My marriage is successful because of love. We love eachother so much that we come to equal compromises about how we use our money, we love eachother so much that we choose how to raise our child, we love eachother so much that we want to sacrifice small parts of our independence for one another, we love eachother so much that we want to spend the rest our lives enjoying the company of the other. I love that he fixes the computer and hosts my website, he loves that I’m a whiz in the kitchen.

There’s no ‘business’ about it. There’s no separation between love and marriage.

Marriage may be a contract but it would (or should) never be signed if love isn’t the reason.

The dog and couch should be separated.

@Bill (#28) Here in Central Europe (right next to Austria) Dec 5 is St Nicholas’ day. Traditionally, St Nicholas travels with an angel and a devil (never quite worked the exact translation, but he doesn’t have a name). Children sing a song for St Nicholas, and good children are given something nice. Bad children are taken away in the devil’s sack. My boyfriend tells me about being *really* scared when he was small that the devil would take him away! It’s becoming more about kids wearing flashing horns, but I have seen at least one group with 2 extremely scary devils.

@Q3 Perhaps I have a slightly unique perspective on marriage – my parents lived together but never married. Until I was 14 I assumed they were married. My boyfriend (ok, fiance) are getting married next year – for me it’s not important, but we want a family and for him it is important to be married first. So I guess for us the ‘marriage’ part is purely practical (although here there are no tax etc benefits), but that isn’t to say the relationship is. He is my best friend, we can talk about and share everything, we’re there for each other always, we play together, are silly together and bring out the child in each other. We also work well together (in ‘job’ work and in household etc work), most of our beliefs and values are the same or compatible (or we know where the compromise is), have similar hopes and dreams and all the other practical things. To me, that’s what love is – both of those things. The marriage part is just a label, which may or may not give legal or financial benefits. But the intangibles are absolutely required. I can’t wait to raise children with him, share my life with him and to be old with him. Without that, why be with him – with or without a label?

The fact that they used a christmas tree, is because it keeps it leaves and was, therefore, a symbol of life during the winter. Or something like that.

Hands down Carol of the bells!!!

I don’t know the musical term for it but I like it when 1/2 the singers start later. I heard it sang once live with 3 ladies singing at offsetting times and it was fantastic.

Arvin- well said. A religious marriage and a legal marriage are indeed 2 different things. If people have religious beliefs forbidding- fine, let it be forbidden in your church until that institution evolves, or not. As far as our presumably secular non-religiously discriminating gov goes, I see no logical reason why gay marriage between 2 consenting adults is not legal. Perhaps the reason is really IRS based.

Michelle,
Excellent statement of what it takes for a marriage to succeed.

I agree, I think we both want consistancy. I think marriage should be allowed for polygamy and incest as well, though polygamy needs a little extra work since some marriage rights don’t scale well to three or more. For example, do social security survivor benefits get divided up equally, doubled (some amount per person no matter how many), or just go to the first spouse? All of the above have problems, and that’s a long debate for another place.

What we do disagree on is scrapping marriage for civil unions. Marriage has a long history of being tweaked legally for the benefits that two people sharing their lives need. I don’t see the benefit of scrapping that whole system and re-writing the rules from scratch.

Also, when it comes to taxes, married people don’t always pay less. Most years my husband and I have paid exactly the same as if we were still single, and a few years we’ve even paid more. There’s no specific tax credit just for being married. Basically how it works is that if you both make similar amounts of money, you pay the same as if you’re single, though if one doesn’t work or makes very little money you’ll probably come out ahead. The reason we’ve paid more in taxes is because we make similar money, but if we weren’t married we could itemize deductions for one of us while the other took the standard deduction and it would come out higher than if we itemized together or took the married standard deduction. Also, if you have the misfortune of filing married filing separately you can run into also sorts of problems. Certain credits are randomly not allowed with that filing status (and only that filing status) and if your spouse itemizes taxes you do not get a standard deduction. So it’s not clear cut that married people have lower taxes.

There is a reason why you start your life with cheaper items, why you begin with a starter home first, and why you initially invest only a few hundred dollars. You are young and still learning. You will make mistakes and learn from them. It is cheaper to learn when you’re young than to make the same mistakes later in life. This was an expensive way to learn that pets (and, I would add, young children) do not mix with pricey furniture.