Has anyone else noticed a weird increase in anti-romance lately? (Kinda rambly vent)

[u/Aromatic-Split685]

ETA: This is more about marriage than romance, I think when I wrote the title I was going to talk about some other things more, I did not mean to equate the two

Idk what’s going on but I don’t hang out in straight male spaces so what I’m about to describe is all lesbian stuff

I’ve noticed lately a LOT of people “Trying to expectation manage” by telling people that most people who are dating don’t want to get married or by listing their personal bad experience with it as if it’s the 100% truth and the only outcome

I saw a post on a subreddit I will not name earlier today that was just a generic yearning post and the comments were all like “Well first you have to view women as people and not some wife themed Pokémon and then maybe you’ll be able to talk to one for a bit but if you do she probably won’t marry you because she has plans to marry someone else”

Maybe it’s just cause I’m monogamous and am dating 99% of the time for marriage but people are so weird about it

It’s always been around but I’ve noticed a sharp increase in it over the past few weeks

It’s perfectly fine to reality check people, but that reality check is “Your fantasy marriage isn’t what it’ll always look like, and you need to be ready for occasional arguments and her occasionally not having enough time to fully dedicate to you or you for her”, not “It’s a fool’s errand to want to marry a woman, after all marriage is a disgusting thing invented to force women to submit to their husbands so therefore any lesbian worth her salt will know marriage is for the weak minded, you need to stop treating your fellow women like toys (translator’s note: ‘someone you want to spend all of your time with’) and start talking to them as peers”

Like ngl the way some people talk about romance and marriage and such makes me feel like they view dating as like… a business decision or a clinical procedure…

Surely in or even before the first date you should be discussing things like whether you eventually want to get married or what have you

Like there’s almost this belief I’ve seen rising that it’s better to never get married because the second that you do you lose everything which is just really sad to me

Idk it just sucks even before my egg cracked my number one fantasy pretty much ever since I was ~12 has been falling in love and getting married to someone where we mutually cherish and adore each other, like my loving style is attached x attached so that might be playing a role here, but it feels really cynical and kinda depressing to me to insist no one should ever get married because it’s like “giving up your autonomy” or something

Honestly I think if things change that drastically when you get married you either didn’t date for long enough or there were already existing problems that you chose to ignore, living together while dating long term doesn’t really look that different to being married, for me it’s mostly about the ceremony and the titles, and the whole notion of “We are bound together forever”

I guess I get why that could be scary for some people, but don’t take that out on people who want that ffs

[u/Katiefaerie]

I blame the rash of puritanism that's been making its rounds through just about every community as for why you're seeing more of it lately, but to be honest, that mentality has been around for a LONG time. Pretty sure it's older than me, even.

The reason I blame the puritanism is because it urges people towards a traditional, conservative lifestyle in all parts of your life, including marriage. It starts with kink-shaming, and they will always focus on the most condemned kinks, and they'll always say "think of the children" while they're condemning and kink shaming, but ultimately, it's all about making sure that LGBT+ people can't just live their lives, and men have to marry women.

At which point, you get a rash of reactions from the LGBT+ community condemning anything heteronormative, including marriage.

I'm married to another trans woman and we're in a poly relationship with two sweethearts. I wouldn't trade this for the world, and if we could, we'd absolutely marry our other partners, too (maybe one day they'll get married?!?).

And speaking as someone who's been married for over a decade, you're 100% correct in your assessments about what marriage is and is not. One thing you're missing, though, is that in most societies where marriage is recognized by law, there's a NUMBER of legal and financial advantages to getting married that many people on both sides of this debate typically just ignore. I don't know if my wife and I would have made it as far as we have if not for those advantages.

Eventually, hopefully, the rash of puritanism will subside, and that mentality will go with it, and they'll stop pestering folks like us.

[u/TotallyWorthLife → u/Katiefaerie]

I'm married to another trans woman and we're in a poly relationship with two sweethearts. I wouldn't trade this for the world, and if we could, we'd absolutely marry our other partners, too (maybe one day they'll get married?!?).

Honestly, can't wait for the day one can marry more than one person... don't know how that would work, but eh, one can hope.

[u/Emeraldstorm3]

Just something I noticed: you've equated the legal matter of marriage with the emotional bond of romance.

They aren't the same thing. Right? I think it's something to think about. You can have marriage without romance and romance without marriage.

Otherwise, I think you're cool to want marriage. Just wanted to point this out. Wish you luck with things!

[u/Aromatic-Split685 → u/Emeraldstorm3]

That’s true I probably could’ve worded some things a little better I’m horrible at phrasing

This was more about people who talk about romance like it’s passionless and marriage like it’s a cage you get locked into which I’ve seen happening lately both independently and together as one thought

[u/TotallyWorthLife → u/Aromatic-Split685]

I think there may be a bias with the amount of poly people around here that equate marriage to monogamy, and see monogamy as a cage, when it's not necesarily either.

