celebrate divorce, it is quite sad! It is a failure no matter how you look at it and who likes to fail? Marriage should be celebrated, divorce should not!

I went as far as gettin engaged, pumped the brakes n backed outa that real quick!!

I got divorced about a year ago, there was no celebration....I was and still am heartbreakingly sad...I lost my best friend and he's not coming back but I am finally at least to the point where I can look at my situation and realize I have to pick up, start from where I am and build a new life. I pray to God that I have a true soul mate out there that he will send in his good timing but for now I will be getting to know who I am without a man in my life. I

My partner and I don't really want to get a formal marriage. We are planning to do some common-law-marriage arrangement and he wants some wedding-like party, which isn't important to me but it is to him so I'll be glad to do it.

We want to be together forever and have a family of our own and that's what counts the most. For me some legal arrangement is important (as a safety net), to him only saying some vows in front of our loved ones is enough. So we're planning to do both things, but we'll do them our way (small event, no religious aspects at all, and overall pretty fun and casual).

I went as far as gettin engaged, pumped the brakes n backed outa that real quick!!

Then why did you bother getting engaged? Sorry but don't propose if you are not following through. It wastes your life & the other persons.

If you don't want to get married then don't. My husband and I are happy (for 15 years), we have great and continually inventive and acrobatic sex, it's the best!!!

Exactly what I've always thought & believed. I wonder why people even bother to get into a relationship at all if they think so little of commitment.

Look, no one wants to get divorced. Everyone hopes it will work out. The woman earlier who had an idea that schools should offer classes in choosing a good partner was dead right.

Some weren't lucky enough to grow up with good models of loving behaviour, and wind up throwing themselves into commitment with people they really didn't have the experience to judge were wrong or hurtful for them. And by the time they figure it out, they're all in.

Or, they had amazing parents, and couldn't predict things would go wrong, because they'd never met someone so messed up, and assumed they were fine like all the people they grew up knowing (rationalizing away the problems, which might not even properly announce themselves until much later), and by that time they're all in also.

Or they just let inertia drive the relationship because all their friends are getting married and there's not much else to do, and they've already been with so and so for years, and they lack the drive to pursue happiness or buck convention. So they forget to break up with someone they don't actually like until they have screaming nightmares at 33.

Also I think a lot of people get lazy because work and the other parts of life grind them down.

But if people do their best to be happy together and it doesn't work, I see it as a crime against nature and all good things to insist they suffer until death.