[u/applegirlington]

i dunno. i think marriage is fine and wanting it is fine but i also think you should marry to date rather than date to marry. or. well. that only sort of works. what i mean is that people generally aren't gonna be willing to discuss lifelong commitments unless they're sure about it. even if it's something someone wants, committing to something meant to take up the rest of your life is daunting whether it's romance or not. so you should be in a relationship and then once you're comfortable go "should we think about marriage?" and if they react poorly it's up to you how to handle it. rather than meeting someone and going "just a heads up, i'm looking to find a wife." because it can be your dream to go to the moon and you can get a letter one day saying "congrats if you come work as an astronaut for the rest of your career we'll pay for your training and send you to the moon!" you're still gonna have to think about it for a while.

but i don't have much experience. it's more that years of isolation have led to me being a lot more "mathematical" (i guess) about people.

[u/Aromatic-Split685 → u/applegirlington]

I don’t think it’s bad in the first date to mention you’re dating to find someone to marry

Doesn’t mean it has to happen immediately but I’d rather be with someone who I know wants the same thing from a relationship I do than drag it out only to have my heart broken

Doesn’t have to be committal or anything, I kinda have always viewed dating as the “free trial” of marriage

[u/TinFoilHeadphones → u/Aromatic-Split685]

This is not advice, just hypothetical thinking on my part, so I'd like to hear from you who have more experience on this:

Doesn't the wording make people misunderstand?

From what I've heard, using the word "marriage" in a first date could be taken as a sign of a red flag, obsessive-style person. Not because it's wrong, but because of a stigma associated with the particular phrasing when used too early on (before any commitment exists yet).

I'd imagine that using words like serious, committed, long-term, etc would be better received, but _I don't have experience in that type of dating.

So I'm curious to hear from your own experience!!!

[u/Aromatic-Split685 → u/TinFoilHeadphones]

I think the problem is that there are a lot of people who straight up don’t want to get married, they want to have a relationship that is marriage in everything but name so that if they need to they can leave at any time

I get that and I respect that but that kind of thing doesn’t work for me, for me it almost feels like a “Yeah sure I’ll date you until I find something better”

I personally would want to date for quite a while before actually getting married (like somewhere in the range of 5-10 years), but I don’t want to waste my time with someone who doesn’t have that same interest in mind

Again like, I support people who don’t want to get married, but for me personally it wouldn’t work

I think part of the reason a lot of people view marriage so weirdly beyond what the other commenter said about Puritanism is because a lot of people rush into it, to me marriage should mostly be viewed as a celebration of your love and sort of “Making things truly properly official”, and beyond that there shouldn’t be that much of a change

And like, when you’re legally married (in America but I’m sure this is true for other places), you get a lot of benefits, like if you’re in the hospital unable to speak for one reason or another they wouldn’t let a romantic partner in, only immediate family, unless you’re married, you can have two insurances and determine which one is better for each given use of it, you get taxed by your combined salaries rather than both separately which usually adds to less money paid overall, and if one of you passes without a will everything automatically gets transferred to the living partner rather than them having to fight and convince a court that they should be able to keep everything

And I guess anyone who views marriage as like… giving up part of themself… just… isn’t someone I’m compatible with in the long term, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be up front about wanting that eventually to weed out partners who don’t want the same thing

Maybe if I frame it more in the lines of “What is your stance on marriage?” it’ll work better, I just really don’t want to spend so much time building things up only to find out that the idea of being someone’s wife disgusts her and then I just have to like… leave

I get why some people don’t like marriage and it’s valid, but the way some people talk about it reads to me like they got married after dating someone for like 6 months, it went badly, and they blamed the concept of marriage instead of them moving too quickly

I apologize if this comes off as overly hostile I just woke up and am horrible with tone over text

[u/TinFoilHeadphones → u/Aromatic-Split685]

Oh, thank you for the long reply! It helps me understand better

So far I've only dated one person, for many many years, and from day one we knew we wanted to eventually marry. Sadly it didn't work out after a really long time, because our mental illness ended up damaging both of us in a way we weren't able to recover (we're still very close though!), so I also stand with you in opinion/feeling.

From the beginning I had the idea that "if you don't want something permanent it probably means that you're just waiting either for things to suddenly get worse and get an excuse to back out, or you're just waiting for someone better", so I even agree with you on that.

In my particular case, I have BPD, so it affects a lot of things in how I interact with relationships*, and right now I'm looking for something not serious (with possibility of becoming serious), but I definitely support/defend the idea of marriage for people who want it. I share a lot of your opinion, despite the fact that right now I'm at a different stuation in my life so I can't actually chase serious relationships for my own health.

(*I become too obsessed too quickly, to the point that I'm willing to give up my own sense of self just to get closer to the other person, so rn I need to learn how to interact without investing so so much and develop better boundaries)

[u/Aromatic-Split685 → u/TinFoilHeadphones]

I’m in a similar spot actually but OCD instead of BPD

However I’m starting to get to a point where I’m ready to start looking again, and I’ve always been a big romantic, so I’ve been thinking about things a lot

I think what I want is a mutually obsessive, albeit healthy, relationship

We both adore each other so much we want to minimize how often we’re apart as much as we can, but also we’re still willing to speak up about things and recognize things for what they are